The official Mender documentation explains how Mender works. This is simply a board-specific complement to the official documentation.
Board description
It’s an open-source single-board computer. It can run Android 4.2, Android4.4, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Raspbian, ArchLinux,openSUSE, OpenWrt, and other OS systems. It uses the AllWinner A20 SoC, and has 1GB DDR3 SDRAM, with Gigabit enthernet and Sata port.
URL: http://www.orangepi.org
Wiki: http://www.orangepi.org/Docs/mainpage.html
Test results
The Yocto Project releases in the table below have been tested by the Mender community. Please update it if you have tested this integration on other Yocto Project releases:
1. Built-in ethernet does not work and had to use a USB->Ethernet adapter
2. Disabled GRUB integration for ARM systems which is default in meta-mender/thud. U-boot is still primary integration method for this platform.
Build Means that the Yocto Project build using this Mender integration completes without errors and outputs images.
Runtime Means that Mender has been verified to work on the board. For U-Boot-based boards, the integration checklist has been verified.
Getting started
Prerequisites
- A supported Linux distribution and dependencies installed on your workstation/laptop as described in the Yocto Mega Manual
- NOTE. Instructions depend on which Yocto version you intend to use.
- Google repo tool installed and in your
PATH.
Configuring the build
Setup Yocto environment
Set the Yocto Project branch you are building for:
# set to your branch, make sure it is supported (see table above)
export BRANCH="thud"
Create a directory for your mender-orangepi setup to live in and clone the
meta information.
mkdir mender-orangepi && cd mender-orangepi
Initialize repo manifest:
repo init -u https://github.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender-community \
-m meta-mender-sunxi/scripts/manifest-sunxi.xml \
-b ${BRANCH}
Fetch layers in manifest:
repo sync
Setup build environment
Initialize the build environment:
source setup-environment sunxi
Configure Mender server URL (optional)
This section is not required for a successful build but images that are generated by default are only suitable for usage with the Mender client in standalone mode, due to lack of server configuration.
You can edit the conf/local.conf file to provide your Mender server configuration, ensuring the generated images and Mender Artifacts are connecting to the Mender server that you are using. There should already be a commented section in the generated conf/local.conf file and you can simply uncomment the relevant configuration options and assign appropriate values to them.
Build for Hosted Mender:
# To get your tenant token:
# - log in to https://hosted.mender.io
# - click your email at the top right and then "My organization"
# - press the "COPY TO CLIPBOARD"
# - assign content of clipboard to MENDER_TENANT_TOKEN
#
MENDER_SERVER_URL = "https://hosted.mender.io"
MENDER_TENANT_TOKEN = "<copy token here>"
Building the image
You can now proceed with building an image:
MACHINE=orange-pi-pc-plus bitbake core-image-base
Replace core-image-base with your desired image target.
Using the build output
After a successful build, the images and build artifacts are:
tmp/deploy/images/orange-pi-pc-plus/core-image-base-orange-pi-pc-plus.sdimgtmp/deploy/images/orange-pi-pc-plus/core-image-base-orange-pi-pc-plus.mender
The disk image (with .sdimg suffix) is used to provision the device storage for devices without Mender running already. Please proceed to the official documentation on provisioning a new device for steps to do this.
On the other hand, if you already have Mender running on your device and want to deploy a rootfs update using this build, you should use the Mender Artifact files, which have .mender suffix. You can either deploy this Artifact in managed mode with the Mender server (upload it under Releases in the server UI) or by using the Mender client standalone mode.
References
- The Mender integration layer for OrangePi PC Plus and template files can be found in meta-mender-community.
Known issues
- The default Linux kernel image format (
uImage) set in meta-sunxi for OrangePi PC Plus does not boot, this might apply to other boards as well. Therefore there is an entrylocal.confthat changes the Linux kernel image format tozImage
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