First Skylark OTA features and release info

I will be sending out the first ever OTA update at ~1800 UTC on 2nd Feb.

Features to watch out for:

  1. “guest” login is finally back! guest cannot configure Tuner or Network, cannot view Network config, but can view Tuner status. Cannot upload/delete files, create directories, etc. guest cannot login over ssh or ftp. guest/guest is also default filled in on the login form, thus allowing easy login.

  2. Much improved mobile experience:
    use firefox on mobile and set it to “request desktop site” mode for best results.
    even better experience if you do full screen. Scrolling in articles etc works,
    but scrolling inside apps (file manager, for example) is still a work in progress.
    Its still problematic on very small screens (4inch or smaller), but 5inch and larger work decently well.
    Safari doesn’t work very well, nor does the Android stock browser. But Firefox on both iOS and Android works quite nicely.

  3. USB external storage works differently: USB stick is no longer used as live storage. When you plugin a USB stick it is made available in the home directory as “external”.
    ntfs is no longer supported: use one of fat32, ext2, ext3, ext4
    every hour, before clean, all files from downloads are synced to the usb stick.

  4. support for user scripts (advanced, more details later)

  5. News app auto update time is now 30 minutes (was 5 minutes), width fixes, sorting fixes.

  6. rsync added for easy sync to offline storage over the network

  7. network config bugfixes

  8. lots of other bugfixes

  9. (edit) forgot this one: logs are now retained across boots.

6 Likes

I’m standing by :grinning: Ken

3 Likes

Just to verify, what is the final update size, and barring major packet loss, the download time estimate?

Its looking like 320KB-ish. So one trip around the carousel should be about 30-35 minutes.

can I download this opak / update online and upload to my chip ?

yes, I plan to upload it to archive a couple days after the OTA goes out. You will need to get the ota opak, and in file manager, open the opaks folder, and upload to it. rest will be the same as the real ota process.

Do you not have a stable frame lock?

Only when the sun comes up in the morning do I have a drop in SNR.

Does this fix the ? file names causing 404 errors? I just noticed that the software that backs up these files over ftp skips these files as well.

Are you seeing “???” in filenames? Inside the UI or in your ftp client?

If inside the Skylark UI, could you please share screenshots?

If in ftp client - that is caused by your ftp client (or your OS) not handling unicode well. Filezilla seems to work well. See if that fixes the issue.

There are some articles that show a “404” when you view them in the News app - those are due to the source website sending a 404 inside of a page instead of reporting a 404 http error. I am trying to filter those out, and most are caught, but some do get thru. But these should not have “??” in their filenames inside the Skylark UI (Whats New app or Filemanager or News app in the middle column).

Here it comes! Crossing my fingers, I just turned this thing on for the first time yesterday after I received it!

Alphasat backend had a failure about an hour back :-/

So the OTA isn’t currently out on Alphasat - Europe, West Asia, Africa.

Working on it.

Just as an FYI (you probably already know) , I am in North America, I-4 F3 is working fine for update so far, about 72% as of this minute.

Bummer on Alphasat… I am waiting :slight_smile:
Let us know when it will be coming down on Alphasat

Oh crap… my outenet has just failed with an error
"Failed to scan directory: Error reading directory: Error: ENOTCONN: socket is not connected, scandir '/mnt/downloads/'
I cant get logs… I am going to have to reboot it :frowning:

don’t!

it probably rebooted.

just wait

or did that happen after reconnecting?

Will need to do a browser refresh and re login.

OK, I am guessing mine has rebooted but I cannot access it. It appears to be connected to my AP but does not have an address. Would it be safe to power cycle it right now or should I wait a while?

Too late… :frowning:
It happened when I reconnected – the last file I saw come down was "Miss universe"
It is back up no, is the OTA file on Alpahast? have I missed it? :frowning:

if it rebooted once after processing the update, its safe to reboot from that point on.

are you on alphasat? no - its not there yet.

drive failure :frowning:

what amazing timing.