Selective operating system patching/updating

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10860303-B2
Application number	US-201313870960-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 25, 2013
Priority date	Apr 24, 2013
Publication date	Dec 8, 2020
Grant date	Dec 8, 2020

Abstract

An application typically runs on top of an operating system. Some computing device have the ability to reboot and load a different operating system whenever an application or set of applications is run. If an old application requires an old operating system version, it is possible to load that OS instead. Every application can have its own version of the operating system. Only new applications or a small set of applications need to use the new OS—all the old applications may run their own older version of the OS. Patches or software updates can be applied only for particular applications. Other applications that need the same base OS but don't need the patch can skip using the patch. It is possible to determine what version the application is and selectively apply the patch based on the version of the application.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method of a computing device executing different applications on top of a computing device operating system (OS), the method comprising:
receiving a first request to run a first application on the computing device operating system;
determining the attribute of the requested first application;
determining, with a computing device processor in response to the received first request, whether a first operating system patch for patching the operating system to run said first application is available, wherein the determining whether a patch is available involves using the determined attribute of the requested first application in a stored application-to-operating-system-patch map to select a first operating system patch, based on the attribute of the first application;
if it is determined that a first operating system patch for said first application is available, selectively applying by symbolically linking the base file of the OS with the folders of the first operating system patch and loading the combined patch operating system;
in response to loading the combined patch operating system, loading and executing the first application on the patched operating system;
receiving a second request to run on the computing device operating system a second application different from the first application;
determining the attribute of the requested second application;
determining, with a computing device processor in response to the received second request, whether a second operating system patch, different from the first operating system patch, for patching the operating system to run said second application is available, wherein the determining whether a patch is available involves using the determined attribute of the requested second application in a stored application-to-operating-system-patch map to select a stored second operating patch, based on the attribute of the second application;
if it is determined that a second operating system patch for said second application is available, selectively applying by symbolically linking the base file of the OS with the folders of the second operating system patch and loading the combined patch operating system; and
in response to loading the combined patch operating system, loading and executing the second application on the patched operating system.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein each determining determines whether there is an available operating system patch that when applied will make the operating system compatible with the requested application.

3. The method of claim 1 further including detecting the version of the first application and selecting between operating system patches to apply in response to the detected first application version.

4. The method of claim 1 further including authenticating the selected first patch before selectively applying said patch.

5. The method of claim 1 further including retrieving the selectively-applied patches on demand.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the retrieving is over a network.

7. The method of claim 5 wherein the retrieving is from a memory device.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the computing device processor detects whether the first application has a bug, and in response to detecting that the first application has a bug, applies the first operating system patch to ameliorate the bug.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 further including selecting, based on the first application, between different base versions of the operating system to run the first application.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the patching modifies the operating system to replace or update the operating system to repair, augment, enhance, substitute or otherwise change operating system functionality.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the patching with the first patch selectively customizes the operating system for the first application.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the first application comprises a certain version of a software and the second application comprises a different version of the software.

13. A method of managing applications on a computing device of the type that runs the applications on top of an operating system (OS), the method comprising:
receiving a first request to run a first application on the computing device operating system;
determining the attribute of the requested first application;
determining, by a root process that is part of the OS, in response to the received first request, whether a first operating system patch for patching the operating system to run said first application is available, wherein the determining whether a patch is available involves using the determined attribute of the requested first application in a stored application-to-operating-system-patch map to select a first operating system patch, based on the attribute of the first application;
if it is determined that a first operating system patch for said first application is available, selectively applying by symbolically linking the base file of the OS with the folders of the first operating system patch and loading the combined patch operating system;
in response to loading the combined patch operating system, loading and executing the first application on the patched operating system;
receiving a second request to run on the computing device operating system a second application different from the first application;
determining the attribute of the requested second application;
determining, by a root process that is part of the OS, in response to the received second request, whether a second operating system patch, different from the first operating system patch, for patching the operating system to run said second application is available, wherein the determining whether a patch is available involves using the determined attribute of the requested second application in a stored application-to-operating-system-patch map to select a stored second operating patch, based on the attribute of the second application;
if it is determined that a second operating system patch for said second application is available, selectively applying by symbolically linking the base file of the OS with the folders of the second operating system patch and loading the combined patch operating system; and
in response to loading the combined patch operating system, loading and executing the second application on the patched operating system.

14. A system comprising:
a user input device that receives a request to run at least a first application or a second application on top of an operating system;
a storage device that stores a plurality of alternative operating system code modifications;
a computer processor operatively coupled to the user input device and to the storage device, the computer processor being configured to:
receiving a first request to run a first application on the computing device operating system;
determining the attribute of the requested first application;
determining, by a root process that is part of the OS, in response to the received first request, whether a first operating system patch for patching the operating system to run said first application is available, wherein the determining whether a patch is available involves using the determined attribute of the requested first application in a stored application-to-operating-system-patch map to select a first operating system patch, based on the attribute of the first application;
if it is determined that a first operating system patch for said first application is availab

Assignees

• Nintendo Co Ltd

Inventors

• Sirois Jeffrey
• Borisov Eugene
• Kwon Eugene

Classifications

• G06F8/65 Primary

  Updates (security arrangements therefor G06F21/57) · CPC title