Using MacOS to Perform Updates to Lowrance Products

[jimh]

This thread discusses several topics encountered when trying to perform updates to Lowrance products using a MacOS computer.

Changing Default Behavior of MacOS Application ARCHIVE UTILITY

Lowrance electronic devices are frequently provided with field-installable updater patch files for the user to apply to his device. The files are often in .ZIP archive formats. The archive often contains more than one file, and sometimes the archive contains subdirectories of additional files. Lowrance expects the user to un-archive the ZIP file, but only to the first expansion, and to leave some elements in the resulting collection of files in a compressed archive state.

The default behavior of a MacOS computer when encountering a ZIP archive is to keep expanding files found inside the archive. When this default behavior is applied to a Lowrance archive, the outcome is a set of files that is different from the files that Lowrance expects to be used with the updater. If the user copies these expanded files onto a memory card and tries to run the updater, the process may fail because the file structure on the memory card will be different than the updater expected to find.

Lowrance has recognized this problem with their updater methods and has provided a recorded presentation to provide instructions for users of the MacOS for changing the default behavior of the MacOS so its behavior will conform to the behavior needed by Lowrance to make their update un-archive in the manner they require. The recorded presentation can be viewed from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH_eu0Wgs8w

The presentation demonstrates the procedure to change the behavior of the MacOS application ARCHIVEUTILITY.app. This application is difficult to locate because it is not in the usual APPLICATIONS directory. The method demonstrated in the recording to locate the MacOS ARCHIVE UTILITY application does not always work. You can find the ARCHVE UTILITY in MacOS usually in the path

/System/Library/CoreServices/Archive Utility.app.

or

/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Archive Utility.app.

Having found the ARCHIVE UTILITY, the application must be launched and its preference must be changed. Lowrance requires that the preferences be set to uncheck the selection "Keep expanding if possible."

ArchiveUtilityPreferences.png (59.45 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

It may be best to modify the behavior of the ACHIVE UTILTY before you download the .ZIP updater archive from Lowrance. The presentation demonstrates this in the opposite order.

[jimh]

SD Memory Card File System and Formatting with MacOS

The SD Memory card to be used in the Lowrance update process should also be formatted properly so the chart plotter can recognize the card and its format. A memory card which has been formatted for a MacOS file system will not work. The Lowrance operating system only sees memory cards that are formatted with the FAT32 (MSDOS FAT32) file system. Most SD Memory cards come already formatted for FAT32 (MSDOS FAT32). Leave the card in that format.

If you must re-format an SD Memory card on your MacOS computer, use the utitlity DISK UTILITY, found in the path

Applications/Utilities/Disc Utility

to format the memory card. Select the format to be "MS-DOS FAT32."

To discover the format of an SD Memory Card:

--insert the card into your card reader;

--open DISK UTILITY

--point to the inserted card

--use the FILE menu option GET INFO to show the information about the card. An example appears below.

An additional problem encountered with using SD Memory Cards and older Lowrance products is related to the size of the file system on the memory cards. Older Lowrance products may not support using memory cards with very large file systems. Best results are usually obtained with using a small capacity memory card, such as a 1-GByte or 2-GByte card or even smaller card. Cards with very large capacity may not be recognized by the Lowrance devices; this causes the updater on those card to not be recognized because the older Lowrance products are not able to recognize the file systems on memory cards with very large capacity.

DIscInfo.png (84.3 KiB) Viewed 4402 times

[jimh]

Correcting Errors in UNIX File Permissions with MacOS

In some instances, and depending on the method use to extract the archive, the payload files from an archive may be extracted with the wrong permissions. If the .LUF file fails to execute when you try to apply its patch, check the UNIX file permission of the payload file in MacOS. Open a terminal window. A sequence of commands in a terminal window is shown below. The process starts in the user home directory, changes to the root directory, Volumes subdirectory, then lists in long form all the .LUF files. The [NAME] refers to the name you gave the SDMemory card volume:

$cd /Volumes
$ls
Macintosh HD [Name]
$ cd [Name]/
$ ls -l *.luf
-rwxrwxrwx [yourUserID] staff 21440 Jul 30 2014 EP-85R_StorageDevice_V220.luf

The permissions are shown in the terminal output as

-rwxrwxrwx

The "r" means read, the "w" means write, and the "x" means execute, repeated for three sets of users, the owner, the group, and everyone else. If you don't see these permissions, you can change them with the Unix command CHMOD. First you probably need to become the super user with the SU command:

$ su

You will be prompted for the password; enter your own user's password. The command prompt now changes to an octothrope (#). Now you can change permission, The command would be

#chmod [FileName] 777

After changing the file permissions, return to your own user with the command exit.

Problems with file permissions on Lowrance update archives seem to have been remedied by Lowrance in most of their recent updater files, so manually setting the permissions may not be necessary.

An alternative to using a terminal window to handle UNIX file permissions is a shareware utility FileXaminer, which can set the unix file permissions with a graphical user interface.

[jimh]

Lowrance has recently released a new series of updater files for their HDS GEN2 and HDS GEN3 products. The advice contained in the prior articles in this thread will remain useful for preparing a memory card with the updater files in the proper arrangement.