Deploy an application update

To deploy an application update you should follow the UI tooltips presented on hosted Mender.

This tutorial is only here as a reference if you need additional guidance or would like to get an overview of the steps necessary to deploy an application update.

Prerequisites

You should have completed one of the following:

• Prepare a Raspberry Pi device
• Prepare a virtual device

Step 1 - Create a Deployment

There is already a demo Artifact available under Releases the first time you use hosted Mender. It contains a small web server you can run on your device. Go to the Releases tab and select the target release already available.

Click CREATE DEPLOYMENT WITH THIS RELEASE as shown below.

This will start the deployment wizard. The first step is to Select target software and devices. As we have not yet created any specific groups the only option presented should be All devices.

Next step is to Select a rollout schedule. You can use the defaults and click the NEXT button.

On the next screen, review your deployment configuration and click CREATE. This will take you to the overview of the deployments and you should see it pending as it is awaiting devices.

After approximately 30 seconds you will see your finished deployment in the Finished tab. There should also be a tooltip to the URL of your deployed web server.

You will see a welcome page similar to the following, if you visit the presented URL.

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed an application update using Mender!

Step 2 - Modify the application

The UI tooltips should now take you through modifying the web page you saw in Step 1 - Create a Deployment. Follow the instructions showed on the pop-up and click the NEXT button when done.

Click the UPLOAD button to upload the file that you created in the previous step.

Drag-and-drop or click browse to select the file for upload.

When you upload a single file to the Mender server, you will get a wizard to create a Mender Artifact of the type file, which allows you deploy single files to your device. You can use the default values pre-filled by the Mender UI and click NEXT.

A Mender Artifact contains two mandatory fields:

• Device type - Device types the software is compatible with, so that software is not deployed to incompatible hardware (e.g. CPU architecture, hardware floating point support, peripheral drivers).

  Depending on which device you are using you need to enter:

  • raspberrypi3 or raspberrypi4 if you are using a Raspberry Pi
  • qemux64-64 if you are using a virtual device

• Artifact name - Name of the software build, so that software is not redeployed if it is already installed at the device.

  • Input is a free form string, you can use e.g hello-world for evaluation purposes

Fill out the required fields and click the UPLOAD button.

You now have a new Artifact under the Releases tab. Use the new Artifact to create a deployment by clicking CREATE DEPLOYMENT WITH THIS RELEASE and click through the deployment wizard, similarly to what you did in Step 1 - Create a Deployment.

Once the deployment finishes you will once again see a link to running web application running on your device. By following the presented link you will see an updated landing page which you created earlier.

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed an custom application update using Mender!

Next steps

Proceed to one of the following tutorials (listed in recommended order):

1. Deploy a system update
2. Deploy a container update