Hello !
Thanks both of you for your usefull input.
The reason that noggie pointed out that it is dangerous to fiddle around directly with the flash without OS Protection was exactly the reason why I implemented everything on the Cf card so far, and used only "properly with the tools from DM flashed images" as source for the copies.
On the other hand in the latest releases of multiboot it worked nice to simply mount the /dev/mtdblock/2&3 devices while booted from CF and copying with tar there existing CF card images back to flash
(already a big stept forward).
In this case all the Flash memory handling is done by the OS and the drivers in this case, meaning I should be save not to fuck up anything.
As I pointed out already the main reason why I wanted to unpack the nfi file is NOT that I want to create my own flash program, it was because I wanted to have a way to have the flash filesystem on hand afterwards and add the link to my multiboot tool afterwards, so that when then booted all functionality would be available for multibooting without the need for further installation (everything needed is on CF card already).
Maybe all these problems with the NAND memory are also the reason why musicbob doesn't want to port the flash wizzard to the 7025 or hasn't succeeded so far
On the other hand if the small bootloader from DM can do the job
and is fully supported NOT to do any of the mentiod dangerous things there must be a way to do the same thing also when booted from
the CF card !
So there are 3 dumb questions:
1) I think these sources of the boot loader are not public, but wouldn't it be possible for the Developers to steal this small code sequence (which cann't be much different to tmbinc's code) to have a clean standalone nfi2flash tool ?
2) the DM bootlader when doing the flash is running on the Dreambox as binary executable (or on the frontprocessor - I know dumb question ?) - would it be possible to run it also when booted (from CF card) - my dumb idea would be like mounting the /dev/mdtblock/1 device where I think it is located (?), and simply call it also with the nfi file as input - because it has to run standalone there would be no need
for kernel hacks, etc... ? It is like running a dos programm under unix, but why not
3) if I remember right the 7020 had the capability to flash from CF card by putting the nfi file and such a small standalone utility on it, would a similar approach be possible for 7025 ?
BTW: I'm just a little old shell script programmer (and not even a good one, I think 30-40% of the multiboot.sh code is redundant because of me being too lazy to use subroutines,... and other nice features of sh)
Therefore I don't have any programming environment for the DM 7025 at hand (well I have a linux PC) or are intersting in implementing one (sorry for posting here in the OE section), so would it be possible to get the C code of tmbinc compiled and put the binary here ?
I'll do some further testing, and then decide if any of this functionality will ever show up in multiboot or if I'll stay away from it
Thanks a lot for your feedback and help so far
thowi