CN101866295A - A method of operating system network installation - Google Patents

Abstract

The embodiment of the present invention proposes a method for network installation of an operating system, including the following steps: the mobile terminal device bootstrap program starts the meta-operating system and enters the system management mode; in the system management mode, the mobile terminal device establishes a network Connect and download the corresponding system image file from the network; the mobile terminal device decompresses the system image file and writes it into the corresponding partition to complete the system installation. The above-mentioned solution proposed by the present invention realizes the networked automatic installation of the operating system of the mobile device without changing the function of the boot program, separates the coupling relationship between the underlying hardware and the network service, reduces the difficulty of transplantation and development, and improves the compatibility between different mobile phones. Terminal portability, easy to implement.

Description

A method of operating system network installation

technical field

The invention relates to the field of network communication, in particular, the invention relates to a method for network installation of an operating system.

Background technique

With the advent of the mobile Internet, smart mobile terminal equipment will become the main network access medium, such as mobile phones, MIDs, embedded devices and so on. With its functional advantages and portability, mobile phones will have broad application prospects, with increasingly rich functions and features. The operating system plays an increasingly important role in mobile phones, and users have also put forward new requirements for the automatic and intelligent management of mobile phone operating systems. Once installed, the operating system of a feature phone cannot be modified, nor can third-party applications be installed. It has simple functions and will gradually fade out in the mobile Internet era. The present invention is mainly aimed at the smart phone (Smart Phone) that can replace the operating system and install the independent application program.

Although smartphones support the replacement of operating systems, the operating system and hardware are tightly bound in the current technical solution, and it is very difficult to install and update the mobile phone operating system. The operation process is complicated and requires users to have certain operating experience and skills. If you are not careful, you may fail. At the same time, users have a strong demand for automatic installation and updates of smartphone operating systems.

First, specific application requirements. The differences in the operating system platforms of different smartphones make the collection of application software very different. For example, the photo browsing program in the iPhone has a friendly user interface, and Windows Mobile includes Office Mobile. Users want to use different applications on the same mobile phone, but it cannot be realized due to the limitation of the operating system. Smartphones are also becoming a new mobile entertainment platform. There are a lot of game software for various smart systems, and the games supported by different systems are also very different. Therefore, it is very important to provide users with a convenient way to use different operating system software. big demand.

Second, the operating system is updated. In order to continuously improve user experience, smartphone operating systems are also constantly updated. Unlike PCs, ordinary mobile phone users are not competent to install mobile phone operating systems. In this way, the benefits brought by the new version of the operating system have to be given up, such as the repair of software defects (especially security-related issues), the support of user applications, and the like.

Finally, system failure repair. The key difference between smartphones and ordinary mobile phones is that third-party programs can be installed. On the one hand, these applications expand the user experience of mobile phones and bring rich applications. On the other hand, software defects in these applications are likely to cause problems in the mobile phone operating system (such as frequent crashes, long response time, etc.). Even professional mobile phone developers must rely on special tools such as development boards to analyze such problems, but it is almost impossible for ordinary users to solve them. In addition, if the system is infected with a virus or invaded, the most effective way is to restore the system to a healthy state. Generally speaking, if there is an abnormality in the mobile phone operating system, reinstalling the operating system is a fast and effective method.

To sum up, providing users with automatic operating system installation is an important function of mobile devices. With the widespread deployment of wireless networks and the popularity of 3G specifications, these high-speed network access methods provide a guarantee for the networked and automatic installation of mobile device operating systems.

At present, most mobile phones do not support the automatic installation of the operating system. Users must manually download the system image and install it manually. The operation methods of different mobile terminals are also different, which has higher requirements for users. Therefore, a large number of mobile phone users have to give up when they need to reinstall the system, and continue to use the original system with poor user experience and performance. Some embedded devices can automatically update the operating system. The basic method is to expand the boot loader to support automatic network download and automatic installation of system images. Many general-purpose embedded device boot programs (such as U-Boot) only provide simple network support in order to facilitate file transfer during the development process, and generally only use the TFTP protocol in wired LANs.

