Is Custom torizoncore-lite build with yocto possible? Can it work with torizon OTA?

Technical Support
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1

Hello,

Specs:

  • Aster Evaluation board
  • Colibri iMX6ULL 512MB Wi-Fi / Bluetooth IT V1.1A

We wanted to use Torizon OTA however, the mentioned SoM does not support torizoncore as mentioned in this thread. Since docker runtime makes it hard to have a full torizoncore image, we wanted to build a custom torizoncore image using Torizoncore-lite Image without docker environment but with Torizon OTA with yocto.

Is it possible to use Torizon OTA to push updates to this new image in paid tier?

2

Greetings @hexagun,

I don’t believe there would be any issues theoretically. However there are definitely some things to consider here.

  • First of all anything container related would obviously not work
  • We (Toradex) provide OS packages via our OTA. However since the Colibri i.MX6ULL (raw NAND variant) isn’t a supported device we do not provide any such packages for this device. We don provide packages for the upcoming eMMC variant of the Colibri i.MX6ULL, but these packages obviously won’t work the same on the raw NAND variant you have.
  • Provisioning will be a bit difficult. Typically we automate the provisioning using a container that is run on the device to be provisioned. But since you can’t run containers this method won’t work. It is possible to provision a device manually without a container, but it’s not something we typically recommend.
  • Since the raw NAND variant of the Colibri i.MX6ULL isn’t supported, it’s not very well tested with OTA/Torizon. So while this may all work on paper, there may be other unknown issues due to lack of testing.

Like I said it appears to be possible. But I don’t know if I can confidently recommend this at the time. I’ll also need to double-check internally if there’s other possible factors here that I may not be aware of.

With all that said, is it just OS updates you are looking for? Or are their other features you’d like to leverage from our OTA platform? (i.e. device monitoring, etc).

Best Regards,
Jeremias

3

Hello @jeremias.tx,

We wanted to use OSTree, that is available with Torizon OTA.

In this case, we were considering on building our images with all the functionality included in it and pushing the complete image to Torizon OTA platform and then sending updates to the devices.

Can you elaborate on how this can be done?

Right now we are just looking for OS updates, however we might use another features depending on future requirements.

Regards,
Nikhil

4

I checked with our team, unfortunately our options are limited here.

While it should be possible from a technical point of view, we can’t guarantee this. The raw NAND variant of the Colibri i.MX6ULL is an unsupported configuration when it comes to Torizon.

Therefore, if something goes wrong while you’re trying this the support we’d be able to provide you would be limited at best.

If possible have you considered the eMMC variant of the Colibri i.MX6ULL? This is fully supported and would alleviate a lot of the issues and unknowns here. Otherwise if you’re locked into the raw NAND variant you might want to consider alternative update solutions other than our Torizon OTA platform.

Best Regards,
Jeremias

5

We have not considered this yet, but will check on it.

Any leads on this?

Thanks and Regards,
Nikhil

6

Any leads on this?

Well when you provision a device with a container the Web UI has you run a command that looks like this:

docker run -v /:/som_sysroot --network=host --privileged -it torizon/torizon-provisioner:0.0.11 provision-device -t <provisioning token>

Inside this container is a script that then does the provisioning work. The script is a bit long so I won’t paste it here. But, you can just run this container on your desktop get a shell into it and view the script yourself.

It should be possible to run the script on the device you wish to provision, outside of a container. However, the script will most likely need modifications since it was designed to be executed from inside a container.

Best Regards,
Jeremias

7

Interesting, thanks for the info.

Regards,
Nikhil