Our release process involves just running a script that runs balena push for a specific fleet. This works well and all the new devices USUALLY pick up this new release but we have a few fleets that are running into problems.
The problem: Some of the fleets have an older release commit labeled “default release track” so it looks like when I run “balena push,” that doesn’t deploy them correctly.
How do I change this behavior so that balena push should always create this default release track? (Or at the very least, a nice band aid solution would be if I could change the default release track to a different release)
Side note: We’re also on a paid plan but I don’t see any features of private chat support.
Hey there! The default behavior should be what you describe; when you create a new release with balena push, the latest one (by date) should be marked as default and all the devices that are set to run the latest release, i.e. not pinned to an older version should update.
If you have some fleets where an older release commit is labelled default and your devices don’t update, it sounds like that fleet might be explicitly pinned to an older version. You’ll be able to check this on the ‘Settings’ page under the selected fleet. The ‘Pin to release’ setting should be set to ‘track latest’. Let me know if that turns out to be the case or not.
Now that you mention it, the terminology surrounding ‘release track’ and ‘default’ on the list of releases isn’t very intuitive and does not suggest this is anything to do with the pinned release of a fleet. Something for us to look into the UX for there, I think.
Noted about your private chat too but I’m going to consider that resolved since you pointed us at this forum thread from the private chat
If you have some fleets where an older release commit is labelled default and your devices don’t update, it sounds like that fleet might be explicitly pinned to an older version. You’ll be able to check this on the ‘Settings’ page under the selected fleet. The ‘Pin to release’ setting should be set to ‘track latest’. Let me know if that turns out to be the case or not.
It’s pinned as “default” to an older release. At this point even if I update the device to “track latest,” it doesn’t make a difference. So currently, the issue still stands and I need to be able to update that so that latest always means my latest balena push. Luckily, it’s only 2 of our fleets with this problem at the moment.
I’m not sure I’m understanding correctly here. If your fleet is pinned to an older release, are you intentionally keeping it that way? This will mean the ‘default’ badge will never move to the latest release in the list of releases, unless you change the fleet setting back to track latest. Even if an individual device is set to track latest, since the fleet is already pinned to an older version, latest for that specific device means ‘the release that the fleet is pinned to’. The only way to override the release for a single device would be to set it to a specific release, but then of course the device will be pinned to that specific release and any subsequent releases created with balena push would have no effect on the fleet nor the device.
Perhaps it’s worth going back to first principles and you explaining what you’re trying to achieve using the pinning settings.
I think this is the part I’m not understanding - to undo it should be a simple as going into the settings for the Fleet in question (not the device), finding the ‘Pin to release’ setting, and changing it back to track latest. You mentioned in your previous message it was pinned to an older release; changing it back to track latest should rectify that. All your devices will need to be set to track latest as well, which you can do from the device list in a batch operation if necessary.
If we’re still not understanding each other, please could you share some screenshots showing the fleet settings page, and the releases list.
It looks like there’s a couple of places where I missed this option for setting a fleet release default but I also had some thoughts on that:
The fleets page has several windows and one of them shows release. However, there’s a couple of issues with this. When looking at this page, I’m always staring at the list of devices. The other windows naturally felt like unrelated metadata. Also, the release just shows a dropdown window and no text stating “default release that gets applied to devices” or something of the sort
There is a fleets settings page that also shows this as “Pin to release.” That’s also a bit misleading to me that it serves as the default release.
Glad you got this figured out! I spend a lot of my time thinking about the UX of the dashboard, which means I’ll definitely be taking your feedback into consideration going forward. I agree that the fleet page is a bit strange and lacks clarity, and as you’ve identified the releases card isn’t clear either. The terminology is something that’s very inconsistent here and we’re gradually rolling out changes to make it the same across the board so that should hopefully help folks to understand what’s going on and how things connect.
It seems this happened to me as well just now. So I push a new build to my slug, it builds fine, I can see it in the list of releases. But “Release track” shows “default” under a different, older, release. The fleet is set to “track latest”. I can’t find any other setting that would undo the setting of “default” to this older release.