This method of supporting the network download and installation of the operating system through the extended boot program is mostly used in customized embedded devices, or in the development process of embedded devices, and is not suitable for released mobile phone terminal products. The reasons are:

(1) The implementation is complicated. The boot program directly interacts with the hardware, and generally only completes the initialization of the hardware, mainly in assembly code, and lacks a friendly secondary development platform. It is necessary to support mobile phone networks (WiFi, GPRS, 3G, LTE, etc.) in the boot program to realize Drivers for different networks and the necessary network stacks are very difficult. In addition, some auxiliary tools must be implemented, such as network configuration tools, file downloads, file decompression tools, file system modules, etc. Most of these tools or modules are designed to work in an independent operating system and use other libraries. It is very difficult and labor-intensive to port these tools to the bootloader.

(2) Hardware binding. The bootloader interacts directly with the hardware and needs to be customized for different hardware platforms. Even the same network will need to be re-implemented due to different mobile phone hardware. In fact, many tools and modules are not necessarily related to the underlying hardware, but if they are implemented in the bootloader, they have to be transplanted according to the hardware platform. If you want to extend new functions, it will be more difficult.

(3) Bootstrap scale expansion. In principle, the bootloader is only responsible for the initialization of the hardware and the loading of the operating system, with less workload and a small program size, which can be quickly loaded into the memory for execution. If network drivers, network protocols, and auxiliary tools are all included, the scale will inevitably expand, the loading will be slow, and it may even exceed the memory capacity and cannot be executed.

Therefore, it is necessary to propose a technical solution that can realize the network installation of the operating system of the mobile communication device and realize the networked automatic installation of the operating system.

Contents of the invention

The purpose of the present invention is to at least solve one of the above-mentioned technical defects, especially realize the networked automatic installation of the operating system of the mobile device without changing the function of the boot program, separate the coupling relationship between the underlying hardware and network services, and reduce the cost of transplantation. And the difficulty of development, improve the portability in different mobile terminals.

In order to achieve the above object, an embodiment of the present invention proposes a method for network installation of an operating system, which is characterized in that it includes the following steps:

The boot program of the mobile terminal device starts the meta-operating system and enters the system management mode;

In the system management mode, the mobile terminal device establishes a network connection, and downloads a corresponding system image file from the network;

The mobile terminal device decompresses the system image file and writes it into the corresponding partition to complete the system installation.

Wherein, the mobile terminal equipment includes the following functional modules:

The network configuration module is used to detect the available network, configure according to the network type, and establish a network transmission channel;

The data service module is used to be responsible for downloading the system image from the network server and verifying the integrity of the system image;

The system service module is used to provide network driver and file system support services, and provide services to the network configuration module and the data service module.

Wherein, establishing a network connection of the mobile terminal device includes the following steps:

The network configuration module in the mobile terminal device will automatically detect the currently available network and present it to the user in the form of a list;

The user selects the network to be used and provides corresponding configuration information;

The mobile terminal establishes a communication connection with the corresponding network.

Wherein, downloading the corresponding system image file from the network includes the following steps:

The mobile terminal device sends a download operating system request to the server, and the server returns a mirror list of available instance operating systems;

The user selects the system image to be downloaded;

The mobile terminal device downloads the system image file and verifies the integrity of the system image file.

Wherein, the mobile terminal device further includes a performance monitoring module, which monitors the remaining battery power and network status of the device, and prompts the user to give up the network installation of the operating system when the battery is low or the network connection is poor.

Wherein, the meta-operating system is a simplified operating system customized according to the hardware platform of the mobile terminal device.

Wherein, the meta-operating system includes a Linux operating system customized according to the mobile terminal device.

Wherein, the mobile terminal equipment includes a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), or a netbook.

The above-mentioned solution proposed by the present invention realizes the networked automatic installation of the operating system of the mobile device without changing the function of the boot program, separates the coupling relationship between the underlying hardware and the network service, reduces the difficulty of transplantation and development, and improves the compatibility between different mobile phones. Terminal portability, easy to implement. Specifically, the technical solution proposed by the present invention has one or more of the following advantages: the boot program in this method is an ordinary boot program without any additional functions, for example, the meta-operating system is a highly customized streamlined Linux operating system, and the target After the platform is successfully transplanted, all network support and auxiliary tools can directly use the very mature tools under the Linux platform, which is easy to implement; loosely coupled with the hardware, the meta-operating system between the boot program and the instance operating system integrates the network protocol, The implementation of auxiliary tools is separated from the underlying hardware, and can be developed based on the common Linux platform. The debugging and transplantation are loosely coupled with the hardware, and the portability is good; the scalability is good. functions, such as supporting new network protocols, performing integrity checks on instance operating systems, and backing up user data.

