[SOLVED] No in-place update ?

[Falconcrest]

Hello,

what could be the reason that an in-place update is not offered for an existing version 8.1.2 to 8.2.0 or 8.2.1
when I press the check for update button on the system config page?
The RPi3 is connected to the Internet, updates to the operating system work without any problems.


Best regards,

Falconcrest

[Tim Curtis]

Here are the URL's for the update description and zip file. Try them in a Browser. The first one should display the contents of the .txt file and the second will download the zip file to your default downloads folder.

Code:

http://d3oddxvgenziko.cloudfront.net/update-r812.txt
http://d3oddxvgenziko.cloudfront.net/update-r812.zip

You could also verify that the correct URL is being used in your moOde player

Code:

moodeutl -q "select value from cfg_system where param='res_software_upd_url'"

It should print

Code:

http://d3oddxvgenziko.cloudfront.net

[Falconcrest]

Thanks for your help, it worked great!

Was this a bug in 8.1.2 or did I do something wrong?

Last question...
Is it easy to run apt update, apt upgrade, etc. to keep the operating system up to date?
Or is it better to leave this alone and only update within moOde?

[TheOldPresbyope]

@Falconcrest

If writing custom code on a moOde player, then it's generally a good idea to use apt update.

OTOH, it's generally not a good idea to run apt upgrade since each released moOde image has been built against a specific version of Raspberry Pi OS and its libraries. Frequently the changes to system libraries, etc., incurred in an upgrade are benign, but once in a while things break because of incompatible changes. Use at your own risk. The worst that can happen is you have to flash a new moOde image and configure it for your circumstances.

Regards,
Kent

[Tim Curtis]

Thanks for your help, it worked great!

Was this a bug in 8.1.2 or did I do something wrong?

Last question...
Is it easy to run apt update, apt upgrade, etc. to keep the operating system up to date?
Or is it better to leave this alone and only update within moOde?

The commands I posted did not update any moOde code. I suspect your Browser or Router cache was stale and when you opened the URL's in the Browser it refreshed the cache(s) so afterwords the URL's worked from within moOde.

Something like that.

[Falconcrest]

@TheOldPresbyope

This has happened to me before. Thank you for the hints.

[Falconcrest]

@Tim Curtis 

Ok, that may have been it.
I also noticed that my pi-hole had also blocked the download.

[Tim Curtis]

@Falconcrest

If writing custom code on a moOde player, then it's generally a good idea to use apt update.

OTOH, it's generally not a good idea to run apt upgrade since each released moOde image has been built against a specific version of Raspberry Pi OS and its libraries. Frequently the changes to system libraries, etc., incurred in an upgrade are benign, but once in a while things break because of incompatible changes. Use at your own risk. The worst that can happen is you have to flash a new moOde image and configure it for your circumstances.

Regards,
Kent

I would agree that doing apt upgrade or dist-upgrade could cause breakage. 

Many of the packages that moOde directly depends on are "held" and so they can't be upgraded via apt without explicitly removing the holds. This can further complicate an apt upgrade though because if a package being upgraded is dependent on one of the held packages that particular upgrade won't be done. What you can end up with is a partially upgraded system in an unknown state :-0

If all the moOde package holds are removed then an upgrade can cause other types of problems for example if the upgrade bumps the Linux kernel then the four custom drivers that we compile two of which are for the Allo SIG won't be present. If the upgrade bumps the version of PHP then moOde won't work at all.

Given that our project releases a new version of moOde every quarter and each version includes the latest upgrades you will only be a few months behind the latest upgrades from the Raspberry Pi crew. This assumes you go with a fresh image and restore settings from a backup. We don't do any apt upgrades in the in-place updates.

[Falconcrest]

@Tim Curtis

Thanks again for the detailed answer, I'm a little wiser now.