Receiving an update code prior to completion of a boot procedure

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9864651-B2
Application number	US-201615204679-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 7, 2016
Priority date	Jul 24, 2012
Publication date	Jan 9, 2018
Grant date	Jan 9, 2018

Abstract

In some examples, fault of a code in an electronic device is detected. In response to detecting the fault, an update code is retrieved using a network stack from a network site over a network to update the code that has experienced the fault, during a state of the electronic device prior to completion of a boot procedure of the electronic device.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An electronic device comprising:
an operating system;
a first network stack associated with the operating system;
a second network stack;
a processor;
a storage medium storing instructions executable on the processor to:
detect fault of a code in the electronic device,
in response to detecting the fault, access a network site using network communication through the second network stack during a state of the electronic device prior to completion of a boot procedure of the electronic device, and
in response to the access, receive an update code to update the code that has experienced the fault.

2. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are executable on the processor to perform the detecting of the fault without input from any remote server.

3. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the code that has experienced the fault includes code of the operating system.

4. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the code that has experienced the fault includes boot code.

5. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the code that has experienced the fault includes an application code or a device driver.

6. The electronic device of claim 1 , further comprising a controller chip that includes the second network stack.

7. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the second network stack has an Internet Protocol (IP) layer and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer, the IP and TCP layers to perform the network communication to retrieve the update code.

8. The electronic device of claim 7 , wherein the second network stack further includes a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) layer to perform the network communication to retrieve the update code.

9. The electronic device of claim 1 , further comprising an application programming interface to allow the instructions to access the second network stack.

10. The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are part of a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) code.

11. A method comprising:
detecting, in an electronic device, fault of a code; and
in response to detecting the fault, retrieving, by the electronic device, an update code for updating the code that has experienced the fault, using a first network stack that is separate from a second network stack associated with an operating system in the electronic device, wherein the update code is retrieved using the first network stack from a network site over a network during a state of the electronic device prior to completion of a boot procedure of the electronic device.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the update code is retrieved using the first network stack prior to loading of the operating system.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein retrieving the update code using the first network stack is performed without using the second network stack associated with the operating system.

14. The method of claim 11 , further comprising:
updating the code that has experienced the fault using the update code, wherein the updating includes replacing or repairing the code that has experienced the fault using the update code.

15. The method of claim 11 , wherein the code that has experienced the fault is selected from among boot code and code of the operating system.

16. The method of claim 11 , wherein the first network stack comprises a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) layer that is separate from an HTTP layer of the second network stack.

17. The method of claim 11 , wherein the detecting of the fault is performed without input from any remote server.

18. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium storing instructions that upon execution cause an electronic device to:
detect fault of a code; and
in response to detecting the fault, retrieve an update code for updating the code that has experienced the fault, using a first network stack during a state of the electronic device prior to completion of a boot procedure of the electronic device, the first network stack being separate from a second network stack that is associated with an operating system in the electron device, wherein the update code is retrieved using the first network stack from a network site over a network prior to loading of the operating system in the electronic device.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18 , wherein the detecting of the fault is performed without input from any remote server.

20. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18 , wherein the update code is retrieved using the first network stack during a state of the electronic device prior to completion of a boot procedure of the electronic device.

Assignees

• Hewlett Packard Development Co Lp

Inventors

• Liu Jon
• Ali Valiuddin Y
• Wang Lan

Classifications

• G06F8/65 Primary

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

• G06F11/079

  Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis (in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36) · CPC title

• G06F11/0793 Primary

  Remedial or corrective actions (recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40) · CPC title

• G06F11/0769

  Readable error formats, e.g. cross-platform generic formats, human understandable formats · CPC title

• G06F11/0709

  in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems · CPC title