Invalid variable in U-boot environment

General Discussions
1

Hi,

I’ve come across a log message from Mender indicating an unsupported variable in the U-boot environment. This is the log message:

Jun 15 12:19:46 user.info mender[5489]: ...
Jun 15 12:19:46 user.info mender[5489]: time="2023-06-15T12:19:46+02:00" level=info msg="Output (stderr) from command \"fw_printenv\": ERR: no such variable: mender_check_saveenv_canary"
Jun 15 12:19:46 user.info mender[5489]: time="2023-06-15T12:19:46+02:00" level=info msg="Output (stderr) from command \"fw_printenv\": ERR: no such variable: mender_check_saveenv_canary"
Jun 15 12:19:46 user.info mender[5489]: ...

I see the message coming up in various other posts as well. But IMHO messages like this are bad, even if they can be ignored, as they obscure other relevant messages or degrade the meaning of relevant log messages.

It seems the variable was introduced in this patch, which is still the leading implementation for the master branch.

Two questions:

  1. Is this a bug on the Mender application side, or a bug in the U-boot environment side? Either way it seems to be harmless for our application, but still.
  2. If it’s a bug, I’d happily submit a patch for it and a PR on meta-mender. But I do need some help regarding the version to which this should be applied.

Thanks,

Kris