Apertis is a Debian derivative distribution geared towards the creation of product-specific images for ARM (both the 32bit ARMv7 and 64-bit ARMv8 versions using the hardfloat ABI) and Intel x86-64 (64-bit) systems.

Apertis v2021dev3 is the fourth and last development release of the Apertis v2021 stable release flow that will lead to the LTS Apertis v2021.0 release in March 2021.

This Apertis release is built on top of Debian Buster with several customisations.

Test results for the v2021dev3 release are available in the following test reports:

Release flow

  • 2019 Q4: v2021dev0
  • 2020 Q1: v2021dev1
  • 2020 Q2: v2021dev2
  • 2020 Q3: v2021dev3
  • 2020 Q4: v2021pre
  • 2021 Q1: v2021.0
  • 2021 Q2: v2021.1
  • 2021 Q3: v2021.2
  • 2021 Q4: v2021.3
  • 2022 Q1: v2021.4
  • 2022 Q2: v2021.5
  • 2022 Q3: v2021.6
  • 2022 Q4: v2021.7

Release downloads

Apertis v2021dev3 images
Intel 64-bit minimal target base SDK SDK
ARM 32-bit (U-Boot) minimal target
ARM 64-bit (U-Boot) minimal

The Intel minimal and target images are tested on the reference hardware (MinnowBoard Turbot Dual-Core), but they can run on any UEFI-based x86-64 system. The sdk image is tested under VirtualBox.

Apertis v2021dev3 repositories

deb https://repositories.apertis.org/apertis/ v2021dev3 target development sdk hmi

New features

Technology preview: 64-bit Raspberry Pi boards support

Starting from v2021dev3 Apertis now ships 64-bit ARM images for version 3 and 4 of the Raspberry Pi boards.

This provides an inexpensive and globally available ARM platform that developers around the world can use to test Apertis on real ARM hardware.

The new rpi64 images support resilient updates and rollbacks via OSTree and U-Boot like the other Apertis ARM platforms.

Unlike the other fully supported Apertis platforms, the rpi64 images are not yet part of the daily automated test runs on LAVA. Apertis plans to add the needed devices to the LAVA lab in the coming months to ensure the images are regularly tested and regressions are identified quickly.

Upstreaming of signed metadata verification for offline updates

The version of OSTree in Apertis ships some downstream changes to protect against malicious static bundle superblocks as used for offline updates.

Work is ongoing to land the feature upstream to be available to every OSTree user.

LXC image recipes moved to GitLab CI/CD

Another pipeline moved from Jenkins to GitLab CI/CD: the tiny image recipes for LXC are now built on GitLab.

Just like the main image recipes, the pipeline is integrated in the merge requests workflow and it gets executed to catch issues before they get committed to the main branch.

Mildenhall flatpak apps

Based on the work done in the previous cycle, most Mildenhall sample applications have been ported to the Mildenhall flatdeb pipeline and now produce Flatpak bundles accordingly to the design document describing the new Application Framework.

Moved both Renesas R-Car and SABRE Lite to newer U-Boot

The Raspberry Pi support required the introduction of a new U-Boot version from Debian Bullseye, version 2020.04.

The Apertis team took this chance to also streamline the support for the other ARM boards and now all the Apertis ARM platforms (i.MX6 SABRE Lite, Renesas R-Car and the newly introduced Raspberry Pi 3 and 4) now share the same U-Boot source package.

This is a fundamental step toward enabling transactional updates with rollbacks with the Apertis update manager on all the reference platforms.

Rhosydd VISS

Rhosydd, the vehicle device daemon implementing the sensors and actuators API has been rebased to the data model from the latest W3C specification, as described in the design document.

Check the Vehicle Signal specification for more information about the data model that replaces the old Vehicle Data specification.

Build and integration

Production deployment of emulated OBS package builds on Intel x86-64

The plan described in the concept document to host the whole build infrastructure on Intel x86-64 has moved from the proof-of-concept stage to the production stage, with ARM 32 and 64 bit OBS workers being hosted on standard Intel x86-64 cloud machines.

Dedicated flatdeb-builder Docker image

A new flatdeb-builder Docker image is now available to streamline the process of building Flatpak bundles with Flatdeb.

The new image is also able to run on places without KVM support, like cloud virtual machines not supporting nested virtualization.

To use it, fetch it with:

docker pull registry.gitlab.apertis.org/infrastructure/apertis-docker-images/v2021dev3-flatdeb-builder

Documentation and designs

Website reorganization

We continue to focus on improving the validity, accessibility and organisation of the Apertis documentation.

