Upgrade from zeus-l4t-r32.3.1 to dunfell-l4t-r32.4.3: Things to check?

[manuel-wagesreither]

Hello everyone!

We're going from zeus-l4t-r32.3.1 to dunfell-l4t-r32.4.3 and I want to make sure that we do not run into unexpected problems.

@dwalkes created this post on the nvidia forum regarding the location of the U-Boot environment, but I'm of the understanding that the issue Dan was worried about is resolved. NVIDIA provided a patch, and we already have a patch doing the same. Hence, we're fine here.

Are there other things one needs to be concerned about?

I compared the tegraflash.zip/flash.xml (zeus) with tegraflash.tar.gz/flash.xml.in (there was no flash.xml) (dunfell). There are a few differences, but they are small enough for me not to bother.

The differences are:

• In tegraflash.tar.gz/flash.xml.in (dunfell) most variables are replaced by their values in-place. This is in contrast to zeus, were there were separate files. At dunfell, there is no tegraflash.tar.gz/flash.xml.
• Exceptions are DATAFILE, APPFILE, BPFDTB-FILE and VERFILE. They show up un-replaced in dunfells tegraflash.tar.gz/flash.xml.in.

Still, I was able to flash this dunfell image just fine. So it seems this is only of cosmetic nature.

Is there anything else I should have an eye on? I'm especially interested on things breaking OTA updateability.

Thanks for you support!
Best regards,
Manuel

[manuel-wagesreither]

If someone finds this through some search engine: When you upgrade to dunfell and use mender as OTA update solution, take care to use poky of version >= dunfell-23.0.3 bringing libubootenv 0.3. Usage of older poky version will make you run into this problem.

If you're using tegra-demo-distro, you are fine, though. It is not affected.

[dwalkes]

@manuel-wagesreither you are on jetson-tx2 with u-boot, correct? If so the only thing I know about to look for is u-boot environment location, which can't change between releases without some additional work like the work @madisongh did at Trellis-Logic/meta-mender-community@7536c74 and, based on the thread with NVIDIA you referenced, shouldn't be necessary to relocate on jetson-tx2.

If I were going to deploy this I'd want to make sure that I verified the zeus -> dunfell transition starting in either boot slot. So I'd have a test case which tegraflashed at zeus and verified the upgrade worked, then one which tegraflashed at zeus, upgraded at zeus to a new boot slot while still on the zeus branch, then upgraded to dunfell.

The second thing I'd check is rollback, I'd want to make sure I could reboot > 10 times after upgrading across zeus->dunfell and that nothing in the NVIDIA bootchain was attempting to roll back to the old boot slot. I've got a start on some scripts which can help with this for cboot cases at mendersoftware/meta-mender-community#207 and I'd like to expand these to cover more cases and especially u-boot after some additional u-boot changes like the one at OE4T/meta-mender-community#8 (comment) are in.

[manuel-wagesreither]

jetson-tx2 with U-Boot, correct. Thanks a lot, I will do as you suggested.