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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.
sd-card size requisite It is must to have minimal size of 8GB SD-Card for Firmware upgrade support |
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
Ex: $ sudo dd if=rdk-generic-hybrid-thunder-image_default_20200302130659.rootfs.rpi-sdimg of=/dev/sdc bs=4M 317+0 records in 317+0 records out 1329594368 bytes (1.3 GB, 1.2 GiB) copied, 104.88 s, 12.7 MB/s $ sync |
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
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.