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System update

Installation or upgrade of specific software⚓︎

Opkg package manager⚓︎

opkg is used to install extra packages that are not installed with the original image.

To use it, first update the package lists 

opkg update
opkg list

Example: install rsync 

opkg install rsync

Editing package feeds⚓︎

The files under /etc/opkg/* define where to get extra software. You can edit them to point to the server of your choice. NOTE: Make sure that the package repository you add is compatible and secure to use

System installation or re-installation⚓︎

System image also known as firmware⚓︎

Host Mobility hardware is able to update itself with two methods using files created by the build system:

  1. Put files on a USB memory stick, plug it into the machine and press reset-button. On the HMX, the USB-upgrade button must be held down during reset as well
  2. Copy the files over the network to /boot directory and set the firmware_update u-boot environment variable to true

The files can be put in /boot in a number of ways. In the case of using secure shell (SSH), you can edit the ~/.ssh/config file like this:

Assign the unit connected with USB cable to name dut 

Host dut
  HostName 192.168.250.1
  User roothmx
  StrictHostKeyChecking No

Depending on the hardware, the upgrade procedures are then slightly different:

Firmware update u-boot variable⚓︎

To trigger a firmware update on certain MX-4 hardware types, a U-Boot variable needs to be set:

Set firmware update U-Boot variable 

/opt/hm/fw_env/fw_setenv firmware_update true

Setting firmware_update to true will enable USB update as well if an image is present on the USB memory.

USB method autoboot.sh⚓︎

If a file named autoboot.sh is found on the USB memory the first thing after upgrade, it will be executed.

This can be used to re-install and configure the unit after update.

Persistent partition /mnt/config and run-parts⚓︎

On some builds, files stored in /mnt/config are kept across system re-installations.

If this is included, all executable files in /mnt/config/update-hooks are executed using run-parts on first boot.

This can be used to re-install and configure the unit after performing an update from the /boot directory.