Fresh, and fixed¶
This is the argument behind Fresh, and fixed, with the measurements that back it. The feature page is the short version.
The base is supported again¶
| upstream | this fork | |
|---|---|---|
| Kernel | 6.8, not a longterm series | 6.12.109, a longterm series |
| Buildroot | 2024.05.1, end of life | 2025.02 LTS |
| Last release | February 2025 | continuous |
The difference is not a bigger number. A longterm kernel keeps receiving security and stability fixes from upstream Linux; 6.8 does not, so a board on it accumulates known, published, unfixed defects for as long as it runs. The same is true of an end-of-life Buildroot: every package in the image stops getting updates at once.
What was actually broken¶
Six faults are worth naming, because each one either took the board out or made it lie to you. All are fixed and each has its ticket in what is and isn't fixed.
The board died silently, twice in one day. Only a full power cut brought
it back. The cause was the mDNS responder: mdnsd 0.12 bound every switch
port, saw its own announcements as a conflict, and leaked about 0.85 MB a
minute on each reload. On a 116 MB board that is a few hours to death. Fixed
by binding it to the bridge alone.
A serial console could reboot the board by accident. Magic SysRq on BREAK was unguarded, so a serial adapter that dropped a line could restart the BMC.
The Firmware page froze on open and on "Check now", because the catalogue was fetched synchronously from every source in turn.
tpi firmware failed with exit 141 whenever the nodes were powered, while
the manual UBI path worked — so the documented command was the one that did
not.
Five tpi releases were green and shipped nothing. The release job
aborted on the very tag that triggered it, and nothing noticed because the
workflow went green.
turingpi.local stopped resolving when avahi was dropped, which also
meant tpi with no --host failed rather than falling back.
Sixty-six releases, and a count that is not decoration¶
| component | releases |
|---|---|
| BMC-Firmware | 17 |
| bmcd | 24 |
| BMC-UI | 19 |
| tpi | 6 |
Every one of them is listed on this site with its own release note,
fetched from the releases themselves by
just refresh-changelog rather than written by hand — so the changelog and
the releases cannot disagree.
Fast releasing is not the same as being stable
A high release count is only a good sign if a bad release cannot hurt you. That is what the health-gated promotion is for: this board has taken 18 firmware updates and rolled one back by itself, with nobody at the rack. Releasing often and reverting automatically are the same policy seen from two sides.