busybox: rm and sed not available during upgrade

busybox: rm and sed not available during upgrade

[Bryan Evenson]

All,

I have custom image based off core-image-minimal that is on the morty branch.  I am working on upgrading the image up to the latest supported branch, one step at a time.  I updated to the pyro branch and got an image to build.  I am using opkg for a package manager.  I test firmware upgrade by executing "opkg update; opkg --download-only upgrade; opkg upgrade" and then looking for errors in the output.  I am seeing some errors during upgrade that I don't know how to fix.

When opkg removes the old version of busybox, updates-alternatives removes all the softlinks for busybox.  Then, it proceeds to upgrade other packages prior to running upgrade-alternatives to create the new softlinks for busybox.  As a result, the preinstall script fails on several packages because the preinstall script can't find rm, sed, tr or start-stop-daemon.

I don't remember seeing these errors previously.  Is there some flag or setting that should force busybox to complete its upgrade prior to uninstalling and installing other packages?

Thanks,
Bryan Evenson

busybox: rm and sed not available during upgrade

[Bryan Evenson]

All,

I have an image that is based off of core-image-minimal that uses opkg for the packaging system.  My latest build is on the morty release and I'm working on updating a more recent release.  Things are generally working on the dunfell release but I'm having an upgrade problem related to busybox.

I'm testing my system upgrade as follows:
opkg update
opkg --download-only upgrade
opkg upgrade

When I upgrade in this manner, some commands provided by busybox are not available during the upgrade process.  Update-alternatives removes the links to busybox, which on my system then leaves no alternatives for rm and sed.  Some other packages, such as util-linux, then attempt to use rm and sed in their upgrade process and are unable to delete the package's old files.  At the end of the upgrade process update-alternatives installs all the new links.  Busybox upgrades just fine but several packages do not upgrade successfully because certain files could not be removed.

I see a commit which looks like it is supposed to fix this situation: https://git.openembedded.org/openembedded-core/commit/meta/recipes-core/busybox/busybox.inc?h=dunfell&id=3a035bd0a06a6ded4d0ce7e35a3bce42245727d2.  I've verified this commit is present in my local working copy, and I've verified that the additions from this commit are present in the postinst script for busybox.  Does this need to occur at a different point in the upgrade process so rm and sed are available to other packages during upgrade?

Thanks,
Bryan