Embedded Design’s Ville Baillie is running a series on over-the-air updates for embedded Linux installations, a key feature of being able to keep Internet of Things (IoT) deployments functional and secure, with this week’s instalment looking at the currently-available off-the-shelf solutions.

“Once an Embedded Linux product leaves the lab and enters the real-world, the question of how to update the device will become important to consider,” Ville writes by way of introduction. “Updates are not always necessary, but it’s hard to think of any software that does not have bugs that are discovered at some point. Even if your software is perfect, if the device communicates on networks or the internet with any open-source libraries, security updates may become a necessity.”

In the second part of the series, Ville examines the relative pros and cons of several off-the-shelf solutions for updating embedded Linux platforms: Mender, SWUpdate, and RAUC. “The decision of which system to use really depends on the project,” he concludes. “It seems that Mender is probably easier to get started with, whereas SWUpdate might be useful for integrating with an update system that has already partially been developed in house, and RAUC might be used as an alternative to SWUpdate.”

Part one and part two are available to read now on Embedded.com.