Additional aspects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.

Description of drawings

The above and/or additional aspects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent and easy to understand from the following description of the embodiments in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:

Fig. 1 is the flow chart of the method for operating system network installation of the embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 2 is the relationship among meta-operating system, example operating system, boot program and hardware of the embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 3 is the relationship among the modules of the meta-operating system in the embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 4 is the networked automatic installation process of the operating system according to the embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 5 is a storage method of a boot program, a meta-OS and an example OS according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed ways

Embodiments of the present invention are described in detail below, examples of which are shown in the drawings, wherein the same or similar reference numerals designate the same or similar elements or elements having the same or similar functions throughout. The embodiments described below by referring to the figures are exemplary only for explaining the present invention and should not be construed as limiting the present invention.

In order to achieve the purpose of the present invention, the present invention mainly aims at the management of the operating system in the mobile device, and proposes a two-stage startup method, which realizes the networked automatic installation of the operating system: in the first stage, the boot program first starts the built-in highly customized element The operating system (MetaOS), the meta-operating system completes tasks such as network connection, system image download, verification, and installation; the second stage starts the operating system used by the user, which is called the instance operating system (IOS, Instance OS).

As shown in Figure 1, it is a flow chart of a method for network installation of an operating system in an embodiment of the present invention, including the following steps:

S110: the boot program starts the meta-OS and enters the system management mode.

In step S110, the boot program of the mobile terminal device starts the meta-operating system and enters the system management mode.

Specifically, mobile terminal equipment includes the following functional modules:

The network configuration module is used to detect the available network, configure according to the network type, and establish a network transmission channel;

The data service module is used to be responsible for downloading the system image from the network server and verifying the integrity of the system image;

The system service module is used to provide network driver and file system support services, and provide services to the network configuration module and the data service module.

In addition, the mobile terminal device also includes a performance monitoring module, which monitors the remaining battery power and network status of the device, and prompts the user to give up the network installation of the operating system when the battery is low or the network connection is poor.

S120: Establish a network connection, and download a corresponding system image file from the network.

In step S120, in the system management mode, the mobile terminal device establishes a network connection, and downloads a corresponding system image file from the network.

Specifically, establishing a network connection with a mobile terminal device includes the following steps:

The network configuration module in the mobile terminal device will automatically detect the currently available network and display it to the user in the form of a list;

The user selects the network to be used and provides corresponding configuration information;

The mobile terminal establishes a communication connection with the corresponding network.

Downloading the corresponding system image file from the network includes the following steps:

The mobile terminal device sends a request to the server to download the operating system, and the server returns a list of available instance operating system images;

The user selects the system image to be downloaded;

The mobile terminal device downloads the system image file and verifies the integrity of the system image file.

S130: decompress the system image file, and write it into a corresponding partition, and complete the system installation.

In step S130, the mobile terminal device decompresses the system image file, and writes it into a corresponding partition to complete the system installation.

Wherein, the meta-operating system is a streamlined operating system customized according to the hardware platform of the mobile terminal device.

For example, the meta-operating system includes a Linux operating system customized according to mobile terminal equipment.

In the above embodiments, the mobile terminal equipment includes a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), or a netbook.

Below mobile terminal equipment is taken mobile phone as example, meta-operating system is taken Linux operating system as example to further elaborate the present invention, obviously, the present invention is not limited to be applied to mobile phone and meta-operating system not only includes Linux operating system.

The method of the present invention is mainly composed of a boot program, a meta-operating system, and an instance operating system on the mobile phone client. The relationship between the three and the hardware is shown in FIG. 2 . The boot program is the same as the boot program in an ordinary mobile phone. It works directly on the hardware and is responsible for the initialization of each component of the mobile phone, loading the operating system kernel, and starting it. In the present invention, the boot program can directly start the meta-operating system or the instance operating system, and different operating systems can be started by different combinations of starting keys. By default, the bootloader directly starts the instance operating system, which is the same as the boot process of a normal mobile phone. If the user wants to update or install the operating system, he enters the meta-operating system, performs corresponding operations, and then restarts to enter the new instance operating system. That is to say, the meta-OS will exit after downloading and installing the instance OS, and will not run concurrently with the instance OS. The meta-OS is a Linux system customized for mobile phone terminal hardware transplantation, while the instance OS is any system that can run on this mobile phone, such as WindowsMobile, Android, etc., and has nothing to do with the meta-OS.

