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Read more about the article Creating an Update Daemon for SUSI Smart Speaker

Creating an Update Daemon for SUSI Smart Speaker

A daemon in reference of operating systems is a computer program that runs as a background process rather than under direct control of the user. Various daemons are being used in SUSI smart speaker.

The following daemons have been created

  • Update Daemon
  • Media Discovery Daemon
  • Factory Reset Daemon 

In this blog, we’ll be discussing the implementation of the Update Daemon in SUSI.AI

Update Daemon

Due to the ever-growing coding community, it is needed to provide regular updates to the smart speaker and keep it in sync with the latest technology. Hence an Update Daemon was required that could fetch updates at a regular interval.

The Updated Daemon was implemented in the following steps

1.Deciding the Update Interval

How frequently should we check for updates was the first question that was tackled while implementing this daemon.
We decided that we should check for Update, every time the Raspberry Pi starts and an internet connection was available.

2. Implementing The Decision

To start the Update script every time the Raspberry Pi starts, we decided to create Systemd rules.

[Unit]
Description=Update Check- SUSI Linux
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/home/pi/SUSI.AI/susi_linux/update_daemon/update_check.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The above rule waits for a network connection to be established with the Raspberry Pi and then triggers a bash script that fetches updates

3. Fetching The Updates


Now, a bash script was prepared that would fetch the latest changes from the online repo and merge the latest changes in the local repo

 

#!/bin/sh

UPSTREAM=${1:-‘@{u}’}
LOCAL=$(git rev-parse @)
REMOTE=$(git rev-parse “$UPSTREAM”)
BASE=$(git merge-base @ “$UPSTREAM”)
CHECK=”
if [ $LOCAL = $REMOTE ]
then
    echo “Up-to-date”
    CHECK=’up-to-date‘
elif [ $LOCAL = $BASE ]
then
    echo “Need to pull”
    CHECK=”Need-to-pull”
else
    echo “Diverged”
fi

if [$CHECK = “Need-to-pull”]
then
    git fetch UPSTREAM
    git merge UPSTREAM/master
fi

 

Resources

Tags

 

susi.ai, gsoc, gsoc’18, fossasia, update, daemon, update_daemon, smart speaker, systemd, hardware

Continue ReadingCreating an Update Daemon for SUSI Smart Speaker
Read more about the article apt-get update in building Meilix through Travis

apt-get update in building Meilix through Travis

Meilix uses Travis to build and then make a github release of the ISO. There are packages that get built in the script executed by Travis.

What problem it is solving? It’s the need of apt-get update which are:

  • Update of the system to support for the newest builds.
  • Adding of the repo after adding a Personal Package Archives (‘PPAs’)

By default, Travis disabled apt-get update for every build. So if we want to run it automatically for each build, we can do it in two different ways.

Way 1:Running apt-get update in before_install step.

Implementation in .travis.yml of Meilix

print 'hello world!'
sudo: required

before_install:
  - apt-get update

 

We already used sudo so there is no need to use sudo in the apt-get update.

This is the most simplistic approach and it update the system packages and source list before installing any packages.

Way 2: executing apt-get update in Travis through APT addon.

The addon comes under the include step and the lint follows this order:

include:
  - os: linux
    addons:
      apt:
        update: true
        sources:
          - ubuntu-toolchain-r-test
        packages:
          - debootstrap
          - genisoimage
          - p7zip-full
          - squashfs-tools
          - ubuntu-dev-tools
          - dpkg-dev
          - debhelper
          - fakeroot
          - devscripts

 

This is helpful in case when we don’t have the before_install step. Additionally, it allows us to specify the packages we need to install.

Choosing between the two options

One can adopt any of the above process to implement apt-update in Travis.

Meilix uses the second approach as because we don’t have before_install parameter.

Sometimes we need some commands to get executed before updating the system, so in that case we prefer before_install to prioritize the tasks.

Resources:

 

 

Continue Readingapt-get update in building Meilix through Travis