Software UpdatesΒΆ

StarlingX software updates (also known as patches) must be applied to the system in order to keep your system updated with feature enhancements, free of known bugs, and security vulnerabilities.

StarlingX provides software updates that are cryptographically signed to ensure integrity and authenticity. The StarlingX REST APIs, CLIs and GUI validate the signature of software updates before loading it into the system.

An update typically modifies a small portion of your system to address the following items:

  • bugs

  • security vulnerabilities

  • feature enhancements

Software updates can be installed manually or by the Update Orchestrator, which automates a rolling install of an update across all of the StarlingX hosts. For more information on manual updates, see Manage Software Updates. For more information on upgrade orchestration, see Orchestrated Software Update.

Warning

Do NOT use the StarlingX Updates and Upgrades guide for Distributed Cloud orchestrated software updates. The Distributed Cloud Update Orchestrator automates a recursive rolling install of an update across all subclouds and all hosts within the subclouds.

StarlingX handles multiple updates being applied and removed at once. Software updates can modify and update any area of StarlingX software, including the kernel itself. For information on populating, installing and removing software updates, see Manage Software Updates.

There are two different kinds of Software updates that you can use to update the StarlingX software:

  1. Software Updates

    These software updates deliver StarlingX software updates containing ostree commits for updating the StarlingX software running directly on the hosts.

    Software updates can be installed manually or by the Update Orchestrator which automates a rolling install of an update across all of the StarlingX hosts.

    For information on populating, installing and removing software updates, see Manage Software Updates.

    Note

    A 10 GB internal management network is required for reboot-required software update operations.

  2. Application Software Updates

    These software updates apply to software being managed through the StarlingX Application Package Manager, that is, system application-upload/apply/remove/delete. StarlingX delivers some software through this mechanism, for example, platform-integ-apps.

    For software updates for these applications, download the updated application tarball, containing the updated FluxCD manifest, and updated Helm charts for the application, and apply the updates using the system application-update command.