The contents of the designs.apertis.org website has been migrated to the main site and the required infrastructure put in place to redirect accesses to the new document locations. Work is underway to evaluate and categorise these documents into the main sites structure.

This change makes it possible to search more of the Apertis documents from one place.

QA

Full coverage of the packaging flow in the project-wide dashboard

The dashboard has been heavily extended to test the integrity of the whole packaging setup, and it now:

  • ensures that updates are landed appropriately
  • checks that versions on GitLab, OBS and in the APT repositories all match
  • all the dependencies can be satisfied and package can be installed

Multi-release support on qa.apertis.org

The website hosting all the Apertis testcase definitions now properly renders all the testcases for each release channel:

It’s now easier for testers to check the right test definition for each specific image.

Other enhancements

Improved ubihealthd shutdown performance

Requested by a product team to improve the responsiveness of shutdown of ubihealthd on NAND devices, a patch that was proposed upstream but didn’t get landed has been cleaned up and is now shipped by Apertis.

The patch splits up updating of PEB statistics and adds checks for the shutdown status through the main loop, reducing the shutdown time noticeably.

HTTP fixes in APT

After experiencing recurring corruption errors when downloading packages, a bunch of patches fixing some nasty HTTP issues have been discussed with the APT upstream maintainers and have been backported to the version of APT shipped by Apertis.

Clean shutdown with systemd/journald

An harmless but annoying message was printed in the logs during device shutdown:

[FAILED] Failed unmounting /var

This was due to the need of keeping the journal daemon available for logging until the end of shutdown.

Since shutting down the system without failures is a highly desirable trait in embedded products using systemd, the upstream fix for the issue has been backported to the version shipped by Apertis after a substantial rework to adapt to the older systemd release.

Automated testing of the packaging CI pipeline

The GitLab CI/CD pipeline handling the packaging workflow is one of the most used features in Apertis.

Unfortunately, it is also moderately complex as it needs to handle a few different scenarios and testing it was a long and fragile process involving multiple GitLab projects.

To make working on the pipeline faster and safer a new test infrastructure has been implemented: every time a patch is submitted a separate pipeline is instantiated on a throwaway packaging project, exercising the changed workflow by emulating the actions of a developer and by monitoring the behaviour of the packaging pipeline itself.

Developers can now feel much more confident when proposing new changes to the packaging pipeline.

Deprecations and ABI/API breaks

Deprecations

During this release cycle we have continued to mark obsolete or problematic APIs with the ABI break tag as a way to clear technical debt in future.

Breaks

Image builds now happen on GitLab-CI

The GitLab-CI pipeline is now producing the reference images, and the old Jenkins pipeline has been dismissed. The same applies for the LXC containers pipeline.

OSTree signing API changes

During the upstreaming process the new OSTree signing API that Apertis shipped in the previous cycle as a preview some API changes have been requested.

The version of OSTree in v2021dev3 now reflects the upstream API and users of the new signing API will need to be adjusted.

Infrastructure

Apertis Docker images

The Apertis Docker images provide a unified and easily reproducible build environment for developers and services.

As of today, this includes the apertis-base, apertis-image-builder, apertis-package-source-builder, apertis-flatdeb-builder, apertis-documentation-builder, and apertis-testcases-builder, Docker images.

Apertis infrastructure tools

The Apertis v2021 infrastructure repository provides packages for the required versions of ostree-push and ostree for Debian Buster:

deb https://repositories.apertis.org/infrastructure-v2021/ buster infrastructure

Images

Image daily builds, as well as release builds can be found at https://images.apertis.org/

Image build tools can be found in the Apertis tools repositories.

Infrastructure overview

The Image build infrastructure document provides an overview of the image building process and the involved services.

Known issues

High (10)

  • T7056 FAILED: Error running command: [‘ssh-copy-id’, ‘user@127.0.0.1’ errors are shown when running the sdk-persistent testcases
  • T7139 Incomplete description of the contribution process into Apertis
  • T7237 sdk-persistent-disk-sysroot test fails
  • T7238 sdk persistent memory tests fail
  • T7258 Debos recipe fails for flat-deb in gitlab ci on BDC for v2021dev2
  • T7296 Clear memory in MRC per MOR request Start, Please wait for some minutes… on bootup
  • T7331 qa-report: The image version in task created due to failing LXC tests in LAVA is misreported
  • T7405 AUM stuck with loop0 during apertis-update-manager-usb-unplug test on ARM32 image
  • T7411 Full Screen does not come up when using the latest Guest Additions for the SDK
  • T7414 glibc build fails on OBS

Normal (106)

