How did you solve this, I’ve gone through the Get Started twice, but when I get to the Deploy an Operating System update, and try to create a snapshot I get this error as well. I only have one device (a raspberry pi 4) and the mender client is installed on it.
Just as a Note I was able to solve this issue by install the Client on the Build System using the Express Install Script (which is located in the Downloads section not in the Client Installation Section of the documentation).
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Hi @fkoops,
Thanks for following up. Just to understand the problem, what did you do initially that did not work? Or which step failed?
Greets,
Josef
OK, here is the long version.
I have a Build System with Linux Ubuntu 22.04 and a Raspberry Pi 4 with 7" Touch Screen, keyboard and mouse. It was my first time working with Mender so my system was pretty clean. I when trough the getting started guide in the documentation. I did the Prepare a Raspberry Pi device, using the image from Mender and with Ethernet so I didn’t have setup Wi-Fi, just enabled SSH. Then I completed Deploy an Application update, with no issues. But on Deploy an Operating System update, I installed mender-artifact though the package manager (an option that was not very clear in the documentation) and when I executed the “mender-artifact write rootfs-image …” I received the error:
/bin/sh: 1: mender: not found
imgFilesystemType error: imgFilesystemType: blkid command failed: exit status 2
I tried a bunch of different things, but the step that appeared for fix the problem was to install the Mender Client on the build machine using the Express installation script.
Hi @fkoops,
Thanks! So installing the Mender Client on your development host (Ubuntu 22.04) fixed the /bin/sh: 1: mender: not found error, which appeared on the development host? That is definitely strange, as mender-artifact does not require the Mender Client to be available. Did you invoke mender-artefact write rootfs-image... directly, or through some script or wrapper? Just trying to understand the problem properly - if you ran into it, chances are that somebody else will face it too.
Thanks,
Josef
For others referencing this thread, I hit the same problem but resolved it by installing the Mender client on the golden device, e.g. the one that you want to create the artifact from. This was hinted in this thread: Mender Not Found Error when Deploying System Update - #2 by TheYoctoJester
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I had the same problem when going through the “1. Get started” section of the mender docs with a raspberry pi 5 device and using a hosted mender trial.
In my case, the error was was due to a version mismatch between the mender client on the device and the mender-artifact version on the build host. The mender client install string provided by hosted mender forced a version 4 client, but apt on my ubuntu 24.04 build host only installed a mender-artifact at version 3.9.
To resolve this, I added the mender PPA key and workstation-tools repo to my apt config, as described in section “12. Download”. Then everything worked well.
Obviously, this isn’t a great UX for a new potential customer! Needing to do this in advance should be mentioned in the docs, but I’m mentioning it here in case others find this thread searching for the error resolution like I did.
There are other errors in the tutorial, like properly setting up the preconfigured wifi settings. Rather than go into a proper solution here, I’ll just say that have a mender employee go through the tutorial periodically with fresh host and device machines as a new user does would probably catch a lot of these onboarding issues that could otherwise discourage new users.
Hi @rob3c,
Thanks for reaching out and sorry for the inconvenience! I’ve taken your feedback to the team and we’ll make the onboarding documentation clearer to avoid the problem hopefully.
The deeper reason for the mender-artifact version discrepancy is that Debianoids (just like Ubuntu is one) do not allow for version bumps one a distribution release is out. So yes, going for the PPA is the right solution as explained in Workstation tools | Mender documentation.
And we do actually regularly execute the guide, but not in the full combinatorial explosion (all target boards, all host distros, all connection types). I’ll see if we can optimize test coverage there.
In any case, thanks for the feedback, and is there anything else I can help you with?
Greetz,
Josef