OS update via OTA

balena cli document says like below


“Cannot update the host os via OTA in openbalena”

If this is true, can I update the host OS with balenaHUP ? I have found this project, but I am not sure if it still works for me. Additionally, I have seen some issues on this GitHub page, but I have not read any responses to them since September 2022. Furthermore, I am running balenaOS on a Raspberry Pi 4, and I cannot find the Dockerfile for Raspberry Pi 4 on this project.

Has anybody experienced this project before?

Thanks in advance.

Hello @chester you only can update the host OS on balenaCloud.

You can read the differences between openBalena and balenaCloud here GitHub - balena-io/open-balena: Open source software to manage connected IoT devices at scale

We know that there are some large fleets using openBalena. However, we as a company consider it still to be in Beta status. We don’t perform regular testing on the platform like we do balenaCloud, and we do not yet have feature-parity between the various services we offer as mentioned before.

What Dockerfile do you need? What project are you trying to build? did you check hub.balena.io?

Good day!

I must have made it clean when I use this. The this in my sentence is balenaHUP. As far as I understood, this project builds a docker image to upgrade the host OS. There are Dockerfiles for RPi2, RPi3 but not for RPi4.

At first, I also understood that the information provided was all the differences between openBalena and Balena Cloud. However, when I tried to update the host OS and checked the Balena CLI documentation, I found the sentence stating that it is only supported on the cloud, as quoted above.

Thank you

Hello,

I’m afraid I don’t fully get your last statement. Do you have any further question on the remote hostOS update via the balena cli or not?
The balena cli supports host OS updates only when you run the device via balenaCloud und the device is actively connected to balenaCloud.

Best Regards
Harald

Hello,

As I mentioned earlier, I understand that I can only update the host OS via OTA using balena cli when using balenaCloud.

I am here to inquire about the functionality of the balenaHUP project. Upon reviewing the files in this repository, I was unable to locate the files for the Raspberry Pi 4. However, there are files available for Raspberry Pi 2/3.

To clarify, I am not asking how to update the host OS without balenaCloud, but rather seeking information on experiences with this project.

However, upon further investigation, it seems that this project may not work properly.

Thank you.

Hello,

Just to clear up a few things, I’d like to ask a few followup questions :slight_smile:

  • are you using open balena, or balena cloud (this is on the openbalena forum, but just being sure here)
  • as my colleagues mentioned, host OS updates are currently not supported in open Balena - so if you are looking into open Balena, then I think you could be out of luck.
  • we have a roadmap item here: Enable balenaOS host-updates in openBalena · Balena Roadmap for enabling this - if you upvote it , it could go towards us prioritising this in the future
  • this project: GitHub - balena-os/balenahup: BALENA Host os UPdater - actually contains the scripts that are used in balena cloud to perform host OS updates - I’m not certain that it would work for open balena

thanks

@mpous , I have been reading the page you suggests: GitHub - balena-io/open-balena: Open source software to manage connected IoT devices at scale

Maybe I am blind, or there is something I misinterpret, but where does it state that OS updates are not possible with openBalena?