It can be seen that the networked automatic installation of the mobile terminal operating system is mainly completed by the meta-operating system. The relationship between the modules of the meta-operating system is shown in Figure 3, and its functional modules are as follows:

System service module: includes network driver, file system support, and provides services to all other modules; network configuration module: detects the available network, configures it according to the network type, and establishes a network transmission channel; data service module: responsible for downloading the system image from the network server , and verify the integrity of the system image; system installation module: decompress the system image and install it to the target partition; performance monitoring module: monitor the remaining battery power and network status of the device, and prompt the user when the battery is low or the network connection is poor In case of abandoning the network installation of the operating system.

As the embodiment of the present invention, the networked automatic installation process of the operating system is shown in Figure 4, and the networked automatic installation of the operating system has the following steps in turn:

1. Start

a) If the user presses the power button, the boot program directly starts the instance operating system without entering the system management mode, and the operation ends.

b) If the user presses a special power-on key combination, the bootloader will start the meta-OS and enter system management mode.

2. Network configuration

a) The network configuration module will automatically detect the currently available network and display it to the user in the form of a list;

b) The user selects the network to be used and provides corresponding configuration information, such as WiFi password;

c) establish a network connection;

3. Performance monitoring

a) If the user's power is low or the network connection is poor, prompt the user to give up the operation, otherwise continue.

4. Download mirror

a) Send a request to the server, and the server returns a list of available instance operating system images;

b) The user selects the system image he wishes to download;

c) Download the image and verify the integrity of the image;

5. Install mirror

a) Unzip the system image file and write it to the corresponding partition to complete the installation function.

6. Restart the system to enter the new instance operating system

The method described in the present invention can be realized on the hardware framework of an ordinary mobile phone, and the technical problems of the design include: a boot program, a meta-operating system, an instance operating system and a system image storage organization, and an implementation mode of each module of the meta-operating system.

Storage methods include:

Fig. 5 shows two kinds of boot programs, meta-OS and instance OS storage methods. Among them, FLASH is a common mobile phone built-in memory, generally a NAND memory chip; NOR is also a common built-in memory. Compared with NAND, it has a smaller capacity and a slower write speed, but a faster read speed and supports on-chip execution In Place, XIP); microSD is an external memory card commonly used in mobile phones. In the structure shown in Figure 5(a), the mobile phone is equipped with only one built-in memory, and the boot program, meta-OS and instance operating system are in different partitions of the same memory. NOR memory, a piece of NAND memory, can implant the boot program and meta-operating system into NOR with a faster reading speed, while the instance operating system exclusively occupies the NAND memory. The second structure not only has a fast startup speed, but also can carry out special protection on the NOR memory (even set it as read-only), prevent user modification or tampering by malicious programs, and ensure the security of the meta-operating system, thus ensuring the download of the instance operating system. Security of installation.

Meta OS customizations include:

The meta-operating system is a highly streamlined Linux system customized according to the target mobile phone platform. The main work focuses on the transplantation and streamlining of the Linux system. First of all, there are relatively mature technologies and methods for the transplantation of Linux system to embedded devices, and the present invention directly uses the existing technology to complete the transplantation; secondly, it customizes according to the target mobile phone hardware, only retaining necessary hardware drivers and tool software, and the element The operating system is simplified to the minimum, and the kernel and root file system of the meta-operating system are organized together by the initramfs method, and only one partition is occupied in the storage. System service, network configuration, data service, system installation and performance monitoring modules only need to be compiled in the cross-development environment of the target mobile phone platform, which is the same as the development process of ordinary Linux programs, and are finally included in the initramfs.

Meta OS module implementations include:

System service module: including kernel, network driver, file system support, providing services to all other modules. The development process of the network driver for the hardware configuration of the target mobile phone platform is the same as that of the ordinary Linux driver program, and there are already relatively mature methods and technologies; most common file systems can be found in the Linux source code, and can be compiled as needed. The key of the system service module is the transplantation of Linux system.

Network configuration module: detect the available network, configure according to the network type, and establish a network transmission channel. Use the wireless network related tools (iwlist, iwconfig, etc.) of the Linux system to detect the WiFi network, and use wpa_supplicant to complete the WiFi authentication and establish a network connection. For GPRS and 3G networks, once the Linux driver is successfully loaded and the network device is added, it can automatically connect to the network.

