Possibility of Mender Client without Mender server

General Discussions
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1

Hi,
Currently we are using the Mender demo server and mender client for the OTA.
I know that the mender server can be installed on-premises, but would like to know whether mender client can work with any HTTPS server?

Is it possible to use custom HTTPS server for hosting mender artifacts and use mender-client to fetch and install in inactive partition? What are the download protocols supported by mender? Is there any link or documentation present for performing the same?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

Best place to look at is the API docs,

https://docs.mender.io/1.7/apis/device-apis

The mender client only supports HTTP/S and the API is well documented above.

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3

Yes, this is possible but you’ll lose out on the deployment management aspect (and future improvements to it), which arguably is the main value of Mender.

Why are you looking to not use the server?

4

@eystein, we would like to explore on the possibility to reuse the existing server with mender client. In this way, the server can be used for mender and other existing use cases (apart from mender).

I would like to tell you that, this is just an experiment and need to see the feasibility first to take this into action :slight_smile:

5

Hi @ajithpv, sure makes sense. If you don’t want to manage deployments (e.g. client just automatically installs a given update at some recurring interval, without any groups, logs, reports) this could be an option.

If you need something more than this I was just a bit concerned that you are underestimating the amount of work it is to “recreate” the deployment management aspect of the Mender server (I think it has around 50,000 lines of code right now). There are also planned features like delta updates, dynamic grouping and analytics that will depend on server support in the future. :slight_smile:

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6

May I know how the delta update depends on the Mender server? I understood the dependency on dynamic grouping and analytics because both are carried out at the server end. But, as far as I know, the delta update is performing at the client side right? Does this have dependency with the server? :thinking:

7

Deltas will be applied by the client, but the server will generate the actual delta at some point among other things.

8

@mirzak Thank you for the reply. Please let me know my understanding (written below) is correct:

  1. The build system will generate the usual mender artifact.
  2. Once the 2 generated mender artifact pass to the Mender server, then server will take the diff and create another artifact which is nothing but the delta.
  3. This delta then will stream to the client and apply the delta on the device.
9

Something like that yeah.

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