Patching the Alien F800

*WARNING: during the patching process If you see the message, "WARNING: DO NOT UNPLUG THE POWER!", you must wait until the reader becomes responsive again, –TCP connections are accepted, Alien> prompt on the serial line, or the resumption of reader heartbeats. Resist the urge to pull the power plug! Interrupting power at this time may result in a corrupted firmware load, and the reader will have to be returned to the factory. *

Updating the Firmware

To check the current firmware version and update to the latest firmware you must go to the web administrative interface by visiting the IP of the RFID reader in your browser then going to administration->system. From there you can see the current version of the firmware and a place to upload the firmware file in the "update" section in the resulting page.

To get the latest firmware file, visit the software and downloads page here or access the firmware file in our Citrix Sharefile Server. If you don't have access to our Sharefile you can make a request for us to add your email to the system and link you to the appropriate directory.

Disabling SNMP & the HTTP Webserver

There's a couple services that come with the Alien F800 that may present a security risk, namely the SNMP Daemon and the Light HTTP Daemon. These can be enabled and disabled through patches provided by Alien. There's two patches to control snmp and web (lighttpd) system services (the ‘-off’ patch stops and disables the service). The patches can be loaded using either the reader web interface or by telling the reader to fetch them from a remote ftp/http server.

Either way will work to apply the '-off' patches (to stop and disable the service).

All you need to do is visit the web-based interface for the RFID reader by typing the reader's IP in your browser, go to administration -> system, under the "update" section click browse next to firmware update and navigate to the pertinent "*.aep" file (e.g. alien-f800-sysserv-snmpd-off_19.10.28_armel.aep) and click on "install".

These patches are provided on our secure Citrix Sharefile server. If you don't have access to our Sharefile you can make a request for us to add your email to the system and link you to the appropriate directory.

If you install the ‘-off’ patches using the reader’s web page make sure to apply the ‘lighhtpd-off’ patch LAST, otherwise it’s going to stop the web server and prevent you from loading the 2nd 'snmp-off' patch.

In order to re-enable the services using the ‘-on’ patches (since the web server's not running) you’ll have to use the Alien ‘upgradenow’ command to install them from a web/http server location. This will require hosting the patch on a server that the RFID reader has access to and use the command line utility in the Alien Gateway Software to have it download and apply the patch from said server (e.g. upgradenow http://<ip_of_webserver>/alien_rfid_patches/enable_webserver ). On Sharefile we provide packages containing a correct control file for disabling and enabling each service using this pull method. We provide these in the alien_rfid_patches.zip archive.

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