Description

Customers may find that while upgrading a dual-imaged CTP from a CTPView that is running 7.3R6 or earlier, the CTP gets disabled by the upgrade process and would require manual re-imaging to recover it. 

This article explains that the above occurrence is because upgrading a dual-imaged CTP running 7.3Rx (on image 1) is not supported and details how to check and prevent this issue from occurring. 

 

Symptoms

If an upgrade is attempted on a dual imaged CTP from a CTPView that is running 7.3R6 or earlier, the CTP will be disabled by the upgrade process.

 

Solution

Presently (November 2020), upgrading a dual-imaged CTP running 7.3Rx (on image 1) is not supported (there is presently no upgrade image for 9.0R1 on image 2). In CTPView releases prior to 7.3R7, there is no check to see if the CTP is dual imaged so the upgrade will proceed.

The ability to dual image the compact flash was added with release 9.0R1. A script, which ships with that release, allows for re-partitioning of the compact flash so that two CTPOS images can reside on the flash. Image1 stores the 7.3R4, or R5, or R6 release and image2 stores the 9.0R1 release. The idea being that you can revert to the older 7.3Rx release in case you need to roll back from 9.0R1 for some reason.

 

Starting in CTPView 7.3R7 and 9.1R2, CTPView will check to see if the CTP flash is dual imaged if an upgrade attempt is made. If it is dual imaged, the upgrade process will terminate. Manually upgrading a dual imaged CTP from 7.3R6 (image1) to 7.3R7 will also be prevented.

The flash image will need to be manually re-imaged to recover the CTP in the above scenario.

The ability to upgrade dual imaged CTPs is expected to be added to a future release (by H1 2021).

To tell if your CTP is dual imaged, you can use the fdisk -l command and run it as the root user.

Here is an example of both single image partitioning and dual image partitioning:

Single image partitioning (much more common) will look like this with 6 partitions (/dev/sdx is also possible):

[root@ctp2056bot i386-redhat 20]# fdisk -l
 
Disk /dev/hda: 4076 MB, 4076642304 bytes
32 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3949 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2016 * 512 = 1032192 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1         8      8032+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2             9       257    250992   83  Linux
/dev/hda3           258       266      9072   83  Linux
/dev/hda4           267      3949   3712464    5  Extended
/dev/hda5           267       283     17104+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6           284       492    210640+  83  Linux
Dual imaging will look like this with 10 partitions:
[root@ctp2056top:/acorn/etc 55]# fdisk -l
 
Disk /dev/sda: 3.8 GiB, 4076642304 bytes, 7962192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000509ff
 
Device     Boot     Start       End  Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1  *         2016    201599   99792  83 Linux
/dev/sda2          203616   7572095 3684240   5 Extended
/dev/sda5          205632   3026015 1410192  83 Linux
/dev/sda6         3028032   3126815   49392  83 Linux
/dev/sda7         3128832   3227615   49392  83 Linux
/dev/sda8         3229632   3832415  301392  83 Linux
/dev/sda9         3834432   6654815 1410192  83 Linux
/dev/sda10        6656832   6755615   49392  83 Linux
/dev/sda11        6757632   6856415   49392  83 Linux
/dev/sda12        6858432   7461215  301392  83 Linux

If you see 10 partitions, the flash is dual imaged and upgrades are not recommended unless you are running a CTPView/CTP version that has dual image upgrade option.