OTA Update Fails Randomly Due to Missing stream-next File

Stan
Sat, 22 Nov 2025 11:54:22 +0000
Board Integrations

Hello,

I’m experiencing an issue with Mender OTA updates where roughly one out of three full rootfs updates fails.
The artifact is a full rootfs update, generated automatically by Yocto during the build process (the .mender artifact produced by the Yocto build).

The failure looks like this:

2025-11-21 13:20:29.232 +0000 UTC info: Running Mender client 5.0.3
2025-11-21 13:20:29.232 +0000 UTC info: Deployment with ID dba37c41-3b03-4f59-a183-fe58fb5d0170 started.
2025-11-21 13:20:29.233 +0000 UTC info: Sending status update to server
2025-11-21 13:20:29.397 +0000 UTC info: Installing artifact...
[...]
2025-11-21 13:21:02.924 +0000 UTC info: Update Module output (stderr): cat: can't open 'stream-next': No such file or directory
2025-11-21 13:21:02.926 +0000 UTC error: Broken pipe: Update Module started downloading, but did not finish
2025-11-21 13:21:02.927 +0000 UTC error: Operation canceled: GET <...>: HTTP request cancelled
[...]
2025-11-21 13:21:12.529 +0000 UTC error: No such file or directory: Cannot open /var/lib/mender/modules/v3/payloads/0000/tree/stream-next

The failure is always related to the missing stream-next file.
What I find confusing is that the exact same artifact sometimes installs successfully, and other times it fails with this error, without any change on the server or the device.

This makes me wonder whether the issue comes from:

a race condition in the Update Module,

a temporary network interruption,

something happening in Mender’s streaming logic,

or a problem with how the rootfs OTA artifact is processed.

If anyone has encountered similar behavior or has any insights into what might cause the intermittent stream-next errors, I would really appreciate your help.

Context:

Yocto Scarthgap

Verdin iMX8MP

Mender client 5.0.3

Update Module used for full rootfs OTA (automatically generated .mender artifacts)

Thanks in advance!
Stan

3 posts - 2 participants