Manual package installation

In some cases it might be necessary to manually install Debian packages. This is particularly useful in restricted locations where downloads.mender.io is inaccessible, such as:

• Networks in regions with restricted internet access
• Air-gapped or offline environments

By default, mender-convert automatically downloads and installs Mender packages (such as mender-auth, and mender-update) from the https://downloads.mender.io/repos/device-components/pool/main/m/ repository. If this repository is not accessible in your environment, you can disable the automatic installation and provide the packages manually.

Configuration

Step 1: Disable automatic package installation

Ensure that you have disabled the automatic installation of Mender packages. By default, only MENDER_CLIENT_INSTALL is enabled.

# Disable automatic installation of mender-auth and mender-update
echo 'MENDER_CLIENT_INSTALL=n' >> configs/custom_config

Step 2: Place packages in the input directory

Create a directory for your packages and copy the .deb files there:

mkdir -p input/deb
cp /path/to/your/packages/*.deb input/deb/

Step 3: Enable manual package installation

Add the following configuration to your config file:

echo 'MENDER_INSTALL_INPUT_PACKAGES=y' >> configs/custom_config

echo 'MENDER_INSTALL_INPUT_PACKAGES_PATH=input/deb' >> configs/custom_config

Step 4: Run mender-convert

To use the config defined in configs/custom_config, you must include --config configs/custom_config as an argument when running mender-convert.