Features

When inheriting the mender-full or mender-full-ubi class in local.conf, Mender provides a default set of features that covers a wide range of boards and needs. However, sometimes it may be necessary to enable or disable certain features depending on the needs for the particular build. This can be done using the MENDER_FEATURES_ENABLE and MENDER_FEATURES_DISABLE variables.

To enable a feature, add this to your local.conf:

MENDER_FEATURES_ENABLE_append = " <FEATURE>"

To disable a feature, add this to your local.conf:

MENDER_FEATURES_DISABLE_append = " <FEATURE>"

Note that the space inside the string is important in both of the above examples!

List of features

Below is a list of the features that Mender provides, with descriptions:

  • mender-bios - Enables booting of traditional BIOS based systems. Normally enabled together with mender-grub. If mender-grub is enabled, but mender-bios is disabled, then it is assumed that the booting process uses the UEFI standard.

  • mender-grub - Enables integration with the GRUB bootloader.

  • mender-image - Enables a build that uses the Mender defined partition layout.

  • mender-image-bios - Enables a build that provides a Mender partitioned image for use with traditional BIOS based systems (.biosimg). If this is enabled then mender-image needs to be enabled too.

  • mender-image-sd - Enables a build that provides a Mender partitioned SD card image (.sdimg). If this is enabled then mender-image needs to be enabled too.

  • mender-image-ubi - Enables a build that provides a Mender partitioned UBI image (.ubimg). If this is enabled then mender-image needs to be enabled too.

  • mender-image-uefi - Enables a build that provides a Mender partitioned UEFI image (.uefiimg). If this is enabled then mender-image needs to be enabled too.

  • mender-install - Enables a build that has Mender installed, with configuration. Note that this does not include the default Mender partition layout, use mender-image for that.

  • mender-ubi - Enables Mender configuration files specifically for UBI images.

  • mender-systemd - Enables a Mender build that uses systemd. See also the section about disabling Mender as a system service.

  • mender-uboot - Enables integration with the U-Boot bootloader.

Default features

By default, no features are enabled, but it is common to include a top level class in order to get some default features. Her is an example of how to enable such a class in local.conf:

INHERIT += "mender-full"

The currently available classes are:

  • mender-full: Enables the most common features for Mender, which are:

    • mender-image
    • mender-install
    • mender-systemd
    • mender-image-uefi
    • mender-grub
  • mender-full-ubi: Enables the most common features for UBI based Mender installations, which are:
    • mender-image
    • mender-image-ubi
    • mender-install
    • mender-systemd
    • mender-ubi
    • mender-uboot

Yocto releases prior to 2.6 (thud) used a different feature set by default. Use the following command to check exactly which features are enabled: bitbake -e core-image-minimal | grep '^DISTRO_FEATURES='