A server-side pre-linking mechanism for updating embedded clients dynamically

Abstract

To allow embedded operating systems to update their components on-the-fly, dynamic update mechanism is required for operating systems to be patched or added extra functionalities in without the need of rebooting the machines. However, embedded environments are usually resource-limited in terms of memory size, processing power, power consumption, and network bandwidth. Thus, dynamic update for embedded operating systems should be designed to make the best use of limited resources. In this paper, we have proposed a server-side pre-linking mechanism to make dynamic updates of embedded operating system efficiently. Applying this mechanism can reduce not only memory usage and CPU processing time for dynamic update, but also data transmission size for update components. Power consumption can be reduced as well. Performance evaluation shows that compared with the approach of Linux loadable kernel modules, the size of update components can be reduced about 14-35% and the overheads in embedded clients are minimal.