Automated update of balena hostOS

Product support balenaOS
1

Hello,

I am having the following challenge:

Assume I have tens of thousands of devices on a production fleet and I need to deploy a new firmware release that only works with a newer version of the Balena hostOS. Unlike the firmware releases I cannot pin an offline device to a specific version of Balena hostOS. Meaning at the moment I would have to manually pin every single device when they come online (assume there are offline devices in stock that are not yet installed, and in transit) which is quite a hassle.

My question is whether there is a way to automate pinning a device to a specific Balena hostOS version?

Ideally it would be great if I could do it from a privileged application container, or during a docker building process of the containers.

I looked at balenaHUP, but it seems they do not support Raspberry Pi 4s. I am also using BalenaCloud and not openBalena.

Let me know if this issue has already been explored, or further clarification is needed.

Thanks,
Roland

3

Hi there,

As you’ve noticed, there is no built-in balena cloud feature right now to pin a fleet or a device to a specified HostOS version. You could take a look at this block: GitHub - balena-labs-projects/autohupr: Automatically keep your balenaOS host release up-to-date with this block! - while I haven’t used it personally I believe its been designed to do what you’ve described - worth a try!

4

Thanks Ryan,

I will give this a go and report back!

6

Hi Ryan,

I can confirm that this approach works for automating hostOS updates.

Thanks for the help! The thread can be closed as solved.

Cheers,
Roland