Normally, my company has a process of capturing custom executables and archiving them. Whenever the software is needed, it's retrieved from there to deploy, typically to a PC. We have a system in development which will use a cRIO, unfortunately I don't have any details yet like part number and I/O modules. But the software developer on the project says, based on his prior experience, that the process of compiling and deploying the code are tightly coupled, and it has to be done in-system, and its not clear to him what files it generates or where it puts them. He suspects that if we did know and archived those, simply copying them into place on a fresh system wouldn't work. (I think the project will include LabView that generates custom FPGA images). If we make a duplicate system someday, I'm concerned that the process we used to make the first one won't be repeatable, especially if there's some turnover and it's new folks trying to figure out instructions he left behind. So I hope someone in this community could provide me guidance on how I would compare two cRIO systems to verify that they're setup the same (and narrow down what went wrong when they don't match). I understand there's a Linux-based real-time OS, and I imagine it wouldn't be hard to verify the version of it is installed. But I don't know where to start on comparing the custom components, which I imagine may end up sprinkled in Flash chips throughout the system.
Secondly, on PCs we create backup images for disaster recovery. Is something like this possible with a cRIO system? If we back up the controller as it is when it deploys FPGA images, would that capture everything needed to restore modules that got fried and replaced?
