Case Study: Switching from Asymmetric to Symmetric Software Updates
Talkat Embedded Linux Conference @ Open Source Summit North America 2022 · on Wednesday, 2022-06-22· at 16:35· Griffin Hall (Level 2), JW Marriott Austin, 110 E 2nd Street Austin, TX 78701·
summary
Migrates an asymmetric recovery-image update flow to a true A/B symmetric model using rout Ral, EFI A/B slots and read-only squashfs boot partitions; implements an overlay layer with overlayFS to allow persistent user changes while detecting new base images via checksums and wiping the overlay on mismatch. Provisioning runs from USB to create two boot slots, bundles are built by Yocto/yap and installed with rout, and a safe‑boot + config‑save/restore mechanism preserves hostname, network and keys. Result: single update path, fewer custom recovery builds and reliable rollback if the new slot fails.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Start
- 1:27Background on Asymmetric and Symmetric Software Updates
- 2:04Asymmetric Updates Involve Two Different Environments
- 3:28Symmetric Updates
- 4:41Seamless Updates
- 22:22A Watchdog Timer
- 24:39Efi Boot Manager
- 27:40Linux Overlay File System
- 37:49Keeping the System Bootable
- 40:23Summary
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