Flashing GSM firmware

Tom Yates madhatter at teaparty.net
Mon Mar 9 08:44:10 CET 2009


On Thu, 5 Mar 2009, Joerg Reisenweber wrote:

> rootfs is a standard FSO-console MS5 patched to fix "doesn't boot on r/o 
> mounted fs" issue. Kernel is recent Andy tracking with GSM sysfs node 
> patch created originally by PaulFerster based on my suggestions.

then, thank you to all of those people.

> MOKO11 was a corporate work involving quite a number of people on IRC, 
> mainly PaulFerster, Werner, Lindi (iirc), and me. Dieter checked for the 
> bugs we spotted and fixed them in calypso's FW.

that's interesting, i hadn't realised that any people in openmoko had 
access to the calypso firmware source; i thought the project was still 
dependent on TI fixing bugs as the community found them.  good to hear 
this is not so, and thanks to those above who are improving it!

> The uSD image was entirely created, tested and published by me.
> Original idea: roh.

then thanks to the both of you, too.  one of my showing-off points for the 
'moko is the way that custom distributions can be created to do specific, 
complex tasks; this is a perfect example.

and to paul fertser: i happily concede that it's perfectly possible to do 
the firmware upgrade using the very precise and helpful instructions on 
the wiki, and thanks for reminding people that this works fine.

the attraction of the SD-based method to me was that neither the tools 
(nor any dependencies they may drag in during the install) have to live on 
my 'moko in normal operation, with their attendant (though doubtless 
small) risk of destabilising it; i run the phone environment when it's a 
phone, and the upgrading environment when it's upgrading the firmware, and 
ne'er the twain shall meet.  thanks to tar (to back the card up before the 
dd) and fdisk+tar (to restore it after flashing), it doesn't need a spare 
SD card.  also, i have two mokos, and it's quite a time-efficient way to 
do a bunch of them.

as a user, i was given a choice of ways to do a complex but desirable 
task, and i was able to pick the one that best suited my temperament and 
situation; i got freedom, is what i got.  thank you all for it!


-- 

       Tom Yates  -  http://www.teaparty.net




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