Allow updating with just a USB connection

[johnnyman727]

Dependent on: tessel/openwrt-tessel#47

[johnnyman727]

On weird issue I'm facing is that running sysupgrade /tmp/openwrt.bin does not seem to work. The only thing it seems to do is kill the SPI Daemon permanently so perhaps it is beginning to restart? @kevinmehall what do you think could be happening to keep sysupgrade from completing when I exec it from the USB Daemon?

[kevinmehall]

Try adding spid and usbexecd to the whitelist of processes that sysupgrade won't kill when starting the update: https://github.com/tessel/openwrt/blob/2015-10-26/package/base-files/files/lib/upgrade/common.sh#L128.

[kevinmehall]

You can just modify /lib/upgrade/common.sh on a Tessel, and if it works then patch the linked file in the openwrt repo.

[johnnyman727]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

[johnnyman727]

Unfortunately, modifying /lib/upgrade/common.sh didn't seem to work.

Strangely, ubus call system upgrade is a ubus option but it doesn't seem to do anything either.

But I could run either require('child_process').exec('sysupgrade /tmp/openwrt.bin') or require('child_process').spawn('sysupgrade, ['/tmp/openwrt.bin']) within node with positive results so I guess we could do that worst case...

[rwaldron]

We should avoid camel casing command line options :P

[johnnyman727]

👍

[johnnyman727]

I think something else must be going on because I was able to successfully sysupgrade from the CLI with this patch and the t2-cli usb-exec sysupgrade /tmp/openwrt.bin command... That should be essentially exactly the same as what happens in the t2 update command so there is something else causing the issue.

[johnnyman727]

I've confirmed that two changes are necessary:

1. The patch as outlined by @kevinmehall above
2. Not closing the child process that execed the sysupgrade for about two minutes (or until it reports that the upgrade completed).

Because I did not implement 2, it seemed as though 1 made no difference but with both implementations, the update succeeds.

[johnnyman727]

Working on the OpenWRT patch here but the documentation on patches is pretty lacking. @kevinmehall can you look it over for me when you get a chance?

[kevinmehall]

The file is in the openwrt tree, so just modify it in a normal commit. Patches are used to make changes to 3rd-party code that is downloaded as an upstream tarball and doesn't live in the repository. (The directory where you added that patch is supposed to be for patches against the uClibc source)

[johnnyman727]

Ah okay, that makes much more sense. Thanks for the clarification.

[johnnyman727]

So this feature introduces a fun complication which is that because we have to update our OpenWRT build to make updating over USB work, all previous builds will not have this capability. That means we have to check the version running on the Tessel and confirm that it's > 0.0.11 before moving forward with a USB-only update.

@rwaldron any thoughts on that? It's kind of shitty but I'm not sure we have a good way to get around it.

[kevinmehall]

If you want a hack, the CLI could modify /lib/upgrade/common.sh on old versions before performing the update...

[johnnyman727]

@kevinmehall I'm ashamed of you for even suggesting such a dirty hack.

But yeah, does sed '/*procd*\|*ash*\|*init*/c \ \*procd*|*ash*|*init*|*watchdog*|*ssh*|*dropbear*|*telnet*|*login*|*hostapd*|*wpa_supplicant*|*nas*|*spid*|*usbexecd*) : ;;'\ /lib/upgrade/common.sh look good?

[kevinmehall]

Don't you need sed -i for in-place edit? Or write to a temp file and mv over the original if busybox sed doesn't have that option.

If you were to include the whole original line, it would be a no-op in the case that the update had already been applied. Also, watch the escaping of the * characters in addition to the |.

[johnnyman727]

Don't you need sed -i for in-place edit? Or write to a temp file and mv over the original if busybox sed doesn't have that option.

Yes, I do and busybox sed does support it.

If you were to include the whole original line, it would be a no-op in the case that the update had already been applied. Also, watch the escaping of the * characters in addition to the |.

Ugh I don't think my fingers can type that many escapes. It's not physically possible.

[johnnyman727]

For anyone who's checking in on this PR, it's currently blocked by my effort to add a hacky to fix an issue described here so that folks running older versions of the T2 firmware can do updates over USB.

The command to overwrite a specific line of a file which determines how the update process works doesn't seem to be effective over the USB Daemon but it does work on the Tessel shell console. I'm guessing the escapes aren't being handled properly...

[rwaldron]

There must be an easier way to do that :\

[johnnyman727]

I've tried all kinds of escaping with no luck. I may go the kinda hackier route and just ship the file with the CLI, then write it to a temporary file on T2, then rename the temporary file to the real file name (thus replacing it).

[rwaldron]

Use template string

[rwaldron]

Damn dude, that was smoooooooth

$ t2 update
INFO Looking for your Tessel...
INFO Connected to Tessel-02A347EF35F2.
INFO New firmware version found...0.0.12
INFO Updating Tessel-02A347EF35F2 to latest version (0.0.12)...
INFO Beginning update download. This could take a couple minutes..
  downloading [====================] 100% 0.0s remaining
INFO Download complete!
INFO Updating OpenWRT (1/2)
INFO Transferring image of size 19.14 MB. This will take 2-4 minutes...
INFO Transfer complete.
INFO Starting OpenWRT update.
INFO Please do not remove power from Tessel.
INFO This process will take at least two minutes...
INFO Updating firmware (2/2)
INFO Firmware update complete!
INFO Updated Tessel-02A347EF35F2 from  0.0.11  to  0.0.12

First time, with new Tessel 2 out of the box.

[rwaldron]

Unplugged, re-plugged, ran t2 wifi setup and we're in business.

Please address the nit-picks and I will land this tomorrow

[johnnyman727]

Nit-picks addressed!