Yoe Distro Network Booting

Lachlan · January 6, 2025, 7:18am

Hey,

I’m looking at integrating Yoe distro with a project. Is there a recommended method of implementing booting over a network for image testing and development?

cbrake · January 6, 2025, 3:05pm

Welcome to TMPDIR!

I’ve rarely used booting images over the network for development, but I assume this would be more platform/u-boot dependent where you configure u-boot to load an image over TFTP and boot it.

The workflow I typically use is:

install an image
update image as needed using the Yoe Updater (this is easy and fast). For development, you can scp a new image to the /data partition and reboot.
for application development, I typically just scp new applications over and run them. It helps if you build your apps so all assets are embedded in the binary, so there is only one file to transfer.
you can also set up a feed server and push new/updated packages to the target. See the feed server functions. After a feed server is set up, you can run opkg update/install on the target system.

Curious if this meets your needs, and if not, why not?

Lachlan · January 8, 2025, 1:44am

I think maybe the Updater path might be the solution I’m looking for. Is /boot accessible on-device in the Raspberry Pi build? The /boot dir only seems to contain the kernel image when the device is booted.

cbrake · January 8, 2025, 1:50am

There are 3 partitions: /boot, /root, and /data. To update, scp the *.upd file to the /data directory and reboot.

More information on the updater is here:

github.com

YoeDistro/yoe-distro/blob/master/docs/updater.md

# Yoe Init/Updater 🚀

## Requirements

There are two functions of the Init/Updater system:

1. verify the system is initialized such that it can run (disk partitions, etc)
1. update the system with new software

Both of these functions are critical for a reliable system. Having
initialization system also greatly simplifies production deployment as the
system can completely initialize itself as long as a kernel can boot.

- single partition update
- update u-boot, kernel, dtb, etc.
- init/updater located in kernel initramfs
- most systems will have 3 partitions
  - `boot`: contains bootloaders, kernel+initramfs+init/updater
  - `rootfs`: root file system that is re-written during update
  - `data`: data that is preserved between updates

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Let us know if any issues – the updater should work on rPI.