openwisp-firmware-upgrader 0.1

1. Create a category

Create a category for your firmware images by going to Firmware management > Firmware categories > Add firmware category, if you use only one firmware type in your network, you could simply name the category “default” or “standard”.

If you use multiple firmware images with different features, create one category for each firmware type, eg:

• WiFi

• SDN router

• LoRa Gateway

This is necessary in order to perform mass upgrades only on specific firmware categories when, for example, a new LoRa Gateway firmware becomes available.

2. Create the build object

Create a build a build object by going to Firmware management > Firmware builds > Add firmware build, the build object is related to a firmware category and is the collection of the different firmware images which have been compiled for the different hardware models supported by the system.

The version field indicates the firmware version, the change log field is optional but we recommend filling it to help operators know the differences between each version.

An important but optional field of the build model is OS identifier, this field should match the value of the Operating System field which gets automatically filled during device registration, eg: OpenWrt 19.07-SNAPSHOT r11061-6ffd4d8a4d. It is used by the firmware-upgrader module to automatically create DeviceFirmware objects for existing devices or when new devices register. A DeviceFirmware object represent the relationship between a device and a firmware image, it basically tells us which firmware image is installed on the device.

To find out the exact value to use, you should either do a test flash on a device and register it to the system or you should inspect the firmware image by decompressing it and find the generated value in the firmware image.

If you’re not sure about what OS identifier to use, just leave it empty, you can fill it later on when you find out.

Now save the build object to create it.

3. Upload images to the build

Now is time to add images to the build, we suggest adding one image at time. Alternatively the REST API can be used to automate this step.

If you use a hardware model which is not listed in the image types, if the hardware model is officially supported by OpenWRT, you can send us a pull-request to add it, otherwise you can use the setting OPENWISP_CUSTOM_OPENWRT_IMAGES to add it.

4. Perform a firmware upgrade to a specific device

Once a new build is ready, has been created in the system and its image have been uploaded, it will be the time to finally upgrade our devices.

To perform the upgrade of a single device, navigate to the device details, then go to the “Firmware” tab.

If you correctly filled OS identifier in step 2, you should have a situation similar to the one above: in this example, the device is using version 2020-03-25 and we want to upgrade it to version 2020-05-15, once the new firmware image is selected we just have to hit save, then a new tab will appear in the device page which allows us to see what’s going on during the upgrade.

Right now, the update of the upgrade information is not asynchronous yet, so you will have to reload the page periodically to find new information. This will be addressed in a future release.

5. Performing mass upgrades

First of all, please ensure the following preconditions are met:

• the system is configured correctly

• the new firmware images are working as expected

• you already tried the upgrade of single devices several times.

At this stage you can try a mass upgrade by doing the following:

• go to the build list page

• select the build which contains the latest firmware images you want the devices to be upgraded with

• click on “Mass-upgrade devices related to the selected build”.

At this point you should see a summary page which will inform you of which devices are going to be upgraded, you can either confirm the operation or cancel.

Once the operation is confirmed you will be redirected to a page in which you can monitor the progress of the upgrade operations.

Right now, the update of the upgrade information is not asynchronous yet, so you will have to reload the page periodically to find new information. This will be addressed in a future release.

OPENWISP_FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_RETRY_OPTIONS

# default value of OPENWISP_FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_RETRY_OPTIONS:

dict(
   max_retries=4,
   retry_backoff=60,
   retry_backoff_max=600,
   retry_jitter=True,
)

Retry settings for recoverable failures during firmware upgrades.

By default if an upgrade operation fails before the firmware is flashed (eg: because of a network issue during the upload of the image), the upgrade operation will be retried 4 more times with an exponential random backoff and a maximum delay of 10 minutes.

For more information regarding these settings, consult the celery documentation regarding automatic retries for known errors.

OPENWISP_FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_TASK_TIMEOUT

Timeout for the background tasks which perform firmware upgrades.

If for some unexpected reason an upgrade remains stuck for more than 10 minutes, the upgrade operation will be flagged as failed and the task will be killed.

This should not happen, but a global task time out is a best practice when using background tasks because it prevents the situation in which an unexpected bug causes a specific task to hang, which will quickly fill all the available slots in a background queue and prevent other tasks from being executed, which will end up affecting negatively the rest of the application.

OPENWISP_CUSTOM_OPENWRT_IMAGES

This setting can be used to add new image types for OpenWRT, eg:

OPENWISP_CUSTOM_OPENWRT_IMAGES = (
    ('customimage-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin', {
        'label': 'Custom WAP-1200',
        'boards': ('CWAP1200',)
    }),
)

Notes:

• label it’s the human readable name of the model which will be displayed in the UI

• boards is a tuple of board names with which the different versions of the hardware are identified on OpenWRT; this field is used to recognize automatically devices which have registered into OpenWISP

OPENWISP_FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_MAX_FILE_SIZE

This setting can be used to set the maximum size limit for firmware images, eg:

OPENWISP_FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_MAX_FILE_SIZE = 40 * 1024 * 1024  # 40MB

Notes:

• Value must be specified in bytes. None means unlimited.