Performance monitoring module: monitor the remaining battery power and network status of the device, and prompt the user to give up the download and installation of the operating system when the battery is low or the network connection is poor. The current battery level and whether it is charging can be obtained through the power management module of the system, and the network bandwidth delay can be obtained through test interaction with the server.

Data service module: responsible for downloading the system image from the network server and verifying the integrity of the system image. Use the common HTTP protocol to interact with the server. Before downloading the system image, first judge whether the local storage has enough space to store the new system image, check and download in the order of external storage first and then built-in storage, and perform MD5 verification after completion to ensure the integrity of the image.

System installation module: decompress the system image and install it to the target partition. Different mobile phone operating systems organize system data and user data in different ways. In order to ensure the security of user data, users should first back up user data before updating the operating system. After the new system image is decompressed, the old system files will be overwritten directly, and the user data will be restored after restarting. Regarding the automatic backup and recovery of user data, we have another patent introduction.

Server-side implementations include:

The server provides the mobile terminal network access service and the storage of the system image. The network access service can adopt common HTTP service to ensure the compatibility and portability of different terminals. In addition to storing the system image itself, the storage of the system image also needs to record the check code of the system image (MD5 digest is used as the check code) and the sequence of images, so that users can easily judge the version and old of the image.

Those of ordinary skill in the art can understand that all or part of the steps carried by the methods of the above embodiments can be completed by instructing related hardware through a program, and the program can be stored in a computer-readable storage medium, and the program can be executed when executed , including one or a combination of the steps of the method embodiment.

In addition, each functional unit in each embodiment of the present invention may be integrated into one processing module, each unit may exist separately physically, or two or more units may be integrated into one module. The above-mentioned integrated modules can be implemented in the form of hardware or in the form of software function modules. If the integrated modules are realized in the form of software function modules and sold or used as independent products, they can also be stored in a computer-readable storage medium.

The storage medium mentioned above may be a read-only memory, a magnetic disk or an optical disk, and the like.

The above is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention, it should be pointed out that, for those of ordinary skill in the art, without departing from the principle of the present invention, some improvements and modifications can also be made, and these improvements and modifications can also be made. It should be regarded as the protection scope of the present invention.

Claims (8)

1. A method for network installation of an operating system, comprising the following steps: The boot program of the mobile terminal device starts the meta-operating system and enters the system management mode; In the system management mode, the mobile terminal device establishes a network connection, and downloads a corresponding system image file from the network; The mobile terminal device decompresses the system image file and writes it into the corresponding partition to complete the system installation. 2. The method for operating system network installation as claimed in claim 1, is characterized in that, described mobile terminal equipment comprises following function module: The network configuration module is used to detect the available network, configure according to the network type, and establish a network transmission channel; The data service module is used to be responsible for downloading the system image from the network server and verifying the integrity of the system image; The system service module is used to provide network driver and file system support services, and provide services to the network configuration module and the data service module. 3. the method for operating system network installation as claimed in claim 2, is characterized in that, described mobile terminal equipment establishes network connection and comprises the following steps: The network configuration module in the mobile terminal device will automatically detect the currently available network and present it to the user in the form of a list; The user selects the network to be used and provides corresponding configuration information; The mobile terminal establishes a communication connection with the corresponding network. 4. the method for operating system network installation as claimed in claim 3 is characterized in that, downloading corresponding system image file from network comprises the following steps: The mobile terminal device sends a download operating system request to the server, and the server returns a mirror list of available instance operating systems; The user selects the system image to be downloaded; The mobile terminal device downloads the system image file and verifies the integrity of the system image file. 5. The method for network installation of an operating system as claimed in claim 4, wherein the mobile terminal device also includes a performance monitoring module, and the performance monitoring module monitors the remaining power of the battery and the network status of the device, and prompts the user when the battery is low. Or abandon the network installation of the operating system in the case of poor network connection. 6. The method for network installation of an operating system according to claim 5, wherein the meta-operating system is a streamlined operating system customized according to the hardware platform of the mobile terminal device. 7. The method for network installation of an operating system according to claim 6, wherein the meta-operating system includes a Linux operating system customized according to the mobile terminal device. 8. The method for network installation of an operating system according to any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein the mobile terminal equipment includes a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA) or a netbook.

Images