Use Linux microPlatform


Aktualizr-lite is the update agent included with the Linux microPlatform. It runs as a system daemon periodically looking for new updates to apply to your device. There are a few interesting things you can do with aktualizr-lite:


Each device running the Linux microPlatform can be configured with a couple of important options. This is defined by creating/updating the device’s /var/sota/sota.toml configuration file.:

# tags is a comma separated list of TUF Target tags a device will accept
# updates for. By default this will be "promoted" which means it only takes
# official updates. This field could also be changed to do
# something like promoted and "postmerge" builds (in master but not promoted)
# tags = "promoted, postmerge"
# By default a device won't run any Docker Apps. This field allows you to
# run applications from the FoundriesFactory App Store.
# docker_apps = "shellhttpd,x-kiosk"

Controlling Incoming Updates

aktualizr-lite’s default functionality is to download new updates, apply them, and reboot the device as soon as it sees a new update. Its possible to customize some of this behavior.

The command aktualizr-lite reboots the device with defaults /bin/reboot. This can be overridden in your sota.toml with:

reboot_command = "/my-custom-command"

This reboot command could do things like checking for outstanding work in your system before doing the reboot, etc.

By default the aktualizr-lite daemon will check for updates every 5 minutes. This value can be updated in sota.toml with:

# check once an hour
polling_sec = 600

Before applying an update, aktualizr-lite will attempt to acquire a lock on /run/lock/aktualizr-lite-update using flock. You can have custom code in your application(s) that acquire and release this lock to help control when updates are applied.

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