OPENWISP_FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_API

Indicates whether the API for Firmware Upgrader is enabled or not.

OPENWISP_FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_OPENWRT_SETTINGS

Allows changing the default OpenWRT upgrader settings, eg:

OPENWISP_FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_OPENWRT_SETTINGS = {
    'reconnect_delay': 120,
    'reconnect_retry_delay': 20,
    'reconnect_max_retries': 15,
    'upgrade_timeout': 90,
}

• reconnect_delay: amount of seconds to wait before trying to connect again to the device after the upgrade command has been launched; the re-connection step is necessary to verify the upgrade has completed successfully; defaults to 120 seconds

• reconnect_retry_delay: amount of seconds to wait after a re-connection attempt has failed; defaults to 20 seconds

• reconnect_max_retries: maximum re-connection attempts defaults to 15 attempts

• upgrade_timeout: amount of seconds before the shell session is closed after the upgrade command is launched on the device, useful in case the upgrade command hangs (it happens on older OpenWRT versions); defaults to 90 seconds

Live documentation

A general live API documentation (following the OpenAPI specification) at /api/v1/docs/.

Browsable web interface

Additionally, opening any of the endpoints listed below directly in the browser will show the browsable API interface of Django-REST-Framework, which makes it even easier to find out the details of each endpoint.

Authentication

See openwisp-users: authenticating with the user token.

When browsing the API via the Live documentation or the Browsable web page, you can also use the session authentication by logging in the django admin.

Pagination

All list endpoints support the page_size parameter that allows paginating the results in conjunction with the page parameter.

GET /api/v1/firmware/build/?page_size=10
GET /api/v1/firmware/build/?page_size=10&page=2

Filtering by organization slug

Most endpoints allow to filter by organization slug, eg:

GET /api/v1/firmware/build/?organization=org-slug

List of endpoints

Since the detailed explanation is contained in the Live documentation and in the Browsable web page of each point, here we’ll provide just a list of the available endpoints, for further information please open the URL of the endpoint in your browser.

GET /api/v1/firmware/batch-upgrade-operation/

GET /api/v1/firmware/batch-upgrade-operation/{id}/

GET /api/v1/firmware/build/

POST /api/v1/firmware/build/

GET /api/v1/firmware/build/{id}/

PUT /api/v1/firmware/build/{id}/

PATCH /api/v1/firmware/build/{id}/

DELETE /api/v1/firmware/build/{id}/

GET /api/v1/firmware/build/{id}/image/

POST /api/v1/firmware/build/{id}/image/

GET /api/v1/firmware/build/{build_pk}/image/{id}/

DELETE /api/v1/firmware/build/{build_pk}/image/{id}/

GET /api/v1/firmware/build/{build_pk}/image/{id}/download/

POST /api/v1/firmware/build/{id}/upgrade/

GET /api/v1/firmware/build/{id}/upgrade/

GET /api/v1/firmware/category/

POST /api/v1/firmware/category/

GET /api/v1/firmware/category/{id}/

PUT /api/v1/firmware/category/{id}/

PATCH /api/v1/firmware/category/{id}/

DELETE /api/v1/firmware/category/{id}/

1. Initialize your custom module

The first thing you need to do is to create a new django app which will contain your custom version of openwisp-firmware-upgrader.

A django app is nothing more than a python package (a directory of python scripts), in the following examples we’ll call this django app myupgrader, but you can name it how you want:

django-admin startapp myupgrader

Keep in mind that the command mentioned above must be called from a directory which is available in your PYTHON_PATH so that you can then import the result into your project.

Now you need to add myupgrader to INSTALLED_APPS in your settings.py, ensuring also that openwisp_firmware_upgrader has been removed:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ... other apps ...

    # 'openwisp_firmware_upgrader'  <-- comment out or delete this line
    'myupgrader'
]

For more information about how to work with django projects and django apps, please refer to the django documentation.

2. Install openwisp-firmware-upgrader

Install (and add to the requirement of your project) openwisp-firmware-upgrader:

pip install openwisp-firmware-upgrader

3. Add EXTENDED_APPS

Add the following to your settings.py:

EXTENDED_APPS = ['openwisp_firmware_upgrader']

4. Add openwisp_utils.staticfiles.DependencyFinder

Add openwisp_utils.staticfiles.DependencyFinder to STATICFILES_FINDERS in your settings.py:

STATICFILES_FINDERS = [
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
    'openwisp_utils.staticfiles.DependencyFinder',
]

5. Add openwisp_utils.loaders.DependencyLoader

Add openwisp_utils.loaders.DependencyLoader to TEMPLATES in your settings.py:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'OPTIONS': {
            'loaders': [
                'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
                'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
                'openwisp_utils.loaders.DependencyLoader',
            ],
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    }
]

6. Inherit the AppConfig class

Please refer to the following files in the sample app of the test project:

• sample_firmware_upgrader/__init__.py.

