Introduction

PICOS supports upgrade2 method for system upgrade. There will be two separate systems on the device after the upgrade2 operation: PICOS and PICOS2. One of them will be the running system and the other will stay inactive. PICOS and PICOS2 system files and their respective configuration files are located in /mnt/open/picos/ of the flash. A list and brief description of these files is as follows.

The upgrade2 installer installs the new system into the inactive system’s file. The inactive system will be overwritten. After this operation, the new system is the inactive system and then the installer modifies the boot menu to make the newly installed system to be the default boot system. Finally, the system will come up running the new network operating system when boots up normally after the upgrading is finished,.

Upgrade2 method supports system rollback function. The "nos-rollback" command can be used to revert to a previous version of the installed software package. Moreover, if it fails to upgrade, the system can automatically rollback to the old system. This can reduce the network interruption risk due to the failure of system upgrade process and ensure the systems’ continuous availability. You can refer to section Rollback Procedure  for details.

We recommend using upgrade2 method to upgrade the NOS as there are functions of system backup and rollback.

Preparation before Upgrading

Table 1. Checklist before Upgrading

Checking the Running PICOS Version

Use the version command to check the version of the running system software.

admin@PICOS# run show version
Copyright (C) 2009-2023 Pica8, Inc.
===================================
Base ethernet MAC Address     : 64:9d:99:d2:04:53
Hardware Model                : S5860-24XB-U
Linux System Version/Revision : 4.3.3.2/4b5f523
Linux System Released Date    : 12/14/2023
L2/L3 Version/Revision        : 4.3.3.2/4b5f523
L2/L3 Released Date           : 12/14/2023
OVS/OF Version/Revision       : 4.3.3.2/4b5f523
OVS/OF Released Date          : 12/14/2023

Building Upgrade Environment

Please make sure that you have set up an HTTP, TFTP or FTP protocol upgrading environment to get the upgrade software, the basic requirements are as follows:

•    PC can log in to the device through serial or SSH.

•    The communication between the server and the device works well.

•    The upgrading file used by the device has already been stored on the server.

Getting the Required Upgrade Software

Please contact Pica8 technical support engineers at the following website for the latest version of upgrade software.

http://www.pica8.com/support/customer

Backing up Important Data in Flash

Before upgrading, save the important data in Flash to the local PC through FTP or TFTP, and then upload it to the switch after the upgrade is completed.

Upgrading Notes

•    You can log in to a device through its console port or using SSH. After successful login, you can run upgrade2 commands on the Linux prompt to upgrade the system.

•    Downgrade to an earlier version is NOT supported by using upgrade2 command. 

•    When using FTP/TFTP to download the image, user should verify that the "binary" mode is being used. If the "binary" transfer mode is not being used, the image can be modified during download, and the upgrade will fail during the md5 check.

•    The image file is a .bin file, for example S5860-24XB-U-picos-e-4.4.3.2-2f6f578-fs.bin.
•    The image is platform dependent, that is, the image_name should be consistent with the platform, otherwise the upgrade script will abort.

Upgrading Procedure

The upgrading procedure in this document gives an example of upgrading on N3048EP-ON from PICOS 3.1.0 to 3.1.1 using upgrade2 command.

Upgrade2 Procedure

Step1       Stop PICOS service before upgrade.

admin@PICOS:~$ sudo systemctl stop picos

Step2         Copy the upgrade package (in the form of .bin) and the MD5 file to /cftmp directory by either FTP, TFTP, HTTP or SCP according to the actual upgrade environment. The following example uses the SCP method.

admin@PICOS:~$ sudo scp pica8@10.10.50.22:/tftp/build/daily/S5860-24XB-U/S5860-24XB-U-picos-e-4.4.3.2-2f6f578-fs.bin  /cftmp
admin@XorPlus$ sudo scp pica8@10.10.50.22:/tftp/build/daily/S5860-24XB-U/S5860-24XB-U-picos-e-4.4.3.2-2f6f578-fs.bin.md5  /cftmp

Step3         Execute the sync operation.

admin@PICOS:~$ sync

Step4         Change directory to /cftmp.

admin@PICOS:~$ cd /cftmp

Step5         Run upgrade2 command to begin upgrading.

admin@PICOS:~$ sudo upgrade2 S5860-24XB-U-picos-e-4.4.3.2-2f6f578-fs.bin

                  After finishing upgrade, the switch will reboot automatically, the system will come up running the new network operating system.

Rollback Procedure

The upgrade2 method supports system rollback function. The "nos-rollback" command can be used to revert to a previous version of the installed software package. Moreover, if it fails to upgrade, the system can automatically rollback to the old system.

The rollback procedure is as follows:

Step1         Run nos-rollback command for manually rollback.

admin@PICOS:~$ sudo nos-rollback

Step2         Reboot system manually to finish rollback.

admin@PICOS:~$ sudo reboot

You need to manually reboot the system after issued "nos-rollback" command and the system switching takes effect. After rebooting successfully, the system will come up running the previous version of network operating system.

Verifying Version after Upgrading

admin@PICOS# run show version
Copyright (C) 2009-2023 Pica8, Inc.
===================================
Base ethernet MAC Address     : 64:9d:99:d2:04:53
Hardware Model                : S5860-24XB-U
Linux System Version/Revision : 4.3.3.3/4c5a643
Linux System Released Date    : 12/26/2023
L2/L3 Version/Revision        : 4.3.3.3/4c5a643
L2/L3 Released Date           : 12/26/2023
OVS/OF Version/Revision       : 4.3.3.3/4c5a643
OVS/OF Released Date          : 12/26/2023