  • T2853 GStreamer playbin prioritises imxeglvivsink over clutterautovideosink
  • T2896 Crash when initialising egl on ARM target
  • T2930 Develop test case for out of screen events in Wayland images
  • T3121 Test apps are failing in Liblightwood with the use of GTest
  • T3210 Fix Tracker testcase to not download media files from random HTTP user folders
  • T3217 VirtualBox display freezes when creating multiple notifications at once and interacting (hover and click) with them
  • T3233 Ribchester: deadlock when calling RemoveApp() right after RollBack()
  • T3321 libgles2-vivante-dev is not installable
  • T3920 arm-linux-gnueabihf-pkg-config does not work with sysroots installed by ade
  • T3970 Ensure that the arch:all packages in the archive match the arch-specific versions
  • T4092 Containers fail to load on Gen4 host
  • T4293 Preseed action is needed for Debos
  • T4307 ribchester-core causes apparmor denies on non-btrfs minimal image
  • T4422 do-branching fails at a late stage cloning OBS binary repos
  • T4444 A 2-3 second lag between the speakers is observed when a hfp connection is made over bluetooth
  • T4568 Ribchester mount unit depends on Btrfs
  • T4660 Eclipse Build is not working for HelloWorld App
  • T4693 Not able to create namespace for AppArmor container on the internal mx6qsabrelite images with proprietary kernel
  • T5468 build-snapshot: allow to build packages without autogen.sh script
  • T5487 Wi-Fi search button is missing in wifi application
  • T5611 kbd package has broken/problematic dependencies
  • T5747 The /boot mountpoint is not empty
  • T5748 System users are shipped in /usr/etc/passwd instead of /lib/passwd
  • T5837 apparmor-utils: apparmor-utils test failed
  • T5852 Terminal comes up inside the Launcher
  • T5861 dbus-installed-tests: trying to overwrite mktemp.1.gz
  • T5863 Songs/Videos don’t play on i.MX6 with Frampton on internal images
  • T5896 sdk-dbus-tools-bustle testcase is failing
  • T5897 apparmor-ofono test fails
  • T5900 evolution-sync-bluetooth test fails
  • T5901 eclipse-plugins-apertis-management package is missing
  • T5906 Video does not stream in WebKit on the i.MX6 internal images
  • T5929 connman-pan-tethering test fail
  • T5930 connman-pan-network-access test fails
  • T5931 connman-usb-tethering test fails
  • T5935 libfolks-ofono25 package not found
  • T5993 rhosydd: 8_rhosydd test failed
  • T6001 eclipse-plugins-remote-debugging test fails
  • T6008 The pacrunner package used for proxy autoconfiguration is not available
  • T6012 webkit2gtk-event-handling-redesign test fails on the amd64 ostree images
  • T6024 folks-inspect: command not found
  • T6052 Multimedia playback is broken on the internal i.MX6 images (internal 3.14 ADIT kernel issue)
  • T6077 youtube Videos are not playing on upstream webkit2GTK
  • T6078 Page scroll is lagging in Minibrowser on upstream webkit2GTK
  • T6111 traprain: 7_traprain test failed
  • T6231 gitlab-to-obs: Handle packages changing component across releases
  • T6243 AppArmor ubercache support is no longer enabled after 18.12
  • T6277 ldconfig: Warning comes up when we do an apt-get upgrade on the i.MX6
  • T6291 Generated lavaphabbridge error report email provides wrong link for full report link
  • T6292 gettext-i18n: test failed
  • T6296 gupnp-services: 11_gupnp-services test failed
  • T6349 sdk-code-analysis-tools-splint: 3_sdk-code-analysis-tools-splint test failed
  • T6366 sdk-cross-compilation: 10_sdk-cross-compilation test failed
  • T6369 apparmor-gstreamer1-0: test failed
