RDKV4.0 Firmware Upgrade - User Manual

Introduction

     This document describes the firmware update of RPI board using FirmwareControl plugin.Plugin can be enabled via controller UI once image is booted. Based on the request given to board, tarred firmware image is downloaded to RPI board from the given HTTP server and the image is updated accordingly.

Environment Setup

 The build procedure is as follows:

•  repo init -u https://code.rdkcentral.com/r/manifests -m rdkv-asp-nosrc.xml -b thunder-next
•  repo sync -j4 --no-clone-bundle
•  source meta-cmf-raspberrypi/setup-environment (select option raspberrypi-rdk-hybrid-thunder.conf)
•  bitbake rdk-generic-hybrid-thunder-image

Flashing the image

   Image is flashed to SD card before inserting to RPI board.   

Command to flash the image

    Generated image has to be flashed to an SD card using this command in local PC:

$ sudo dd if=<path to ImageName.rpi-sdimg> of=<path to SD card space> bs=4M

The SD card is then inserted to the Raspberry Pi board and booted to check for containers created.

The Raspberry Pi board is connected to the PC via a USB to serial converter and the logs can be checked in console or can be connected via HDMI cable to a TV and logs will be shown in the terminal

Test Setup

        For testing Firmware Control plugin , we need HTTP server that hosts the tarred image.

Setting up a HTTP server:

    For setting up a HTTP server we can use Apache 2.0 or lighttpd. Below are the steps for HTTP server using Apache 2 

•  Install Apache2 package
  •      sudo apt update
  •     sudo apt install apache2
•    Check the firewall application profiles
  •     sudo ufw app list
•    Modify firewall rules to allow Apache2
  •       sudo ufw allow 'Apache'   
• Verify the status
  • sudo ufw status
• Verify Apache2 service is running using systemd command
  • sudo systemctl status apache2

• Server can be connected using http request, http://<ip of device> (ex: http://192.168.2.8)

• Configuration files for Apache2 can be found in /etc/apache2/.
• We should place tar file to document root folder for accessing it. Check document root folder mentioned in conf file. This can be found in path /etc/apache2/sites-available/. 

Enabling the FirmwareControl Plugin:

   FirmwareControl plugin is enabled or disabled via Controller UI. Controller UI is launched using browser via http://<board ip>

   Ex: http://192.168.2.20

Upon booting the image, firmwareControl plugin will be disabled

Plugin needs to be enabled before proceeding with firmware update.

RPi - Board :

• Flash the image supported with FirmwareControl plugin feature in the RPI board and verify the 2 partitions(ex. mmcblk0p1, mmcblk0p2) present under dev folder (use command fdisk -l)
• Execute curl request for firmware update.  During first time execution, firmware update request creates one more partition in memory(mmcblk0p3) and auto reboots to update partition table. This happens only on the first request, further requests will not result in board reboot before firmware update.
• Once device boots up verify there are 3 partitions in /dev (ex. mmcblk0p1, mmcblk0p2, mmcblk0p3) (use command fdisk -l) .
• Execute curl request for firmware update for second time.
• Image tar file will be downloaded to a file in /tmp folder (ex. ImageTemp). Verify image is downloaded to /tmp
• Reboot RPI board once firmware update process is completed manually using reboot -f command.
• Once board boots up verify the current image version ( cat /version.txt)
•  Verify the version of booted image which shows the downloaded image version

Conclusion

Please find the summary on firmware upgrade explained above

Limitations: 

•  Auto reboot after firmware update is not happening currently. User has to reboot manually after completion of firmware update.
•  RPI board will reboot before firmware update only for the first request for updating memory partition table, and user has to give request command once again for firmware update. This occurs only for the first request after board boot up.