Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 10:29:32 -0700 From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> To: Russell Haley <russ.haley@gmail.com> Cc: Karl Denninger <karl@denninger.net>, "freebsd-arm@freebsd.org" <freebsd-arm@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Updating / keeping current strategies? Message-ID: <CANCZdfooPWaSxFjW%2BZHpv8x=tAeRcmprnruZHBQvfqjk_AgzBQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20151208170304.4386897.13959.1326@gmail.com> References: <5666F37C.4060908@denninger.net> <CANCZdfoweb-f-2e2k=Q8zoB_G9x1VJVvHZoGUao-zRu4zvC=Lg@mail.gmail.com> <20151208170304.4386897.13959.1326@gmail.com>
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On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 10:03 AM, Russell Haley <russ.haley@gmail.com> wrote: > We do a ping pong at work for our embedded linux upgrades. It ensures that > we can fall back to the original install if the update fails. However, we > use a sata drive. Do you gave an documentation for this? > It's a work in progress, but https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/nanobsd/article.html has the basics. Warner > Thanks > > Russ > > Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Koodo network. > Original Message > From: Warner Losh > Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 7:55 AM > To: Karl Denninger > Cc: freebsd-arm@freebsd.org > Subject: Re: Updating / keeping current strategies? > > On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 8:13 AM, Karl Denninger <karl@denninger.net> wrote: > > > What are people doing in this regard with devices like the Raspberry Pi2? > > > > Build times for a "make buildworld" are measured in (many) hours to a > > day or more and require a USB-attached disk for temporary storage, as > > the ramdisk for /tmp that is typically mounted blows up due to lack of > > space and SD cards are slow enough on writes (especially small writes) > > as to make the process virtually impossible. But even with a > > USB-attached disk the process is ridiculous in terms of consumed > > walllclock time. > > > > Further, "make installworld" sometimes fails inexplicably. > > > > Kernel builds are a bit more reasonable, only requiring a couple of > hours. > > > > I'm wondering what the best option is to not only build current code on > > a regular basis (since -CURRENT is a "work in progress") but also to > > deploy and update existing devices. What are people doing that has a > > history of working well? > > > > I've been updating for years. But usually building on another machine and > then > installing to the media of the embedded machine via NFS. This mostly works > and isn't too sucky. But there are problems with this approach, since high > write work loads tend to bog down the embedded box due to crappy storage > being used (eg SD cards, USB attachment or both). > > You may have noticed some commits to nanobsd I've been making lately. > I'm moving all my local boards over to nanobsd with a ping-pong partition. > I'd create a new image for a new partition, splat it on to the 'pong' > partition, > adjust the active flags and reboot. NanoBSD has supported this operation > for a while, and this works well in the hand-built images I've done. > > I'm polishing off the rough edges for this by making it possible to > dynamically > resize the first time. FreeBSD supports this for one partition today. But > it > doesn't provide a good way to do a divide by 2. The support in FreeBSD > for writing MSDOS partitions as a regular user is also weak, so there's > bits from mtools in my build. I've also not completely integrated the > u-boot > ports into the build. There's also an open question about the proper way > to install packages on these boxes. One school of thought says that nanobsd > should put the packages you want onto the image, and that's all you'll > ever get. Another says that nanobsd should keep the database of packages > off the ping or pong partitions so that when you upgrade, the packages > are refreshed to the old set. There's other in-between positions I've heard > articulated. > > So I can't help you today, but I'll be able to help you soon. > > Warner > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-arm@freebsd.org mailing list > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arm > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-arm-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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