A project I've inherited uses a very old version of buildroot, but I'd like to change it to use a feature that was added only in a later buildroot release.
Is there a straightforward way of updating a buildroot setup to use a later release?
e.g. if I save out a defconfig file and import that in a later buildroot release, would that just work, or are there practical reasons why not? Are there additional configuration files I'd need to carry across (e.g. kernel, busybox, etc)? Thanks!
No.
In fact, it's worse that that.
You can start by using a newer Buildroot version with your old default configuration file, but you will need to check the resulting configuration carefully for deprecated packages and packages whose versions are not compatible with whatever application software you might be adding to the Buildroot filesystem. The names of some packages (e.g. opencv) change over time, so you need to eyeball the resulting .config file to make sure that all of the packages that you need are there.
If you build a toolchain or Linux kernel in Buildroot (commonly done but not generally good practice), then you need to make sure that the new configuration is set to build the old version of the kernel and compiler. These might be too old to build some of the packages in the newer version of Buildroot.
If you upgrade your kernel at the same time that you upgrade Buildroot, then you need to port your old kernel config file to the new kernel version. Since the kernel configuration options change frequently, you will probably need to start from defconfig for your board and then use make menuconfig to manually add the configs that you need.
Busybox is a bit less volatile, so there is a chance that your old config will work.
If your old Buildroot configuration uses postbuild or postimage scripts, you will need to review them, but my guess is that they will not need any changes.
You should allocate at least a week for this work, maybe more, depending on the complexity of the configuration. Remember that if you are forced to use an older vendor kernel due to patches for a specific SoC, for example, the Freescale 2.6.33.9 kernel for the BSC9131, then the upgrade that you want to do might not be possible without doing six to twelve months of work to port the vendor's kernel patches to a newer kernel version.
Cheers.
Related
I've set successfully my Yocto build to patch one of the standard kernel modules, and I'd like to make it possible to update that (and possibly some others in the future) module only on the target system using kernel modules RPM file. The only problem is that the patched module is marked with the exact same revision as the original one, so the only way to update would be to force reinstall of all kernel modules.
Is there any way to manually change PR or a similar version-related parameter for a specific kernel module, or maybe tweak the Yocto project in some other way, so the RPM file built upon it would recognize that module as the only one in need of update?
I have inherited a device / code base / quality process that only allows deploying packages supported by yocto. I'm exploring options for replacing RabbitMQ with mqtt on our devices, but several of the services in the code base require message headers so I would prefer to adopt mqttv5. I see that mosquitto has finally released an mqttv5 server (mosquitto 2.x). I'm new to yocto, so I'm curious what is the time frame for yocto to support mosquitto 2.X? Is there a better place to ask this question, such as a yocto discussion community or mailing list?
Hard to say when the recipe will be updated but its no magic to adjust a recipe for a newer version by yourself:
Get the last available recipe. In case of mosquitto its for version 1.6.12
Rename recipe to match the wanted version: mosquitto_1.6.12.bb => mosquitto_2.0.3.bb and move it to the correct layer
Download the appropriate archive (mosquitto-2.0.3.tar.gz)
Determine the md5 and sha256 checksum of the archive and change them within the recipe (might also be needed for license file if that changed)
bitbake
In most of the cases this is all but it might be needed to take some further changes because the dependencies of the new version are different or patch files are not compatible anymore.
Is there a way to install multiple versions of the same package in CentOS/RHEL (7/8) if the package installs separate files in each version?
We have an application we've recently converted to using RPM instead of a home-built package manager based on tar. In order to make atomic-like switches between versions, each version installed in separate directories with the version number in the name, and a symlink with the unversioned name pointed to the current, or previous, version at any given moment in time. The application, of course, used the unversioned name to get init script, configuration files, interpreter version and code. I'm thinking that the alternatives package would be the basis for this, although we wouldn't use the alternatives command to manage symlinks (although there's no technical reason not to).
Not exactly as you describe.
Some packages allow this (Kernel and Kernel-devel being two of them) but i beilieve this is an exception added within the package manager.
