Firmware-updater

Simple typescript tool for updating firmware. Made for work purposes.

Usage guide

Environment preparation

Download project files

Choose any place where you wanna arrange project, for example /home/username/projects/, go to this folder:

cd /home/username/projects/

Then cloning project files there:

git clone git@github.com:qwerty541/firmware-updater.git

Go to the appeared project folder:

cd ./firmware-updater/

Compile firmware emulator

Important! For this step you need to have installed rust compiler, follow this link for details: https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install

Now follow to subproject folder:

cd ./fake-firmware-process/

Begin compilation by this command:

cargo build

HTTP firmware update server

After compilation of firmware emulator we need a http server from witch the new firmware version will be downloaded.

Important! For this and future steps you need to have installed nodejs, follow this link for details: https://nodejs.org/

Globally install nodejs package http-server:

sudo npm install -g http-server

After installation we need to prepare a folder for HTTP server where will be placed binary file with "new" version of firmware

Go to the project folder:

cd /home/username/projects/firmware-updater/

Init folder for HTTP server, for example fake-http-server-storage:

mkdir ./fake-http-server-storage/

Copy inside these new folder firmware binary file:

cp ./fake-firmware-process/target/debug/fake_firmware_process ./fake-http-server-storage/

Now we need to give that file a name with contains firmware version, for example firmware-v2. Version 2 because will have version 1 running and we will upgrade it to 2.

mv ./fake-http-server-storage/fake_firmware_process ./fake-http-server-storage/firmware-v2

Now all about HTTP server was read, lets run it:

cd ./fake-http-server-storage/
http-server

The console will show ip address and port of HTTP server. Now we need to move it with firmware binary file path in configuration file:

cd /home/username/projects/firmware-updater/firmware-updater/
mv ./config.example.json ./config.json

Now open config.json with any text editor and change properties remoteFirmwareStorageServer and firmwareFileNameWithoutVersion to your values. After these changes in configuration file these properties should look like:

{
  "firmwareFileNameWithoutVersion": "firmware-v",
  "remoteFirmwareStorageServer": {
      "hostname": "127.0.0.1",
      "port": 8080,
      "path": "/"
  },
}

Firmware storage

In current step will be organize folder for our current firmware binary file and write info about that in config file:

cd /home/username/projects/firmware-updater/
mkdir ./firmware-storage/
cp ./fake-firmware-process/target/debug/fake_firmware_process ./firmware-storage/
mv ./firmware-storage/fake_firmware_process ./firmware-storage/firmware-v1

After that we need to rewrite property firmwareLocalStoragePath in config.json. After changes it should look like:

{
  "firmwareLocalStoragePath": "/home/username/projects/firmware-updater/firmware-storage/",
}

Systemd process

At this step we need to run our current firmware binary /home/username/projects/firmware-updater/firmware-storage/firmware-v1 as systemd process.

For that you need to create .service file from template:

cd /home/username/projects/firmware-updater/
sudo cp ./fake-firmware-process/fake_firmware.service /etc/systemd/system/

Then open this will with text editor and change path to firmware binary file to your actual:

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/username/projects/firmware-updater/firmware-storage/firmware-v1

Now we can launch it with systemctl command:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start fake_firmware

And check its status to be sure that everything went without errors:

sudo systemctl status fake_firmware

It remains only to change systemdFirmwareServiceConfigurationFilePath property in config file. After changes it should look like:

{
  "systemdFirmwareServiceConfigurationFilePath": "/etc/systemd/system/fake_firmware.service"
}