How to update EasyOS

August 15, 2022 — BarryK

Page created June 18, 2022. Instructions are for EasyOS 4.1 or greater.
Page updated June 27, 2022. Instructions are for EasyOS 4.2.2 or greater.
Page updated August 15, 2022

A significant feature of EasyOS is the ease of updating to new versions, and rollback to older versions and snapshots, and roll-forward again.

Here is how to do an update: on the desktop there is an icon labeled "update"; click on that, and the latest version of EasyOS is downloaded and installed. You then reboot, and that's it, you have updated. Here is the "update" icon:

A great thing about EasyOS is that updating is an "atomic" operation: there are just three files required to upgrade; 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs'. Replace those with the latest, and version update is done. That, essentially, is what "update" does.

That's updating, but you can also roll-back to an earlier version or snapshot. Read about that here:

https://easyos.org/user/easy-version-upgrade-and-downgrade.html

Tutorial finished. The rest of this web-page is just extra information that you might find handy to know...

Update script

The "update" icon runs a script, an application with a text-mode interface. Here is the first window:

...the pink text summarizes what is going to happen. After pressing the ENTER key:

...the script has probed online and determined there is a later version, 4.2.1. If there wasn't, the script would have terminated.

Note the reference above to a "delta file". This is also known as a "difference file". If you have kept the previous image file, in this case 'easy-4.2-amd64.img", the update script looks to see if there is a difference-file online. This is a small file that only has the differences between 4.2 and 4.2.1.

Normally there would be a difference-file online, but if there isn't, then the full 'easy-4.2.1-amd64.img' file would be downloaded, a whopping 825MiB. Compare that with the 4.2-to-4.2.1 difference file at only 338KiB.

What is going to happen, is the difference-file will be downloaded, then it will be combined with 'easy-4.2-amd64.img' and will create 'easy-4.2.1-amd64.img', the full-size latest version.

Press the ENTER key again:

Yes, as the pink text says, it is "easy peasy" to perform a manual update. That is described further down this page.

Press ENTER for automatic update:

...the highlighted text with blue background explains what has happened. Those three files are put into place; 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs' into the working-partition.

A useful bit of information:
/mnt/wkg is a symlink to the working-directory in the working-partition, in this case /mnt/sdb2/easyos

The update has been completed, and all that you need to do is reboot.

Note though, the downloaded file 'easy-4.2.1-amd64.img'. You could delete it; however, it is strongly recommended to leave it there, as it will be used at the next update, so only a small difference-file will be downloaded.

If you want to update the only-very-slightly-harder way, or just want to understand in more detail what is going on, read below...

Manual updating

The online image file, for example 'easy-4.2.1-amd64.img', has three files inside it, that are required to update an existing installation of EasyOS. The image file is 825MiB and is formatted like this:

Gap
1MiB

Boot-partition
7miB fat12

Working-partition
816MiB ext4

Easy has a script, 'mount-img', that can be used to open up the image file:

# mount-img easy-4.2.1-amd64.img

...or, just clicking on the file will run 'mount-img'. And two windows will popup. The boot-partition:

The 7MiB fat12 partition is the boot-partition. It has the Limine bootloader. This will boot on both legacy-BIOS and UEFI computers.

The working-partition:

What you have to do is drag those three files, 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs', into the existing installation. Here is the case of the EasyOS installation in sdb2/easyos:

After having drag-and-dropped those three files, don't forget to unmount the partitions in 'easy-4.2.1-amd64.img'. This can be done simply by clicking on it a second time, or you can do it in a terminal:

# mount-img

This description is not just for Easy on a USB flash-stick. The above picture could be a "frugal" install of Easy in an internal drive partition. It is the same principle; drag-and-drop the three files.

You can see why the words "easy peasy" are used. Reboot and you have updated.

If you really really want to know more indepth details, read on...

Manual updating the hard way

Download the latest image file, say 'easy-4.2.1-amd64.img'. Run 'fdisk' to view the partitions:

# fdisk -l easy-4.2.1-amd64.img
 ...
Device                Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
easy-4.2.1-amd64.img1 *     2048   16383   14336    7M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
easy-4.2.1-amd64.img2      16384 1687551 1671168  816M 83 Linux

The second partition is what you need. Multiple by 512 to convert to bytes:

# echo $((16384*512))
8388608

Now mount the second partition:

# LOOP2="$(losetup -f)"
# losetup -r -o 8388608 $LOOP2 easy-4.2.1-amd64.img
# mkdir -p mntpt2
# mount -t ext4 $LOOP2 mntpt2

...that's it, the second partition has been mounted, and you can now copy 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs' out from 'mntpt2'.

One thing to remember, after having copied them out, unmount the partition:

# sync
# umount mntpt2
# losetup -d $LOOP2

Have fun!

Postamble

Some extra thoughts...

EasyOS underwent major structural changes in 4.1, 4.2 and 4.2.1, and the "update" icon on the desktop does not work prior to 4.2.2. Going further back, EasyOS did not even have an "update" icon.

However, it is still possible to update an old installation of Easy. It requires manual steps, that are described in this forum post:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=64166#p64166

Tags: user