TorizonCore 6.2.0 Quarterly Release

Admin.tx · May 5, 2023, 3:44am

We are pleased to announce the TorizonCore 6.2.0 quarterly release for Toradex’s System on Modules.

TorizonCore is our operating system that powers Torizon, a DevOps platform that simplifies the development and maintenance of embedded Linux software. TorizonCore is designed to be used out-of-the-box on devices requiring high reliability, allowing you to focus on your application instead of on building and maintaining an operating system.

Torizon uses software containers, making it simple to add functionality to your system in a way that is both secure and easy to maintain. Torizon supports hardware acceleration in containers and graphical user interfaces.

This release includes all updates from the previous 6.x.y TorizonCore releases.

Updates and Highlights

TorizonCore

Migration between 5 and 6 versions possible:
- Upgrade from TorizonCore 5 to TorizonCore 6 using Torizon Remote Updates is now possible.
- To upgrade to TorizonCore 6, all users will need to first upgrade to Maintenance Release 5.7.2.
  - The workflow looks as follows:
    TorizonCore 5.7.0 → TorizonCore 5.7.2 or newer maintenance release → Bootloader update → TorizonCore 6
    Learn more on the Upgrade Instructions
- Bootloader binaries for TorizonCore 5 were published to the Torizon Platform Services, allowing users to downgrade from 6 to 5.7.2 or newer.
- Documentation concluded and released.
Device drivers included as a module:
Updates from BSP 6.2.0:
- Please also note that TorizonCore is built on top of the Toradex BSP Layers for the Yocto Project. Read the BSP Layers and Reference Images for Yocto Project release news to learn more.

Debian Packages and Containers

The Torizon debian-shell container has been deprecated. The Torizon debian container is recommended as a drop-in replacement.

Other Updates

Several bug fixes:
- A critical bug fix for synchronous updates was completed. With that fix, if a synchronous update rollback happens, the newer container image will not be pruned. This will result in an overhead of the flash storage, which will keep the rolled-back container as well as the newer container.
- CPU usage increasing by 2x on SoMs based on NXP i.MX 6/6xULL/7 was reverted.
- Wi-Fi on Verdin iMX8M Plus V1.1A was fixed after adding missing firmware for the new hardware revision.
- The “ip” command fails to configure the CAN interface.
- Aktualizr-Torizon is rebooting mid-process during synchronous updates with big container images.
Automated tests:
- This release had extensive use of automated tests. The constant increase of test coverage improves the quality of the code while leaving more resources to boost the value of each release.

Intended Use

The TorizonCore 6.2.0 Quarterly Release is a production-grade release. Some of the documentation and tooling features are still works in progress, which implies limitations on their usage. Once these components get updated, you will be able to use all workflows supported by the TorizonCore 5 series. You will learn more about this later in the next section.

Therefore, if you are in production with TorizonCore 5 and key features for your specific project are missing on TorizonCore 6, we recommend that you continue using the Quarterly Release 5.7.2. Otherwise, if you are in evaluation, development, or production and all features you need are available in TorizonCore 6, we recommend moving to this quarterly release.

General Considerations

This release removes some limitations from the previous 6.x releases.

VS Code IDE Extension
Support for TorizonCore 6 has been added to the Torizon IDE Extension 2 for VS Code, formerly codenamed ApolloX on Toradex Labs. In addition, the IDE extension had the first stable release, including official documentation.
TorizonCore Builder
Support for TorizonCore Builder (TCB) on TorizonCore 6 is concluded. The limitations from the previous Quarterly Release 6.1.0 were resolved. Make sure you are using TorizonCore Builder 3.7.0 or newer.

Even though this is a TorizonCore Quarterly Release, the Torizon tooling and ecosystem still have limitations.

Debian Containers for Torizon
Debian Bookworm containers were published on Docker Hub with the major tag “3” and are expected to work on all SoMs supported by this release. They are not usable out of the box for the following reasons:
- The documentation has not been completely updated yet, and some changes will prevent the graphical containers from starting.
- The environment variables for container tags on TorizonCore have not been bumped yet, therefore if you use them to run containers, as instructed in many places in our docs, you will end up running the Debian Bullseye containers.
- The chromium, cog, and sample containers have not been updated yet to Debian Bookworm.
- Debian Bullseye containers were tested and are expected to work. While this may enable you to early adopt TorizonCore 6, we don’t intend to regularly update and test Bullseye containers for TorizonCore 6. As soon as the tooling and documentation are updated for Bookworm containers, you should use them.

Upcoming Features

Full support for Bookworm containers: Updated packages are being released and the newly launched Torizon IDE Extension 2 already provides the switch for different Debian releases. Work completion is expected to arrive in an upcoming release.
Remote Access: Support for the upcoming feature from Torizon Platform Services is expected to arrive in an upcoming release.
Hardware-accelerated TensorFlow Lite: Support is expected to arrive in an upcoming release.

Get more updates on this from our Release Details.

Hardware Support

A quarterly release is intended to be used in a production environment only with volume products, as long as they are supported by TorizonCore.

Volume products: Apalis iMX6, Apalis iMX8, Colibri iMX6ULL 1GB, Colibri iMX6DL, and Colibri iMX7D 1GB
This release is intended to be used in production on these modules.
Sample products: Colibri iMX8X, and Verdin iMX8M Mini, and Verdin iMX8M Plus
Due to the hardware status of the samples, this release is intended for development.
For Verdin, only the second generation of Verdin products is supported.