Certain Applications like PHP and Python which is perfectly acceptable to have multiple version (Python2.X and 3.X) do this by changing the base name of the application/rpm.
Take a look at: https://rpm.org/user_doc/multiple_versions.html
It gives a good insight on how to achieve what you want
I have a custom board with imx6dl chip and peripherals. I have compiled u-boot, zImage and rootfs from examples provided by manufacturer. But when i try to build yocto from git repo with latests releases, it fails to run (some drivers not working, board is loading and display interface, but touchscreen is not working for ex.),
Is there any way to include precompiled binaries zImage, u-boot and device table to bitbake recipes? I'm very new to yocto project, and only need to get bootable image with working drivers and qt5.
If you have a working boot chain (e.g. u-boot, kernel and device tree) that you have built out-of-yocto, then you might try building a rootfs only. This requires two main settings, to be made in your local.conf to get started. Please don't firget that this is just a starting point, and it is highly advised to get the kernel/bootloader build sorted out really soon.
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel = "linux-dummy to have no kernel being built, and something like MACHINE="qemuarm" to set up an armv7 build on poky later than version 3.0. The core-image-minimal target should at least be enough to drop you in a shell for starters, and then you can proceed from there.
Additionally, it might be qorth asking the board vendor or the yocto community (#yocto on the freenode server) if they know about a proper BSP layer. FSL things are quite nicely supported these days, and if your board is closely related to one of the well-known ones, you've got a high chance that meta-freescale just does the trick nicely.
Addition:
#Martin pointed out the mention of Qemu is misleading. This is just the easiest way to make Yocto build a userland for the armv7-architecture which the imx6dl is based on. The resulting root filesystem should be sufficiently compatible to get started, before moving on to more tuned MACHINE configuration.
I have built a RPM-package for Centos 6.6 that is installed on a machine of our customer.
This package contains our own software, customized for the specific use case, but also uses the open-source package HAProxy.
HAProxy (RPM-version 1.5.4-2.el6_7.1) comes with a default-configuration in /etc/haproxy/haproxy.conf and it cannot be customized without changing this file.
But I want the configuration to be part my generated package. RPM throws an error if the /etc/haproxy/haproxy.conf file is in my package, because it is also part of the haproxy-package.
I have worked around this problem by providing a custom upstart-script which starts HAProxy with a different config file, but this does not seem to be the right way to do this.
Is there a preferred way to handle such customizations?
In cases like this, I've created an RPM which installs configuration files into a different subdirectory, and in its %post and %preun scriptlets modifies the uncooperative package's config-files:
when installing, I renamed the original config-files, and made symbolic links from those pathnames to the overwriting config-files, and
when uninstalling, the package removed the symbolic links and restored the original package's files.
Doing it that way of course meant that my config-RPM was dependent on the original RPM. A little awkward to describe, but it works.
In followup, the issue of updating was mentioned. Updating an RPM requires special handling to avoid uninstalling things. The rpm program passes a parameter $1 which you can test in the %pre and %preun scriptlets to notice that this is an upgrade and that there is no need to save the original config-files (or restore them). The rest of the scriptlet would be the same, by copying the new versions of your config-files over the others.
Further reading:
Defining installation scripts (shows the use of `$1)
RPM upgrade uninstalls the RPM
Your approach is correct. On EL6 and sysv there is no other choice than creating custom haproxy package or custom haproxy service or create script which customer runs after installation. I see creating another service as best option.
Note that on EL7 with SystemD you have much better option as you can use Drop-In feature of SystemD. For more information see:
https://coreos.com/os/docs/latest/using-systemd-drop-in-units.html
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/systemd#Drop-in_snippets
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User#Service_example
The usual way this is done is to have a drop-in configuration directory, e.g. /etc/httpd/conf.d/, where your package would drop its configuration, and you would tell the other daemon, e.g. httpd, to do a graceful restart in your %post/%postun.
I don't know anything about HAProxy, but a quick search implies that they do not support this configuration directory concept that has been around for many years. A few people have hacked it in, but unless it is out-of-the-box, you will run into your original problem again.