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Trigger Your First OTA Update

Phase 2 — Tenant-Stack required

hawkBit, ThingsBoard, and the OTA update pipeline are part of the Tenant-Stack, which is available in Phase 2. The steps below will work once a Tenant-Stack is deployed and the device is enrolled. See Tenant-Stack Setup.

This guide shows you how to upload a software bundle to hawkBit and deploy it to a device.

Prerequisites

  • The Tenant-Stack is running (ThingsBoard + hawkBit bootstrapped).
  • At least one device is enrolled and connected (see Enroll Your First Device).
  • The device's rauc-hawkbit-updater service (or ddi-poll.sh simulation) is running.

1. Log In to hawkBit

Open https://tenant.example.com/hawkbit in your browser (replace with your Tenant-Stack hostname).

Default credentials:

  • Username: admin
  • Password: admin

2. Upload a Software Bundle

  1. Go to Upload in the left navigation.
  2. Create a new Software Module:
  3. Name: cdm-os-image
  4. Version: 1.0.0
  5. Type: OS
  6. Upload a bundle file. For testing, you can use any file (the simulation does not check the content).
  7. Create a Distribution Set:
  8. Name: cdm-release-1.0.0
  9. Version: 1.0.0
  10. Assign your software module to it.

3. Create a Rollout Campaign

  1. Go to Rollout in the left navigation.
  2. Click Create Rollout.
  3. Fill in:
  4. Name: test-rollout-1
  5. Distribution Set: cdm-release-1.0.0
  6. Target Filter: name==device-001 (or * for all devices)
  7. Action Type: Forced
  8. Groups: 1 group, 100% of targets
  9. Click Create and then Start the rollout.

4. Watch the Device Receive and Apply the Update

On the device side, the DDI poller (ddi-poll.sh or rauc-hawkbit-updater) checks hawkBit every 30 seconds. When it detects a pending deployment:

[ddi-poll] Polling hawkBit DDI...
[ddi-poll] Deployment action found: action-id=42
[ddi-poll] Downloading artefacts...
[ddi-poll] Simulating RAUC install (slot B)...
[ddi-poll] Reporting success to hawkBit...
[ddi-poll] Update complete.

Real Hardware

On a real Yocto device with RAUC installed, rauc-hawkbit-updater downloads the bundle and calls rauc install on the inactive A/B partition. After a successful install, the device reboots into the new slot.

5. Verify the Update Status in hawkBit

  1. Go to Deployment in hawkBit.
  2. Find device-001 — the status should show Finished: Success.

6. Verify the Update Status in ThingsBoard

The device reports its OTA status back via MQTT. In ThingsBoard:

  1. Open the device-001 device.
  2. Check Latest Telemetry for the key sw_version — it should show 1.0.0.
  3. Check Attributes for rauc_slot — it should reflect the active boot slot.

Next Steps

  • OTA Updates Workflow — full rollout strategies, staged rollouts, and rollback.
  • Monitoring — track update success rates across the fleet in Grafana.