Modify boot partition contents on Asus Tinker Edge T (flash)

Product support balenaOS
1

Hey all,

I just setup a brand new Tinker Edge T board to be used in a machine learning application. I was very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to flash balenaOS onto the embedded eMMC memory chip and boot from it.

I just downloaded the OS image, burned it on an SD card, modified the boot partition on the SD card to include my connectivity settings, and put it in the board.

The device copied the necessary images onto the embedded flash memory and I rebooted without the SD card to see everything working properly! Amazing!

Now I’m wondering if it’s possible to add a new connection configuration file to the boot partition without re-flashing the whole OS and without SSH-ing into it? I guess I could plug in an ethernet cable and do it at runtime from the dashboard, but what if I don’t have an Ethernet connection available, can I still add a WIFI configuration?

Plugging a USB cable into a computer didn’t mount any storage, but maybe I don’t know the jumper switch configuration to enable this.

Thanks a lot for your help.

2

Hi,

Personally, I’m not familiar with Tinker Edge T board, perhaps there is a setting to put it in “flashing mode” where you can mount it as a drive. In general, there’s a ‘boot’ partition which contains the system-connections file, you can add the wifi config to that file as indicated in the docs: Network Setup on balenaOS 2.x - Balena Documentation . Either SSH’ing through a wired connection or somehow mounting the device on your computer would be required to modify that file.

4

Ok thanks. I think I’ll ask the Asus support if it’s possible to set it up in flashing or storage mode.

6

I asked the support and they said it’s not possible to access flash storage offline.

7

Unfortunately there is no other way to modify the system-connections without having access to flash storage or ssh’ing into the device.