OTA Connect Developer Guide

Installing aktualizr via debian package

Aktualizr makes .deb packages available via the GitHub releases page. Download and install the .deb package, for example:

sudo apt install ./aktualizr.deb

Setting up aktualizr

The debian package will install, enable, and start an aktualizr systemd service immediately after it’s installed. However, there are some configuration steps that should be taken before the service starts. To use aktualizr with a server (i.e. OTA Community Edition or HERE OTA Connect), you will need to download the provisioning credentials file provided by the server and place it at /var/sota/sota_provisioning_credentials.zip.

You can pass any other command-line arguments in this file, as well.

For security reasons, we recommend creating the /usr/lib/sota/sota.env file even if you aren’t going to use it. The file should be owned by root, with 600 permissions.

Secondary ECUs

The debian package ships with a default Secondary ECU configured. This acts like a dummy device, dropping whatever file you send it into /tmp/demo-virtual-secondary/firmware.bin.

Building the debian package

After following the main build setup steps, just make package instead of make to create a debian package from your current branch, for example:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/advancedtelematic/aktualizr
cd aktualizr
mkdir build
cd build
cmake  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DBUILD_DEB=ON ..
make package

Making a Release on github

The process for releasing a new version of aktualizr and updating the documentation is described here.