Proper Raqcop Update Mechanism in work.

[Davesworld]

 Since Raqcop uses a Cobalt Rom friendly kernel and several other files differ from the stock IPCop, Raqcop always needed it's own update path and updates signed with a different signature than standard IPCop.

To refresh your memory, the Cobalt is a headless device with a serial console and possesses a 16x2 character LCD there to be utilized. If you already own such hardware, you already know this.

During boot and halt, the lcd gets written to from rc.sysinit and rc.halt. Changes to prevent TTY errors during boot were also necessary to rc.sysinit. Changes to inittab as well as securetty to accomodate the serial console were necessary as well as preventing the system to look for other console TTY's that cannot exist on a headless device.

Because of the difference between Raqcop and IPCop due primarily to architecture differences ie biosless and headless requiring a custom tailored kernel on top of other necessary changes, it has always needed it's own gpg signed updates to prevent improper upgrades via the web gui.

A great new feature of what will become IPCop 2 allows downloading updates directly from Sourceforge and installing them within the web gui without manually downloading to your computer and then uploading them via the web gui. You can still manually upload as well like you did in 1.4.x but if you're red is active, it's self contained.

I already have my own key pair and have the next version set up to honor a unique raqcop gpg signature and look for updates from the raqcop site. Once you have a running and well set up Raqcop 2 machine, you will be able to upgrade with ease directly.

The next version be it RC2 or the actual 2.0 release will require a fresh install initially but will be fully updatable from one version to the next without the cumbersome methods we used in 1.4 for Raqcop which required uploading a tarball, uncompressing it and then running the update shell manually.

As always, the 2.0 series of Raqcop will have diff files available for anyone to study the differences between Raqcop and IPCop. The proper classification for Raqcop is that of being an adaptation of IPCop to run properly on Cobalt x86 hardware and take some advantage of the built in display.

[Davesworld]

Ok, the update mechansim or method if you prefer is working. I just did my first dynamic update from a running RC1 box with the updates.cgi and functions pointing to raqcop plus the raqcop key imported. The iso of RC1 and Diff now reflect the changes. I can upload new pre-made images if anyone wants them, else wait until RC2 or 2.0 whichever the next version will be and do a clean install at that time.

[Davesworld]

Everything including images, iso, and diff labeled RC1 as of 09/11/11 is compliant with the Raqcop upgrade methods. This means that if you download RC1 and install it as of today, you will be able to upgrade to the next version of Raqcop dynamically (IPCop 2.0 has the option to download the file itself) regardless of whether it is RC2 or 2.0 stable.

I'm running 1.9.21 which is in between RC1 and the next version on my daily firewall. I started with RC1 and applied the Raqcop update by downloading. The Raid Flash is nice too so if I lose a flash drive the other holds it up just fine.

I'll probably switch out to one of my Raq 550's here soon. I got one quieted down and am running 3G on it as a backup. The 550 has separate LED's for both drives and the two built in nics and it seems to handle Traffic Accounting at the high detail level setting with little impact. It's running a 1.26ghz PIII but  have four 1.4ghz chips here so I may just use those.