Supervisor dependencies on BalenaOS (and vice versa)

Product support balenaOS
1

Are there any dependencies between BalenaOS and supervisor versions?
Can I upgrade one without the other completely independently?

Currently most of my Generic_x86 fleet is running balenaOS 2.85.3+rev8 and Supervisor version 12.10.13.
Can I upgrade one without the other in this case?

2

Hi there,

You can update the supervisor without updating the host OS ( Self-service Supervisor Upgrades - Balena Documentation ) with some caveats:

  • you can’t downgrade the supervisor back down to the old version pre-update
  • updating to a new minor version of the supervisor, where the minor version is the digits after the first decimal point in the version number - i.e 12.X.XX should be seamless
  • updating a to a new major version - e.g 13.X.X in your case, should work - but it is inherently riskier - I would probably advise testing it out first on non production units in your fleet to make sure it works with your application without problems
  • usually we’d recommend consistantly updating the host OS along with the supervisor - however as above, its worth testing this out on non-production devices just to be sure that it causes no problems for your specific use case

Hope this helps! This link explains supervisor updating a bit: Self-service Supervisor Upgrades - Balena Documentation