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swugenerator

A host tool to generate SWU update package for SWUpdate.

SYNOPSIS

usage: SWUGenerator [-h] [-K ENCRYPTION_KEY_FILE] [-k SIGN] [-s SW_DESCRIPTION]

[-a ARTIFACTORY] [-o SWU_FILE] [-c CONFIG] command

Generator SWU Packages for SWUpdate

positional arguments:
command:
{create,sign,extract,mender} command to be executed

create creates a SWU file sign signs an existing SWU file provided by -i extract extracts the files of an existing SWU file provided by -i mender wraps an existing SWU file provided by -i into a Mender Artifact

optional arguments:
-h, --help

show this help message and exit

-K ENCRYPTION_KEY_FILE, --encryption-key-file ENCRYPTION_KEY_FILE

AES Key to encrypt artifacts

-n, --no-compress

Do not compress files

-e, --no-encrypt

Do not encrypt files, for artifacts that are already encrypted. encrypted and ivt are kept as set in sw-description

-x, --no-ivt

Do not generate IV when encrypting

--keep-names

Store encrypted artifacts under their name, without the suffix .enc in the SWU and in sw-description

-y, --no-hash

Do not store sha256 hash in sw-description

-k SIGN, --sign SIGN

RSA key or certificate to sign the SWU

-s SW_DESCRIPTION, --sw-description SW_DESCRIPTION

sw-description template for the create command

-t, --encrypt-swdesc

Encrypt sw-description

-a ARTIFACTORY, --artifactory ARTIFACTORY

list of directories where artifacts are searched

-o SWU_FILE, --swu-file SWU_FILE

SWU output file, required for create, sign and mender

-c CONFIG, --config CONFIG

configuration file

The sign, extract and mender commands read an existing SWU, given with -i/–swu-in-file after the command.

Description

swugenerator is a tool running on host to create and modify SWUpdate’s Update files (SWU). SWU file contains a meta description of the release (sw-description), and swugenerator adds components to a template passed from command line. This tool requires openssl to run and to sign the SWU. It is goal of the tool to fill the gap with Yocto/OE, where SWU generation is done by classes in the meta-swupdate layer, but other buildsystems like Debian or Buildroot have no tools to create a SWU.

The tool signs the SWU and can encrypt the artifacts. The tool parses the sw-description, in libconfig or in JSON (a sw-description starting with {), and provides the following features:

  • replace occurrencies of variables found in the CONFIG file

  • add sha256 to each artifact

  • check if an artifact should be encrypted and encrypts it

  • sign sw-description with one of the methods accepted by SWUpdate

  • pack all artifacts into a SWU file

It maybe run in two steps to create an unsigned swu file and then sign it later in a second call:

swugenerator -o output.swu -a . -s sw-description.in create
swugenerator -o signed_output.swu -k CMS,key.pem,ca.crt sign -i output.swu

Names of encrypted artifacts

An encrypted artifact is stored with the suffix .enc, and its filename in sw-description is changed accordingly, so that the same file can be packed both encrypted and not. --keep-names keeps the original name, as scripts in sw-description may expect; a file used both encrypted and not is then refused.

CMS signing with several signers

-k CMS,... can be given more than once: the signature has then a signer for each, for example a classic and a post-quantum key. SWUpdate verifies all of them, so every certificate must be in its trust store. The signers must use the same password file:

swugenerator -o output.swu -a . -s sw-description.in \
    -k CMS,rsa.key,rsa.crt -k CMS,mldsa.key,mldsa.crt --cms-md sha512 create

--cms-md sets the message digest of openssl cms (needed for keys without a default digest, such as ML-DSA; one digest is used for all signers), and --cms-certfile adds a file with intermediate certificates (can be repeated).

Extra files

Only the files that sw-description uses are packed. --add-file <name> (can be repeated) adds a file found in the artifactory as it is, even if sw-description does not use it; a file already in the SWU is not added twice.

Files of 4 GiB and more

The cpio formats of SWUpdate limit a file to 4 GiB - 1 byte. swugenerator packs bigger files with an extension of the New CRC format (magic 070704), where the upper 32 bits of the size are in the field rdevmajor. The other files keep the New CRC format. The SWU can be installed only with a SWUpdate version that supports the extension: older versions stop the update when they reach the file.

cpio -i cannot extract such files. The extract command extracts all files of a SWU as they are stored, encrypted or compressed artifacts are not decoded:

swugenerator extract -i output.swu -d outdir

Without -d, the files are extracted into the current directory. The checksums of the files are verified, and files that would be written outside the directory are refused.

Mender Artifact

A Mender Server delivers updates only as Mender Artifacts. The mender command puts an existing SWU, unchanged and with its signature, into a Mender Artifact (format version 3) as the payload of type swu, as mender-artifact write module-image -T swu does. SWUpdate’s Mender Suricatta module takes the SWU out of the artifact while it is downloaded:

swugenerator -o update.mender mender -i signed_output.swu -D board-a -D board-b -N release-2

Options of the mender command:

-i, --swu-in-file SWU_IN_FILE
                      SWU to wrap
-D, --device-type DEVICE_TYPE
                      compatible device type, can be repeated
-N, --artifact-name ARTIFACT_NAME
                      artifact name, default: version in sw-description
-T, --payload-type PAYLOAD_TYPE
                      payload type, default: swu
-C, --compression {gzip,xz,none}
                      compression of header and payload, default: gzip

The artifact is reproducible with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.

Installation

To install swugenerator clone the repository, and from the main project folder run pip (pip3 required): For new Linux distributions, replace it with pipx.

pip install .

To uninstall:

pip uninstall swugenerator

Metadata

Release files for swugenerator 0.9

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