OTA upgrade from ubuntu jetpack to balena

Product support balenaOS
1

Hi,

We currently have a fairly large amount of Jetson Nano based devices in the field, running a customized version of Ubuntu 18.04 with Jetpack 4.4.
These devices would need to be upgraded to balenOS.
Aside from dispatching a bunch of technicians to perform a USB flash in the field, we are looking into the feasibility of upgrading these OTA, in-place in the field.

We have enough RAM available to load the uncompressed balenaOS image into a ram disk, and perform the upgrade from there.
Can a balena engineer comment to the differences in partition layout? Specifically, the partitions involved in the early boot stage are crucial.
Any other feedback into the feasibility of this would be helpful as well!

Regards,
Robin

5

Hello Robin, I will ask my colleagues if there have been past examples of this approach, and get back to you. In the mean time you can find detailed information about the partition structure here: https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/masterclasses/host-os-masterclass/#1-filesystem-and-partition-layout. Regards

12

Hi Robin, we do in fact have a methodology for migrating devices, but it’s not currently functional for the Jetson Nano device type. We are taking a look internally to determine if we could make it work, and we’ll reach out via email to let you know what we find. Thanks!