On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 7:04 PM Robert Nelson <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 4:19 PM John Allwine <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > I'd like to start a discussion about creating complete Beaglebone images > > that leverage OSTree to be able to atomically update the system as a whole. > > The scripts in https://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder generate > > complete images for the Beaglebone that include specific kernel, apt > > packages, boot settings, git repositories, etc. Updating a deployed > > Beaglebone without reflashing a new image involves piecemeal updating of > > those various components. Improperly updating can leave the system in a > > broken state and can be difficult to get back into a good state. It would > > be great to be able to leverage those image-builder scripts to construct > > the rootfs, add that tree as a commit to an OSTree repository and properly > > configured Beaglebones could download that commit and atomically switch to > > it to update the whole system while preserving portions of the system such > > as home directories and other key directories (/etc, /var?). If something > > did break, rolling back is easy as well. > > > > Configuring a Beaglebone this way would make most of the system read-only > > so using apt-get to install new packages wouldn't work without altering its > > implementation, but that seems like a worthy trade off. This would be for > > someone who has a Beaglebone with an out-of-the-box image and some > > scripts/servers set up in their home directory who doesn't want to worry > > too much about the system as a whole, but wants to be able to easily update > > it without reflashing or doing piecemeal updates. People who develop > > software for Beaglebones in their customers' devices could host their own > > OSTree repository and make their own modifications to the image-builder > > scripts if they have their own set of system dependencies (this is what I'd > > like to do). > > > > Does anyone else think this would be useful? Is there anyone with the > > expertise to know what details would need to be taken into account to make > > this work properly? > > > > OSTree documentation is here: https://ostreedev.github.io/ostree/ > > It lists a number of examples of it being used in various Linux > > distributions. > > I remember seeing one of Peter Robinson's demo of Fedora IoT a few > years back at ELC, that used OSTree+btrfs. It worked pretty well. At > that time, I made sure btrfs worked well for us, to possibly look down > that road. My biggest issue, the 4gb eMMC, was too limited for the > out of box images to do something like that. For an iot/console image > the idea would still work well.. While working on bullseye images > this week, i noticed we still have the "--no-merged-usr" flag for > debootstrap, we should try with that removed in 'bullseye', as ostree > needs that.. > > We did have ostree installed on the lxqt images: > > https://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder/blob/master/configs/bb.org-debian-buster-lxqt-v5.4.conf#L138 > > --no-merged-usr (due to bugs in stretch/buster..) > https://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder/blob/master/scripts/debootstrap.sh#L138
bullseye and later now has --no-merged-usr disabled: https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder/commit/2d7bf137e3447038142a83751ed4fca76faca5fe Regards, -- Robert Nelson https://rcn-ee.com/ -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/CAOCHtYgG6-42Xyr-JYVkCJ_QvQk7HTu4%2BNvpj5yGwwOJo-r6_Q%40mail.gmail.com.
