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Support of <strong>android</strong> OTA updates - DragonBoard 845c - 96Boards Forum

Support of android OTA updates

Hi all,
Do AOSP OTA updates work on the db845c?

The DragonBoard is already part of AOSP. As far as i know, it also uses A/B partitioning and GKI, too.
I am an absolutely newbie at that bootloader stuff. However i had a look into the DragonBoard part of AOSP. But i was not able to find the OTA related lines. So i dont know if i just search at the wrong location or if OTA is not yet supported.

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

I checked with a developer involved on this topic… this is what I received:

We don’t support custom OTAs. It is a different beast altogether and
not really an AOSP requirement.

Good news is that we don’t really need OTA on db845c. We already have
android Flash Tool  |  android Open Source Project support, so users
can easily upgrade to newer AOSP builds on db845c using an internet
browser on their HOST machine. This is closest to OTA and works really
really well. Only limitation I see is that it doesn’t update
bootloader binaries on db845c. We have not looked into that part yet.
Maybe it is possible and not yet supported on db845c. We will need to check.

Also please note that db845c does not have A/B partitions support.

Currently i am evaluating AOSP and checking several features, how they work and how to set up correctly. I want to have a look on OTA from customer perspective, so unfortunately the browser flash tool is not a valid workaround for me as i also want to add modifications to have a custom AOSP build.
Guess i need to check out other devices then.

But thank you anyway :slight_smile:

I think you are grossly misunderstanding. OTA updates are not impossible, they are just not implemented. As you are wanting to generate customized AOSP builds, you have no alternative (regardless of the device being selected) to implementing the OTA infrastructure yourself.

This type of device is not, in general, an end-user type product, so the supporting infrastructure for things like OTA’s will not be present for them at all, even for so-called “factory” system images.

If you wish to build it into an end-user type of device, then you would be responsible for implementing the infrastructure required for supporting OTAs yourself.

This is not a hugely burdensome proposition. The AOSP device configuration can easily be set up to generate OTA updates. Start your reading here; OTA Updates  |  android Open Source Project

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Yeah, i know that its possible to implement OTA. But i am not familiar with that lowlevel stuff like partition tables and bootloaders. I would need a step by step guide to get a better understanding. The Google docu is too abstract because it just explains what but not how. Especially the non A/B description looks poor or i did not get the point there.

Unless somebody has a more detailed tutorial (maybe for other devices so i can use it as a reference), i need to look for other boards or come back to that topic once i learned more about that.

You didn’t listen. It doesn’t matter what device you choose. You could be trying to distribute a Google pixel phone with a custom system image, and YOU STILL NEED TO DO IT YOURSELF.

You can’t use somebody else’s OTA infrastructure to distribute your ota’s.

When you are building AOSP, there is a command you use to generate OTA packages. You run that command. You take the file it makes and you put in on YOUR WEB SERVER. One line in a configuration file you set in your custom system image contains the url of your web server.

So go running to other devices if you like, it won’t help you at all.

calm down…
you are talking about distributing ota
i am talking about generating ota and ota compatible devices
so its just a misunderstanding and no need for capital letters

I don’t know where you come up with the idea that it’s ok to be hostile towards someone who is trying to help you.

So now you get to help yourself.

I think we must close this thread at this point!

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