Bitt,

you are only partly right. The .upgrade file I am talking about won't touch the originals software partition and won't include it either. It will just be applied on top of a "classic" upgrade file. Also my hda2 image won't include the customized init executable that is included with the empeg's original .upgrade files.

In addition to this, I plan to provide a shell script / batch file along with it that takes

1. a patched hijack kernel,
   
2. an original .upgrade file and
   
3. my upgrade file,

unpacks the upgrade files and merges their pieces with the hijack kernel and creates a new upgrade file. As I won't be distributing any software that is copyrighted by empeg/sonicblue, they obviously can't object to it.

cu,
sven