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michel

Member

Registered: 2023-04-27

Posts: 3  

Updating boot partition - where is "rpi-update" ?

Finally getting to update my boot partition on a Beowulf RPI3b.

Found a page ("https://linuxhint.com/update-raspberry-pi-kernel/") where they mention a supereasy way - just update, upgrade then run "rpi-update".  It should reasonably be a systematic script extracting the current Linux version from /, the massaging it and plugging it at the proper place in the boot partition. Oh yes, it also obtains a fresh set of files for the hardware, also to be plugged in the boot partition.

Would be perfect if my old Beowulf had a copy of that file.  It doesn't.

Can someone point me to either a place where I can obtain it, or/and help me build a small howto?  The opaque part is to identify and obtain the firmware updates. The screen shot in the file above shows that about 100M are downloaded to update firmware and this gets one updates to VideoCore, SoftFP libraries and "the SDK".

Alternately, I read elsewhere that the RPI now can "benefit" from having an EUFI, which would allow any new install to be made directly to the "normal" ext4 partition.  I have not, however, found a place where it is shown clearly what goes where, and what part(s) of the RPI are unaffected when installing the EUFI.  If that news is true, it would deserve to be more visibly advertised, no?

With thanks,

Michel

vortex

Member

Registered: 2020-11-12

Posts: 14  

Re: Updating boot partition - where is "rpi-update" ?

Hi Michel,

From a raspberrypi forum moderator at https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopi … 63#p441963 in 2013

Don't do it.

rpi-update was a quick hack made back in the day before the kernel and firmware was not properly packaged. apt-get upgrade is enough in 99% of the cases.

This thread also documents how to install rpi-update if you chose to ignore this advice.

For documentation on the on-going effort to bring UEFI to some RPi hardware platforms (RPi3/4), see https://github.com/pftf

michel

Member

Registered: 2023-04-27

Posts: 3  

Re: Updating boot partition - where is "rpi-update" ?

Thanks much, Vortex. But I see that the thread is about ten years old and some bits fell by the wayside... So the attempts failed:

- After apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and two reboots , I still am running 4.6.3-gb48d47a, all files in /boot are from 2016.  In /, the directories /dev, /etc, /, /root, /run , /sys and /tmp are dated today.  I must have a very old version indeed.

So I disregarded your warning about rpi-update and tried to apt-get install rpi-update ... which was not found.  Is there another repo to search, or where can I find one of the more recent non-UEFI install files?

With thanks,

Michel

michel

Member

Registered: 2023-04-27

Posts: 3  

Re: Updating boot partition - where is "rpi-update" ?

Solved via full upgrade.

Was not obvious, but dd'ing an .img to base disk can create the two required partitions.

And no, I'll follow wise advices and not use rpi-updates.

With thanks!