  • T6444 aum-update-rollback-tests/arm64,amd64: Automatic power cut test should be reworked to reduce the speed of delta read
  • T6446 aum-update-rollback-tests/amd64: DNS not available in LAVA tests after reboot
  • T6614 aum-update-rollback-tests/armhf: Rollback situation is not reproduced on public armhf target and internal images
  • T6620 Repeatedly plugging and unplugging a USB flash drive on i.MX6 (Sabrelite) results in USB failure
  • T6662 SDK: command-not-found package is broken
  • T6669 Stop building cross compilers tools and libraries for not supported platforms
  • T6670 Remove or move git-mediawiki package from the development repo
  • T6680 Drop mkdocs package from development repository
  • T6681 Fix btrfs packages in the development repository
  • T6682 Drop or fix installation for git-all package in development repository
  • T6683 Drop or fix installation for gccbrig package in development repository
  • T6684 Move dh-python package from target to development repository
  • T6685 Fix gstreamer1.0-gl package in target repository
  • T6686 Move kernel-wedge package from target to development repository
  • T6687 Move kdump-tools package from target to development repository
  • T6688 Fix libblockdev-btrfs2 in target repository
  • T6689 Move skales package from target to development repository
  • T6690 Fix mesa-vdpau-drivers package in target repository
  • T6691 Fix mesa-va-drivers package in target repository
  • T6692 Move makedumpfile package from target to development repository
  • T6693 Move lsb-release package from target to development repository
  • T6694 Fix firmware-linux package in target
  • T6695 Remove remaining hotdoc dbgsym package from development repository
  • T6727 FTBFS: Apertis v2020pre package build failures
  • T6768 Fix the kernel command line generation in OSTRee for FIT image
  • T6773 HAB testing: the unsigned image may pass validation in several circumstances
  • T6783 Kernel trace on armhf board with attached screen
  • T6795 SabreLite failing to boot due to failing “to start udev Coldplug all Devices”
  • T6806 HAB on SabreLite in open state accepts any signed kernel regardless of the signing key
  • T6885 gitlab-rulez fails to set location of the gitlab-ci.yaml on first run
  • T6887 ARM64 target does not reboot automatically
  • T6891 apparmor-pulseaudio: 13_apparmor-pulseaudio test failed
  • T6903 U-Boot boot counter is used for AMD64 & ARM64
  • T6961 audio-backhandling feature fails
  • T7000 DNS resolution does not work in Debos on some setups
  • T7012 Apparmor Denied session logs keep popping up on the terminal while executing tests
  • T7016 network proxy for browser application is not resolving on mildenhall-compositor
  • T7018 Chaiwala-logo doesn’t come up on boot up
  • T7127 apparmor-functional-demo: test failed
  • T7128 apparmor-session-lockdown-no-deny
  • T7129 apparmor-tumbler: test failed
  • T7201 gitlab CI reporting of OBS build status fails under modest/heavy load
  • T7203 Sometimes Connman is unable to establish a Wi-Fi connection on minnowboard
  • T7207 PBAP Phonebook Access PSE profile fails from time to time
  • T7223 didcot: test failed
  • T7224 OBS logging job fails in Gitlab CI pipeline
  • T7247 connman-new-supplicant: test failed
  • T7308 sdk-vb-fullscreen testcase link needs to be changed for v2019
  • T7333 apparmor-geoclue: test failed
  • T7340 newport: test failed
  • T7387 Chaiwala test package needs to be installed when executing the Connman Pan Tethering and Connman Pan Network access test
  • T7401 systemd-boot does not initiate rollback after repeated failed boots

