Installing RevPi kernel without burning an image

EcoMan · Post by **EcoMan** » 29 Mar 2020, 16:16

Hi,

I have several RevPi devices installed in client locations.
Those locations have poor network connection.
The devices are currently running a regular stretch-lite image, but I'm experiencing a lot of fails while they are running .
I believe the reason is that I need to install the revPi kernel.

I am looking for a way to install the kernel remotely, without cloning 2.5 Gb of data.
Is there a way to do that ?

Thanks.

lukas · Post by **lukas** » 30 Mar 2020, 09:37

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-kernel

will just transfer about 40 MBytes for the raspberrypi-kernel deb-package and about the same amount for the apt packages lists.

You can reduce that to just the 40 MBytes for the raspberrypi-kernel deb-package by copying it from a machine you've already updated. The package is left behind in /var/cache/apt/archives. Copy it to the remote machines with scp. Alternatively, download it directly from:
https://packages.revolutionpi.de/pool/m ... _armhf.deb

Be sure to reboot the devices after installing the new kernel.

EcoMan · Post by **EcoMan** » 30 Mar 2020, 10:45

Thank you.
This is of course while having the Kunbus sources in the sources.list right?

Also, do I need to install the PiControl or any other package?

lukas · Post by **lukas** » 30 Mar 2020, 12:22

If you install via apt-get, then yes, you need /etc/apt/sources.list.d/revpi.list as well as /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/revpi.gpg. Both are included in the "revpi-repo" deb-package, which is pre-installed on our image.

piControl.ko is included in the raspberrypi-kernel deb-package.

If you've already got our raspberrypi-kernel package installed on those machines then you do not need to install any other packages. There were no additions to that packages' prerequisites recently.

EcoMan · Post by **EcoMan** » 30 Mar 2020, 15:56

Great.
Thank you very much.

EcoMan · Post by **EcoMan** » 06 Apr 2020, 17:18

A follow-up question on this:
I've done as proposed and installed the kernel remotley.
It worked fine for several devices, but then one device crashed and didn't return.
I had to send somone to replace it.
When he brought the faulty device, it didn't respond - no USB power, no RJ45 lights and no HDMI output.

Upon connecting it via MicroUSB, we can see it's 'boot' folder and it's missing a lot of files (see attached list of files).

Any idea what could have happened ?

lukas · Post by **lukas** » 10 Apr 2020, 20:10

It seems to be specifically missing all the files included in the "raspberrypi-bootloader" package, such as "bootcode.bin" and the various "start*.elf" files. So there's no bootloader on the device, hence it can't boot.

I don't really know how that happened. Perhaps the package was inadvertantly removed? Or was meant to be updated but failed to install, e.g. because the eMMC was full?

It would be possible to resurrect the device by mounting it on a Linux system, downloading the following deb-package and installing it on the mounted eMMC:
http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/pool/main/r/raspberrypi-firmware/raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20200212-1_armhf.deb

Installing RevPi kernel without burning an image

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