RedBoot (an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in '' NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, a ...

for Red Hat Embedded Debug and Bootstrap firmware) is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

application that uses the

eCos The Embedded Configurable Operating System (eCos) is a free and open-source 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 preci ...

real-time operating system A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which ...

Hardware Abstraction Layer Hardware abstractions are sets of routines in software that provide programs with access to hardware resources through programming interfaces. The programming interface allows all devices in a particular class ''C'' of hardware devices to be acce ...

to provide bootstrap

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide ...

for

embedded system An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is ''embedded'' ...

s. RedBoot allows download and execution of embedded applications via serial or

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

, including embedded

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

and

applications. It provides debug support in conjunction with GDB to allow development and debugging of embedded applications. It also provides an interactive

command line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

to allow management of the

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid F ...

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 server.

References

{{reflist

External links

*http://ecos.sourceware.org/redboot/ *http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/redboot.shtml *http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/techref/bootloader/redboot Boot loaders Free boot loaders

See also

References

External links