Using Mender for local updates
So much for the theory. In the last two sections of this chapter I want to demonstrate the principles I have talked about so far with examples of software update working in practice. As the basis of the example I will be using Mender. Mender uses a symmetric A/B image update mechanism, with fall-back in the case of a failed update. It can operate in a standalone mode for local updates, or in managed mode for OTA updates. I will begin with the standalone mode.
Mender is written and supported by mender.io
(https://mender.io). There is much more information about the software in the documentation section of the web site. I will not delve deeply into the configuration of the software here, since my aim is to illustrate the principles of software update.
Building the Mender client
The Mender client is available as a Yocto Project meta layer. These examples use the Morty release of the Yocto Project, which is the same one that we used in Chapter 6, Selecting a Build...