DietPi Update Notification

Audio Gear Talk DietPi
1

I installed Allo DigiOne with DietPi a week ago and wondered how notification of OS updates would be communicated. Well, I found out this morning when music would not play to the DigiOne. I logged on to DietPI and was prompted to run dietpi-update to install V156. I am back up and running, this method certainly caught my attention.

2

Hi, can this feature be disabled? Just started with diet-Pi and do not want endpoints that decide for themselves to just stop working. The wife will be really impressed by that featureā€¦
In any case they will be installed with no access to keyboard or video so am I expected to rip them out to update? This needs to be an appliance like the rest of my hifi.

3

One can log on to DietPi from a PC using PuTTY, a free terminal emulator, to issue dietpi-update and and other commands. I donā€™t know for a fact if this is the official method of notification of OS updates, just that events occurred as I described. I donā€™t know if this can be defeated, and could not find a clear answer on the DietPi forums.

4

Hi,

I recall there was a ā€˜keep your Pi up to dateā€™ type program on the dietpi-config menu option list, but I did not install it. Even if it does check for updates regardless, they should not stop the device working. There is a possibility I suppose that your Pi stopped working for another reason. When you logged on you saw the update notice and made the connection.

5

Updates should not be optional. In addition to the functional updates provided by the author will be security updates designed to protect your networks. Even if your setup works OK, you should be thinking of using SSH a few times a year just to facilitate updates. You could petition Dan to further automate updates if it was feasible, so they happened in the background.
I have SSH on my tablet. While listening to music I might log on to check every so often so a keyboard and screen are not needed.

6

Hi Henry,

if an update opportunity stops the thing working, then I need to make them optional. I agree with your point re keeping the Pi up to date, but this needs to be transparent to the user, or notified within the Roon interface, as Roon/ROCK updates are.
Do other distributions have this issue?

1 Like
7

Hi,

In DietPi, updates are optional, however, we do recommend keeping upto date (explained well here: DietPi Update Notification). This will ensure bug fixes, optimizations benefit your system.

DietPi is extremely stable, we run various testing prior to update release. Updates will not ā€œbreakā€ the system.
We have only received reports of ā€œfailed updatesā€, by users who are experiencing hardware related issues, which render the system unstable during updates (intense IO operations). The usual cause of this is:

  • Insufficient PSU (please use official PSU for stability)
  • Insufficient SD cards (we recommend Sandisk for stability)

If any of the above conditions are not met, we cannot guarantee system stability on the device.

8

Hi Dan,

thank you for that info. I assumed that if ā€˜stop working when an update is dueā€™ was by design then there would have been many reports of this behaviour (which there arenā€™t). Diet-Pi would also have obtained a reputation for unreliability and it would not be as popular as it is.
I will look into using SSH to check for updates.

9

I can report that having learned to use SSH (it is easy with a Mac, nothing to install) when I logged in last night to my Pi there was an update notification for DietPi v157 listed. It didnā€™t stop anything working.