Recovery partition and utils

The recovery partition is similar to the linux partition; both hold the kernel and device tree blobs. But the recovery partition also includes a recovery initramfs with support for updating the system. When instructed to do so, the initramfs performs the update of the firmware using the swupdate tool and the update packages generated by Digi Embedded Yocto.

The recovery partition is programmed by default during the getting started process when you program the Yocto firmware. See Step 3: Program the Yocto firmware

Recovery utils

Recovery utils is a software package that allows you to configure the recovery commands to later reboot into recovery mode and perform the configured tasks. It provides:

• librecovery is a static library which implements the supported recovery commands. You can statically link your applications against this library to use the recovery feature. For more information, see Recovery library (firmware update).
• recovery-reboot command line application configures and reboots into recovery mode.

#> recovery-reboot --help
Reboot into recovery mode setting recovery commands.
Copyright(c) Digi International Inc.
 
Version: 0.2
 
Usage: recovery-reboot [options] [<SWU-package-path>]
 
  -u  --update-firmware          Perform firmware update
  -k  --encryption-key=<key>     Set <key> as file system encryption key.
                                 Empty to generate a random key.
  -w  --wipe-update-partition    Wipe 'update' partition
  -T  --reboot-timeout=<N>       Reboot after N seconds (default 10)
      --help                     Print help and exit
 
<SWU-package-path>    Absolute path to the firmware update package

• update-firmware command supports only the firmware update recovery command. See Program the firmware from Linux.

#> update-firmware --help
Update the firmware using the recovery reboot.
Copyright(c) Digi International Inc.
 
Version: 0.2
 
Usage: update-firmware [options] <SWU-package-path>
 
  -k  --encryption-key=<key>     Set <key> as file system encryption key.
                                 Empty to generate a random key.
  -T  --reboot-timeout=<N>       Reboot after N seconds (default 10)
      --help                     Print help and exit
 
<SWU-package-path>    Absolute path to the firmware update package