I've also got something which installs package files. The main idea is to use emplode to upload a gzipped tar file ( or a zip file ). A windows application monitors the serial port and stops the player app to get a shell prompt. A specific file ( install.sh ) is located in the tar file, unpacked and executed. The install.sh file can popup dialog boxes on the windows machine by echoing certain tags eg:

echo '[DIALOG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=100 TYPE=1 MSG="overwrite existing file?"]'

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It's written in delphi and I've just tested it on delphi 6. I use a freeware tcommport component, which will need some work to get it to run on kylix. This way, it could be run on win32 or linux
BTW: Delphi 6 / Kylix is free for personal use...

smu's program could be interesting though; there is still a scratch partition which could be used for temporary storage. patching the original install file to overwrite /sbin/init shouldn't be that hard either...

Frank van Gestel