Low (18)

  • T1809 Upstream: linux-tools-generic should depend on lsb-release
  • T1924 telepathy-ring: Review and fix SMS test
  • T1964 Mildenhall compositor crops windows
  • T2142 Power button appers to be disabled on target
  • T2226 Network search pop-up isn’t coming up in wi-fi settings
  • T2367 Videos are hidden when Eye is launched
  • T2483 Video doesn’t play when toggling from full screen to detail view
  • T2498 Simulator screen is not in center but left aligned
  • T2704 The video player window is split into 2 frames in default view
  • T3161 If 2 drawers are activated, the most recent one hides behind the older one, instead of coming on top of older one.
  • T3537 cgroups-resource-control: test network-cgroup-prio-class failed
  • T3759 Status bar is not getting updated with the current song/video being played
  • T4166 On multiple re-entries from settings to eye the compositor hangs
  • T4296 Segmentation fault is observed on closing the mildenhall-compositor
  • T4490 webkit2gtk-drag-and-drop doesn’t work with touch
  • T6065 apt-get dist-upgrade fails on SDK
  • T7204 Bluez pairing operation is failing from time to time
  • T7225 webkit2gtk-ac-3d-rendering test fails

Lowest (73)

  • T789 Remove unnecessary folks package dependencies for automated tests
  • T1556 No connectivity Popup is not seen when the internet is disconnected.
  • T1960 remove INSTALL, aclocal.m4 files from langtoft
  • T2028 Documentation is not available from the main folder
  • T2299 Clutter_text_set_text API redraws entire clutterstage
  • T2317 libgrassmoor: executes tracker-control binary
  • T2318 mildenhall-settings: does not generate localization files from source
  • T2475 Theme ,any F node which is a child of an E node is not working for Apertis widgets.
  • T2781 Horizontal scroll is not shown on GtkClutterLauncher
  • T2785 The background HMI is blank on clicking the button for Power OFF
  • T2788 Share links to facebook, twitter are nbt working in browser (GtkClutterLauncher)
  • T2790 Background video is not played in some website with GtkClutterLauncher
  • T2833 Interaction with PulseAudio not allowed by its AppArmor profile
  • T2858 shapwick reads /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/passwd, and writes /var/root/.cache/dconf/
  • T2889 Cannot open/view pdf documents in browser (GtkClutterLauncher)
  • T2890 Zoom in feature does not work on google maps
  • T2917 Images for the video links are not shown in news.google.com on GtkClutterLauncher
  • T2995 Focus in launcher rollers broken because of copy/paste errors
  • T3008 beep audio decoder gives errors continously
  • T3171 Unusable header in Traprain section in Devhelp
  • T3174 Clang package fails to install appropriate egg-info needed by hotdoc
  • T3219 Canterbury messes up kerning when .desktop uses unicode chars
  • T3237 make check fails on libbredon package for wayland warnings
  • T3280 Cannot open links within website like yahoo.com
  • T3319 mx6qsabrelite: linking issue with libgstimxeglvivsink.so and libgstimxvpu.so gstreamer plugins
  • T3332 Compositor seems to hide the bottom menu of a webpage
  • T3430 Spacing issues between text and selection box in website like amazon
  • T3431 Content on a webpage doesn’t load in sync with the scroll bar
  • T3433 Resizing the window causes page corruption
  • T3506 Confirm dialog status updated before selecting the confirm option YES/NO
  • T3517 webview Y offset not considered to place, full screen video on youtube webpage
  • T3563 GObject Generator link throws 404 error
  • T3564 GLib, GIO Reference Manual links are incorrectly swapped
  • T3580 Canterbury entry-point launching hides global popups, but only sometimes
  • T3588 <abstractions/chaiwala-base> gives privileges that not every app-bundle should have
  • T3631 Segmentation fault when disposing test executable of mildenhall
  • T3647 The web runtime doesn’t set the related view when opening new windows
  • T3729 ribchester: gnome-desktop-testing test times out
  • T3730 canterbury: Most of the tests fail
  • T3763 Compositor hides the other screens
  • T3771 Roller problem in settings application
  • T3797 Variable roller is not working
  • T3798 In mildenhall, URL history speller implementation is incomplete.
  • T3909 MildenhallSelectionPopupItem doesn’t take ownership when set properties
  • T3939 libshoreham packaging bugs
  • T3940 libmildenhall-0-0 contains files that would conflict with a future libmildenhall-0-1
  • T3969 MildenhallSelPopupItem model should be changed to accept only gchar * instead of MildenhallSelPopupItemIconDetail for icons
  • T3971 libbredon/seed uninstallable on target as they depend on libraries in :development
  • T3972 webview-test should be shipped in libbredon-0-tests instead of libbredon-0-1
  • T3973 bredon-0-launcher should be shipped in its own package, not in libbredon-0-1
  • T3991 virtual keyboard is not showing for password input field of any webpage
  • T3992 Steps like pattern is seen in the background in songs application
  • T3996 Avoid unconstrained dbus AppArmor rules in frome
  • T4005 Newport test fails on minimal images
  • T4009 connman: patch “Use ProtectSystem=true” rejected upstream
  • T4010 connman: patch “device: Don’t report EALREADY” not accepted upstream
  • T4027 webkit2GTK crash observed flicking on webview from other widget
  • T4031 Mildenhall should install themes in the standard xdg data dirs
  • T4046 Page rendering is not smooth in sites like www.yahoo.com
  • T4048 HTML5 demo video’s appear flipped when played on webkit2 based browser app
  • T4050 Render theme buttons are not updating with respect to different zoom levels
  • T4052 Rendering issue observed on websites like http://www.moneycontrol.com
  • T4089 Crash observed on webruntime framework
  • T4110 Crash observed on seed module when we accesing the D-Bus call method
  • T4142 introspectable support for GObject property, signal and methods
  • T4348 Inital Roller mappings are misaligned on the HMI
  • T4383 folks-metacontacts-antilinking: folks-metacontacts-antilinking_sh.service failed
  • T4386 apparmor-tracker: AssertionError: False is not true
  • T4419 traprain: sadt: error: cannot find debian/tests/control
  • T4420 canterbury: core-as-root and full-as-root tests failed
  • T4421 ribchester: Job for generated-test-case-ribchester.service canceled
  • T5301 libsoup: /usr/lib/libsoup2.4/installed-tests/libsoup/ssl-test test failed
  • T5989 frome: 6_frome test failed