Tero Kivinen <[email protected]> wrote: > Michael Richardson writes: >> And you can't force people to monotonically go up in versions, because >> bugs do occur, and people need to "undo"...
> Undo should always need to be manual operation, preferrably something
> like reboot and press factory reset button, and then you can load any
> firmware without any checks in.
yes, you are right, this may well be the right answer for 2016.
I think that as we go more autonomic, and/or more ISP managed, that this
isn't going to fly.
> For automatic updates, or normal updates done by adminstrative
> interface, there is never need to go backwards, i.e., you can force
> them to do monotonically go up in version.
> Also quite a lot of systems actually keep two firmwares, current and
> backup one, so undo operation will simply switch to the backup version.
More core-ISP devices (i.e. cisco/juniper/brocade/etc. routers) often support
multiple backup firmwares, but it is actually rather common to have to revert
more than one version back... but more particularly, often the right version
isn't the previous version, but instead a version in between the previous
version, and the current version, or worse, a side branch version...
While the above is not a concern for Homenet per-se, I think it is likely
that homenet will get deployed into Internet-dependant small businesses early
as it provides good dual-ISP operation.
> There are lots of devices which you cannot downgrade once you have
> upgraded them, and people do not really consider them a problem...
Lots of devices get bricked and go into the waste, and many manufacturers
consider that a feature, but few consumers do.
> I do not even remember when was the last time I needed to downgrade
> back to previous version. There has been some versions which have been
> buggy, but usually those are fixed by manufacturer, and the fix will be
> to load next firmware, not downgrading to old one.
I have regularly had to downgrade the radio firmware in my phone in order to
run the operating system that I wanted. From the baseband CPUs point of
view, the host system is not always that trusted.
--
Michael Richardson <[email protected]>, Sandelman Software Works
-= IPv6 IoT consulting =-
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