RedBoot
Encyclopedia
RedBoot is an open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 application
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

 that uses the eCos
ECos
eCos is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements of run-time performance and hardware needs...

 real-time operating system
Real-time operating system
A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...

 Hardware Abstraction Layer to provide bootstrap firmware
Firmware
In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...

 for embedded system
Embedded system
An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...

s. RedBoot is used in both product development and in deployed products in the field, such as the entertainment systems on the Airbus A380
Airbus A380
The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. It is the largest passenger airliner in the world. Due to its size, many airports had to modify and improve facilities to accommodate it...

s and Delta's Boeing 767.

RedBoot allows download and execution of embedded applications via serial
Serial communications
In telecommunication and computer science, serial communication is the process of sending data one bit at a time, sequentially, over a communication channel or computer bus. This is in contrast to parallel communication, where several bits are sent as a whole, on a link with several parallel channels...

 or Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....

, including embedded Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 and eCos
ECos
eCos is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements of run-time performance and hardware needs...

 applications. It provides debug support in conjunction with GDB
GNU Debugger
The GNU Debugger, usually called just GDB and named gdb as an executable file, is the standard debugger for the GNU software system. It is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Java...

 to allow development and debugging of embedded applications. It also provides an interactive command line interface to allow management of the Flash
Flash memory
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...

 images, image download, RedBoot configuration, etc., accessible via serial or Ethernet. For unattended or automated startup, boot scripts can be stored in Flash allowing for example loading of images from Flash, hard disk, or a TFTP
Trivial File Transfer Protocol
Trivial File Transfer Protocol is a file transfer protocol known for its simplicity. It is generally used forautomated transfer of configuration or boot files between machines in a local environment....

server.

External links

  • http://ecos.sourceware.org/redboot/
  • http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/redboot.shtml
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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