Updating ONIE

ONIE provides a way to update itself, including the boot loader and Linux kernel. In many ways, this behaves similarly to the discovery and installation phase, except that ONIE is looking for a different kind of image.

When compiling ONIE, one of the build products is an ONIE updater. See the ONIE Build Products table.

To update ONIE, you follow a procedure similar to installing a network OS (NOS), except instead of using an NOS installer, you use the ONIE updater. Also a few details are different as described next.

Starting ONIE in Self-Update Mode

To initiate ONIE self-update mode, follow the steps described in the NOS interface Updating and Embedding ONIE section. This launches ONIE in self-update mode.

Specifying the Updater URL

All of the methods for discovering an NOS installer from the Installer Discovery Methods section also apply to discovering an ONIE updater image, with a few exceptions.

ONIE looks for the following default updater file names in order:

1. onie-updater-<arch>-<vendor>_<machine>-r<machine_revision>
2. onie-updater-<arch>-<vendor>_<machine>
3. onie-updater-<vendor>_<machine>
4. onie-updater-<arch>
5. onie-updater

For a hypothetical x86_64 machine, the default updater file names would be:

onie-updater-x86_64-VENDOR_MACHINE-r0
onie-updater-x86_64-VENDOR_MACHINE
onie-updater-VENDOR_MACHINE
onie-updater-x86_64
onie-updater

Another difference is when using DHCP Vendor-Identifying Vendor-Specific Information (VIVSO), you must set option 2, Updater URL, to specify the updater URL.

Also, as described in Rescue and Recovery, you can use the onie-self-update command to specify an updater URL from rescue mode.

ONIE Update Image Format

The ONIE update image adheres to the following format:

• The image is a self-extracting shell script archive.
• The image must contain the string ONIE-UPDATER-COOKIE, which identifies the image as an ONIE updater image.

The image itself is executable and supports a number of command line options:

-h
        Help.  Print this message.

-v
        Be verbose.    Print what is happening.

-q
        Be quiet.  Do not print what is happening.

-x
        Extract image to a temporary directory.

-i
        Dump image information.

-f
        Force ONIE update opteration, bypassing any safety
        checks.

Delivering General Firmware Updates using ONIE

For managing firmware updates see Firmware Updates.