Preparing a USB stick for upgrading Platinum modules

Requirements

A computer running Linux.
A USB stick that can be erased, 1GB or greater.
Some Linux knowledge.

If the instructions on this page cannot be followed, then please request a USB upgrade stick from Güralp Systems. We will provide a ready-made stick (and cable if necessary) directly to you.

Request a USB upgrade kit

* Your Name

* Organisation

Where are you located

* Your Email

If you would rather build your own, follow the procedure below.

Identify the device name

Insert the USB stick into a USB socket on the computer. Wait for ten seconds to allow the kernel to recognise the device, then run the command dmesg. The output should contain lines like

sd 46:0:0:0: [sdb] 15826944 512-byte logical blocks: (8.10 GB/7.54 GiB)
sd 46:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 46:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
sd 46:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 46:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
     sdb: sdb1
sd 46:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 46:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

The device name in this example is sdb although the name on your system may well be different. Note that sdb refers to the physical device and sdb1 refers to a partition on that device. sdb is used throughout the remainder of this example: substitute the name that your system has used if it is different.

Prepare USB stick

Partition the USB stick. The partition table must be in DOS (MBR) format and not in EFI format (which is becoming the default on newer systems). It is normally sufficient to create a single partition covering the whole device.

Create an ext2 filesystem on the new partition. The following commands should be suitable for creating the filesystem:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1
sudo mke2fs -t ext2 /dev/sdb1
sudo e2label /dev/sdb1 Pt-firmware

(It is, of course, necessary to substitute sdb with the name of the device.) Now mount the stick somewhere it can be accessed, usually on /mnt:

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

Download required scripts and firmware

Scripts

Use the following wget commands to download the scripts to be run on the device. If you are using a mount point other than /mnt, substitute its path in pace of /mnt.

sudo wget -O /mnt/upgrade http://www.guralp.com/download/DCM/upgrade-from-disk
sudo wget -O /mnt/upgrade-EABI http://www.guralp.com/download/DCM/upgrade-from-disk-EABI
sudo chmod 0755 /mnt/upgrade*

Firmware

Use the following rsync command to download the required firmware, changing the emphasised text (ARCH and mnt) as required:

sudo rsync -av --del rsync://rsync.guralp.com/platinum-stable/ARCH /mnt

(Note it is critical that there is no trailing slash after ARCH). This command can be run again at any time to update the firmware on the USB stick, only downloading files which have changed. To determine which architecture(s) you need:

Name	Description
`CMG-DCM-mk2x`	CMG-DCM modules (Platinum firmware)
`CMG-DCM-mk4-eabi`	CMG-EAM modules (Platinum firmware, builds ≥10000)
`CMG-DCM-mk4`	CMG-EAM modules (Platinum firmware, builds ≤3801)
`CMG-NAM`	CMG-NAM (original 3U rackmount, with or without serial ports)
`CMG-NAM64`	CMG-NAM64 (original 3U rackmount)
`CMG-NAM-mk2`	CMG-NAM-mk2 (new 1U rackmount)

If you need more than one architecture, run the rsync command above once for each required architecture, using the correct name in place of ARCH each time.

The difference between CMG-DCM-mk4-eabi and CMG-DCM-mk4 is in the build number. If you know the units being upgraded are already at build 10000 or greater, then only the eabi version is required. Otherwise, get both versions.

The upgrade scripts automatically know which firmware they need, so if unsure simply download all the architectures.

Finally, dismount the USB device with the command

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

substituting the name of the actual device used in place of sdb1.