• sample_firmware_upgrader/apps.py.

You have to replicate and adapt that code in your project.

For more information regarding the concept of AppConfig please refer to the “Applications” section in the django documentation.

7. Create your custom models

For the purpose of showing an example, we added a simple “details” field to the models of the sample app in the test project.

You can add fields in a similar way in your models.py file.

Note: for doubts regarding how to use, extend or develop models please refer to the “Models” section in the django documentation.

8. Add swapper configurations

Once you have created the models, add the following to your settings.py:

# Setting models for swapper module
FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_CATEGORY_MODEL = 'myupgrader.Category'
FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_BUILD_MODEL = 'myupgrader.Build'
FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_FIRMWAREIMAGE_MODEL = 'myupgrader.FirmwareImage'
FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_DEVICEFIRMWARE_MODEL = 'myupgrader.DeviceFirmware'
FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_BATCHUPGRADEOPERATION_MODEL = 'myupgrader.BatchUpgradeOperation'
FIRMWARE_UPGRADER_UPGRADEOPERATION_MODEL = 'myupgrader.UpgradeOperation'

Substitute myupgrader with the name you chose in step 1.

9. Create database migrations

Create and apply database migrations:

./manage.py makemigrations
./manage.py migrate

For more information, refer to the “Migrations” section in the django documentation.

10. Create the admin

Refer to the admin.py file of the sample app.

To introduce changes to the admin, you can do it in two main ways which are described below.

Note: for more information regarding how the django admin works, or how it can be customized, please refer to “The django admin site” section in the django documentation.

from openwisp_firmware_upgrader.admin import (  # noqa
    BatchUpgradeOperationAdmin,
    BuildAdmin,
    CategoryAdmin,
)

BuildAdmin.list_display.insert(1, 'my_custom_field')
BuildAdmin.ordering = ['-my_custom_field']

from django.contrib import admin
from openwisp_firmware_upgrader.admin import (
    BatchUpgradeOperationAdmin as BaseBatchUpgradeOperationAdmin,
    BuildAdmin as BaseBuildAdmin,
    CategoryAdmin as BaseCategoryAdmin,
)
from openwisp_firmware_upgrader.swapper import load_model

BatchUpgradeOperation = load_model('BatchUpgradeOperation')
Build = load_model('Build')
Category = load_model('Category')
DeviceFirmware = load_model('DeviceFirmware')
FirmwareImage = load_model('FirmwareImage')
UpgradeOperation = load_model('UpgradeOperation')

admin.site.unregister(BatchUpgradeOperation)
admin.site.unregister(Build)
admin.site.unregister(Category)

class BatchUpgradeOperationAdmin(BaseBatchUpgradeOperationAdmin):
    # add your changes here

class BuildAdmin(BaseBuildAdmin):
    # add your changes here

class CategoryAdmin(BaseCategoryAdmin):
    # add your changes here

11. Create root URL configuration

Please refer to the urls.py file in the test project.

For more information about URL configuration in django, please refer to the “URL dispatcher” section in the django documentation.

12. Create celery.py

Please refer to the celery.py file in the test project.

For more information about the usage of celery in django, please refer to the “First steps with Django” section in the celery documentation.

13. Import the automated tests

When developing a custom application based on this module, it’s a good idea to import and run the base tests too, so that you can be sure the changes you’re introducing are not breaking some of the existing features of openwisp-firmware-upgrader.

In case you need to add breaking changes, you can overwrite the tests defined in the base classes to test your own behavior.

See the tests of the sample app to find out how to do this.

You can then run tests with:

# the --parallel flag is optional
./manage.py test --parallel myupgrader

Substitute myupgrader with the name you chose in step 1.

For more information about automated tests in django, please refer to “Testing in Django”.

Other base classes that can be inherited and extended

The following steps are not required and are intended for more advanced customization.

# myupgrader/views.py
from openwisp_firmware_upgrader.private_storage import (
    FirmwareImageDownloadView as BaseFirmwareImageDownloadView
)

class FirmwareImageDownloadView(BaseFirmwareImageDownloadView):
    # add your customizations here ...
    pass

url('^firmware/', include('openwisp_firmware_upgrader.private_storage.urls')),

# urls.py
from myupgrader.views import FirmwareImageDownloadView

urlpatterns = [
    # ... other URLs
    url(r'^(?P<path>.*)$', FirmwareImageDownloadView.as_view(), name='serve_private_file',),
]

API views

If you need to customize the behavior of the API views, the procedure to follow is similar to the one described in FirmwareImageDownloadView, with the difference that you may also want to create your own serializers if needed.

The API code is stored in openwisp_firmware_upgrader.api and is built using django-rest-framework

For more information regarding Django REST Framework API views, please refer to the “Generic views” section in the Django REST Framework documentation.