What is the biggest image currently? OSTree is smart about space, so if updated incrementally and old images get pruned, it could work. But I agree it’s a big limitation. Using a microSD card in that case would be better.
> On Apr 16, 2021, at 6:04 PM, Robert Nelson <robertcnel...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 4:19 PM John Allwine <j...@pocketnc.com> 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 > > 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 beagleboard+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/CAOCHtYgHJiESN2df7jVbUErSwL5mcoPva-woQXR91t%3D0nCJJDQ%40mail.gmail.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 beagleboard+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/DE7D0E98-7405-4FC7-85B2-339E53CC4837%40pocketnc.com.
