Image forming apparatus of which programs are remotely updatable

• US 20040145766A1
• Filed: 11/17/2003
• Published: 07/29/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 11/18/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Sugishita, Satoru, Sasaki, Katsuhiko, Abe, Yoshihiko, Katoh, Ryohichi
• Granted Patent: US 7,380,243 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 358/1.13
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1204 resulting in reduced user or operator actions, e.g. presetting, automatic actions, using hardware token storing data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/123 Software or firmware update, e.g. device firmware management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1285 Remote printer device, e.g. being remote from client or server
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

An image forming apparatus is disclosed that includes one or more processing units, a control unit, an update program acquiring unit that acquires an update program for updating programs of the processing units and the control unit, and a program updating unit that updates the programs of the processing units in the order of the number of the other processing units through which the control unit communicates with each of the processing units. The order in which the processing units are updated is determined based on the number of other processing units via which each of the processing units communicates with the control unit.

Claims

1. An image forming apparatus, comprising:

one or more processing units wherein each processing unit processes data for forming an image;

a control unit that communicates with each of said processing units directly, or indirectly through another one or more of said processing units;

an update program acquiring unit that acquires an update program for updating programs of said processing units and a program of said control unit; and

a program updating unit that updates the programs of said processing units in the order of the number of said other one or more processing units through which said control unit communicates with each of said processing units.

2. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein said program updating unit determines the order in which the programs of said processing units are updated thereby to create update order information based on the update program acquired by said update program acquiring unit.

3. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 2, wherein said program updating unit correlates the order in which the programs of said processing units are updated with names of the programs.

4. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 2, wherein the update order information includes information indicating update status.

5. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein

said control unit has one or more application programs related to image forming processing;

and

said program updating unit can update the application programs individually.

6. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein

one of said processing units is a display unit that displays information of the image forming apparatus;

and

said program updating unit updates the program of the display unit after the programs of other processing units and the program of said control unit are updated.

7. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a communication unit for connecting the image forming apparatus to a network;

wherein

said update program acquiring unit acquires the update program using said communication unit.

8. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said control unit reboots updated ones of said processing units in the order in which said processing units are updated.

9. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said control unit reboots updated ones of said processing units after all to-be-updated programs have been updated.

10. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said control unit, when a primary program thereof is to be updated, executes a secondary program stored in a second memory region other than a first memory region in which the primary program is stored.

11. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 10, wherein said control unit, when the primary program thereof is being updated, executes the secondary program stored in the second memory region of a volatile memory.

12. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 11, the secondary program is smaller in size than the primary program.

13. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said control unit, when updating the program of one of said processing units, causes the one of said processing units to operate in a restricted mode.

14. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said control unit, when communication with said processing unit is disconnected, reboots itself.

15. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said control unit reboots itself in a predetermined time after the last one of updated processing units is rebooted.

16. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said control unit stores information indicating a state of the image forming apparatus in a non-volatile storage unit before rebooting itself, and restores the image forming apparatus to the stored state after rebooting itself.

17. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 16, wherein the state of the image forming apparatus is a state in which the power consumption of the image forming apparatus is reduced.

18. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 17, further comprising a display unit that displays information related to the image forming apparatus;

wherein the state of the image forming apparatus is information displayed on the display unit.

19. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 18, wherein said display unit displays the progress of the update of the programs.

20. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 19, wherein said display unit, if the image forming apparatus is set at the state in which the power consumption thereof is reduced, does not display the progress of the update of the programs.

21. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said program updating unit creates an update management table including information related to the acquired update program.

22. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 21, wherein the update management table includes module IDs that specify the acquired update program.

23. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, wherein said processing units include processing units that said control unit can directly reboot and processing units that automatically reboot themselves in response to a request from said control unit.

24. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 7, further comprising:

an update result information creating unit that creates update result information indicating results of the update of the programs; and

an update result outputting unit that outputs the update results based on the update result information.

25. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 24, wherein said update result outputting unit either prints the update results, transmits an e-mail message indicating the update results, or displays a screen indicating the update results.

26. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 24, wherein the update result information includes at least one of the version of a program before update, the version of the program after update, the date and time the program is updated, and whether the program is updated successfully.

27. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 24, wherein said update result information creating unit stores the update result information in a non-volatile storage unit.

28. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 27, wherein said update result information creating unit accumulates the update result information.

29. The image forming apparatus as claimed in claim 27, wherein

said control unit restarts the image forming apparatus after said update result information creating unit stores the update result information in the non-volatile storage unit;

and

said update result outputting unit outputs the update results after the image forming apparatus is restarted.

30. A method of updating a plurality of programs for an image forming apparatus, comprising the steps of:

acquiring an update program for updating the programs; and

updating each of the programs in the order of the number of processing units through which a control unit and the processing unit in which each program is installed communicate with each other.

31. The method as claimed in claim 30, further comprising the step of:

rebooting the processing unit in which the program is updated.

32. The method as claimed in claim 31, wherein the processing unit in which the program is updated is rebooted in the order in which the programs are updated.

33. The method as claimed in claim 30, further comprising the step of:

creating update result information indicating update results of the programs; and

outputting the update results of the programs based on the update result information.

34. The method as claimed in claim 33, wherein, in the step of outputting the update results, the update results are either printed, transmitted as an e-mail message, or displayed on a display unit.

35. The method as claimed in claim 33, wherein the update result information includes at least one of the version before the update, the version after the update, the date and time of the update, and whether the program has been updated successfully.

36. The method as claimed in claim 35, wherein, in the step of creating the update result information, the update result information is added to the update result information of the past.

37. The method as claimed in claim 33, further comprising the step of restarting the image forming apparatus after the step of creating the update result information.

38. The method as claimed in claim 37, wherein, in the step of creating the update result information, the update result information is stored in a non-volatile storage unit before the image forming apparatus is restarted.