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Mender – An open-source OTA software updater for embedded Linux devices

mender.io

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Re: Mender – An open-source OTA software updater for embedded Linux devices

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

disclaimer: I work for Mender Mender is basically full image update solution while resin is container based. Mender is fully open source, both client and server, resin is having only client open source. Mender is more lightweight, it provides a thin layer to be integrated with the already existing stack, while resin is providing full stack you need to use to be able to incorporate update mechanism.

So is there any way to make Mender do local updates that are not OTA?

https://docs.mender.io/1.0/Getting-started/Standalone-deploy...

Re: Mender – An open-source OTA software updater for embedded Linux devices

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. I'm currently also involved in the development of an embedded linux project for which we yet have to find out the perfect update story. We thought about replacing individual packets too, but it looks like a hard way from various perspectives: - Build system: Would need to figure out how to build all these packets (with their requirements) in a reliable way. - Deployment: Deployments should be reproducabl…

I'm kind of in this boat now with a couple of products. The catch is I need to do both local and OTA updates. This seems to be a rare feature that nobody is doing. I also am trying to get Resin.io like containers working. It seems like it would be an easier way to test and deploy.

That's also a requirement for me - local updates (via connected USB stick, triggered via reboot or web interface) should work also in addition to OTA. _In fact local updates would have an even higher priority.

We fiddled around also a little bit with the container route. I liked it for quick iteration times (rebuild a docker container, pull it from local image registry to device and test it there). But we found out that we won't get by with just container updates, and that most updates would also need to contain a new kernel or kernel module versions.

Re: Mender – An open-source OTA software updater for embedded Linux devices

#27
post #23
post #13

Does Mender work with mbed OS?

Figured the answer: no, you need Linux.

Strictly speaking you don't need Linux. As mentioned in the blog post, Mender also works with IncludeOS [0]. A demo was shown at the OpenIoT Summit last week, the video should be available in the near future.

[0] http://www.includeos.org/

Re: Mender – An open-source OTA software updater for embedded Linux devices

#29

Can someone summarize the difference between Mender and OSTree? I see that QtOTA chose OSTree as their underlying mechanism, which is significant in embedded automotive industry.

From my perspective as a curious observer of both projects, OSTree certainly looks attractive, because it doesn't waste space on two rootfs partitions which have to be oversized to accommodate future growth of the image. I initially thought OSTree required btrfs, because Project Atomic used btrfs the last time I looked at it. But according to the docs, while OSTree will take advantage of btrfs features if btrfs is being used, OSTree itself will work with a variety of filesystems including ext4.

Edit: An upside of the alternating rootfs partition approach is that the rootfs can be cryptographically verified at the block level. Chromium OS implemented this, and CoreOS also uses that implementation. This is probably outside the scope of Mender itself, but the updating approach used by Mender enables it.

Re: Mender – An open-source OTA software updater for embedded Linux devices

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. I'm currently also involved in the development of an embedded linux project for which we yet have to find out the perfect update story. We thought about replacing individual packets too, but it looks like a hard way from various perspectives: - Build system: Would need to figure out how to build all these packets (with their requirements) in a reliable way. - Deployment: Deployments should be reproducabl…

I'm kind of in this boat now with a couple of products. The catch is I need to do both local and OTA updates. This seems to be a rare feature that nobody is doing. I also am trying to get Resin.io like containers working. It seems like it would be an easier way to test and deploy.

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