RO 5 Upgrade

I have 5.29 (9/12/23) installed on a i.MX6 device. Typing FX0 confirms this. I wrote the latest (5.31) rom and cmos to sdcard and booted. The harddisk (SSD) has not been updated to 5.30 at this point. I was left at the ‘*’ prompt and the error displayed was that support for RO 530 is missing.

I went to the desktop and attempted to upgrade the ssd to 5.30 but the error there was telling me I needed to start from a 5.28 disk image. 5.28 is on there already.

Anybody any clues as to what is wrong?

I’d like some pointers before I try things likely to trash my current install.

I have the original sdcard and I’m back to 5.29 whilst I ponder my next move :-)

Wrong order of upgrade?

As per the news item and specifically:

Getting installed

We recommend installing the HardDisc4 elements first, including updating the !Boot application. Once you’re happy that has gone smoothly it’s time to switch over the main operating system too.

and the full document on upgrading to 5.3x is here

Ok, will give that a try. Thanks.

No, still no go. The script won’t update the install, telling me I need to start from 5.28.

The only thing I can see is the presence of Philips monitor description file. No idea why that should be a blocker.

Commenting out the 3 ‘ifthere’ lines at the top of the updater script allows the update to proceed and complete.

I had to do the same thing. I was trying to update from a RISC OS Direct 5.28 build and for some reason two of the three files being looked for in the update script had slightly different file names. It took me quite a few hours but I finally have it working with my RISC OS Direct distribution. It definitely wasn’t a smooth process.

Commenting out the 3 ‘ifthere’ lines at the top of the updater script allows the update to proceed and complete.

Eek! That’s almost certainly left you in an indeterminate state. Those sentinel IfThere statements aren’t just there to spoil your day, they’re there to check that you’re starting from what looks like (as far as can be ascertained in an Obey file) the previous stable release. After which…and this is the important bit…it applies only the differences between versions.

That list of differences comes from comparing the previous stable release. If what you actually had was RISC OS 5.27 (say), then by commenting out the lines it’ll merrily proceed with the script, but now you’re missing whatever was added/removed/changed at RISC OS 5.28. Or if you’re someone who messes around inside their !Boot maybe there are some files left behind which shouldn’t be there any more? This is especially important when there’s a rollover from 5.ax to 5.bx because that’s the point where breaking changes are allowed in the Hook directories.

The InSituBootUpdate script is pretty dumb – it’s provided as a stop gap to shortcut to the yawningly long list to do it properly in anticipation of the rest of !Boot being packaged. Though perhaps at its 3rd appearance (5.24→5.28→5.30) maybe it’s time to throw in the towel waiting for the changes needed to PackMan to be implemented, and just write a plug-in to deal with rolling updates to !Boot specifically?