Upgrading Platinum systems avoiding RSYNC on the private network

If your Platinum systems have a slow or intermittent network connection, there is a possibility of problems occurring during a firmware upgrade. In rare cases, the system can potentially become unusable when an upgrade takes a significantly long time or is interrupted. To guard against this, it is possible to download a mirror copy of the firmware onto the file-system of the EAM, NAM or Affinity itself. It can then upgrade itself using this copy as the upgrade source. The process is essentially identical to using a local mirror site with the exception that it uses the device itself as its own mirror server.

The easiest way to do this is using rsync (see the Upgrading Platinum Systems With Unreliable Internet Connections page) but these instructions are specifically aimed at applications where rsync is to be avoided on the private network. Instead, ssh and tar are used to transfer a firmware image to the target system in a technique known as a tar-pipe. The source of the image to be transferred can be built using rsync or acquired directly from Güralp Systems on a USB stick.

The target system must have access to the network while the tarpipe is running but it does not need network access while it is actually upgrading. If the download process is interrupted, it can be easily restarted. The operation of the target device is not affected during the download (other than by creating a bandwidth requirement) so this process can safely be repeated until it has completed successfully.

Platinum systems use the rsync protocol to update their firmware to the latest revision. rsync is an extraordinarily flexible tool but it can be rather complex. The upgrade script in Platinum is a front-end to rsync which is used to hide this complexity and ensure the safe use of the protocol. The source for the rsync transfer is normally the Güralp rsync server; in this instance, it will be a local image in the target device's file-system: i.e. the device will function as its own mirror server. In this way, while the rsync protocol is still used, it is not used over the network.

Upgrading a Platinum system using itself as its own upgrade mirror involves five steps:

Acquiring the mirror content;
Transferring the mirror content to the target system;
Setting up the system as a local rsync server;
Configuring the system to use itself as its upgrade server; and
Performing the upgrade.

The procedure is slightly different for systems with different architectures so the instructions have been split into three. Please select one of the links below:

For more information, first contact your local distributor or email .