The standard images are a debian derivative. The OSTree images are prefixed apertis_ostree. There is no OSTree images for the SDK. The SDK includes a tool for creating or manipulating OSTree repositories, but it is not using OSTree as a way to update itself. Only OSTree specific images will support OSTree commands for updates and rollback. Note that apt-get and the debian packages are not available in OSTree images.

Updating the host with Apertis Update Manager (AUM)

AUM has been added into Apertis starting from 18.12. It allows to do automatic and manual updates. Updates with USB mass storage devices are supported as well. CLI utility updatectl is aimed to manage the AUM daemon.

AUM logs are available with command journalctl --unit apertis-update-manager

OTA update

By default OTA updates are switched off.

To enable OTA updates for one time:

gdbus call -y -d org.apertis.ApertisUpdateManager -o / -m org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Set org.apertis.ApertisUpdateManager UpdatesFromNetwork "<true>"

To enable OTA updates permanently please add into the configuration file /etc/apertis-update-manager.ini following:

[Manager]
UpdateFromNetwork=true

Offline update

Starting from Apertis 18.12 files for offline updates are generated and available for download (check files with extension “*.delta”).

Automatic offline update

It is enough to copy such file to the root of USB mass storage device with special name static-update.bundle and attach that device into the target system. AUM will automatically detect the update file and try to use it for the system upgrade.

Automatic offline updates will only be triggered when a file with the above mentioned special name is found on a USB drive with a single partition. To create a USB disk with a single partition in Apertis:

Insert USB device and ensure that it is visible to the Apertis SDK.
Use lsblk or another tool to determine the disk device file related to the USB device.
Create a new partition spanning the USB device (warning: this will delete existing data):
```
$ echo 'type=83' | sudo sfdisk $DISK
```
Where DISK is set to the name and location of the disk device file (for example: /dev/sda)
Format this new partition wit a FAT32 file system:
```
$ sudo mkfs -t vfat $DISK
```

Manual offline update

It is possible to update the system manually from local file with CLI, for instance to update SabreLite device manually to v2022dev3 release:

updatectl --apply-static-delta apertis_ostree_v2022dev3-fixedfunction-armhf-uboot_v2022dev3.0.delta

Automatic rollback

With 19.03 release Apertis is able to automatically detect the rollback situation for incorrect upgrade and revert the system to the previous state. More details are available in manual test of rollback.

Updating the host with OSTree tool

OTA updates

To trigger an update, it is simply needed to run the update command below and reboot.

$ sudo ostree admin upgrade

13 metadata, 16 content objects fetched; 28621 KiB transferred in 16 seconds
Copying /etc changes: 4 modified, 0 removed, 17 added

(ostree upgrade:719): OSTree-WARNING **: Couldn't unlink ostree-0-1.conf
Transaction complete; bootconfig swap: yes deployment count change: 1

Locally available deployments

OSTree can show the deployments available. This can be though of as seeing the branches in a call to git branch. The star symbol (\*) is attached to the commit currently in use.

Immediately after a call to ostree admin update, the (pending) label is attached to the commit to use on next boot.

$ sudo ostree admin status
  apertis 8d77e30a3ae56f0b0bac2e92dfef17869a1764e65936e2c32cb4791330601836.0 (pending)
    origin refspec: origin:apertis/v2022dev3/amd64-uefi/fixedfunction
* apertis 398824a16a766149a9c025311745472739f85d310fd6b1346456050dc112671a.0
    origin refspec: origin:apertis/v2022dev3/amd64-uefi/fixedfunction

After the reboot, the (rollback) label is attached to the commit that was in use before the update.

$ sudo ostree admin status
* apertis 8d77e30a3ae56f0b0bac2e92dfef17869a1764e65936e2c32cb4791330601836.0
    origin refspec: origin:apertis/v2022dev3/amd64-uefi/fixedfunction
  apertis 398824a16a766149a9c025311745472739f85d310fd6b1346456050dc112671a.0 (rollback)
    origin refspec: origin:apertis/v2022dev3/amd64-uefi/fixedfunction

Switching to the previous release

After an update, OSTree kept a reference to the previous release that was deployed. It is possible to switch to this release by using the commit id that was returned in a call to ostree admin status (with the .0 extension removed).

$  sudo ostree admin upgrade --allow-downgrade --deploy-only
                  --override-commit=398824a16a766149a9c025311745472739f85d310fd6b1346456050dc112671a -r

And after reboot, the status is:

$ sudo ostree admin status
* apertis 398824a16a766149a9c025311745472739f85d310fd6b1346456050dc112671a.1
    origin refspec: origin:apertis/v2022dev3/amd64-uefi/fixedfunction
  apertis 8d77e30a3ae56f0b0bac2e92dfef17869a1764e65936e2c32cb4791330601836.0 (rollback)
    origin refspec: origin:apertis/v2022dev3/amd64-uefi/fixedfunction

Note how the new commit labelled rollback is now the commit corresponding to the latest update.

Warning: This is not a real rollback! The worst case where a rollback is needed occurs when the OS didn’t boot. In this situation, the only component able to handle the rollback is the bootloader.

Temporary modifications on the filesystem

OSTree filesystems are read-only (with the exception of /var and /etc). For development purposes, it is possible to modify files on the filesystem using a layered approach. OSTree can create a layered, read-write, filesystem on top of the existing /usr. All changes on this filesystem will be lost at reboot.

sudo ostree admin unlock

References

OSTree reference documentation: https://ostreedev.github.io/ostree/

AUM repository with detailed documentation: https://gitlab.apertis.org/appfw/apertis-update-manager

QT over the air update, using OSTree: http://doc.qt.io/QtOTA/

Search Apertis

OSTree updates and rollback

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