Mender Client 5.0.2 release: Enhanced reliability and stability for production IoT deployments

The latest Mender Client 5.0.2 release focuses on critical stability improvements and enhanced reliability features. Mender Client 5.0.2, a maintenance release, addresses operational challenges that can impact large-scale deployments and consistent communication between devices and the Mender Server.

Release highlights:

• Improve inventory collection reliability across different system configurations
• Strengthen connection management with enhanced retry logic and backoff strategies
• Enhance monitoring capabilities with refined logging and alert management
• Expand platform compatibility with an updated build system support
• Resolve HTTP parsing issues that could disrupt device-server communication
  
  

Improved inventory collection across system configurations

The Mender Client 5.0.2 release enhances the mender-inventory-geo function, performing reliably across different system configurations and specifically addressing compatibility issues between different wget implementations commonly found in embedded Linux distributions. Additionally, Mender Client 5.0.2 introduces several improvements to state management reliability, ensuring devices do not become unresponsive to updates or fail to report their status correctly. 

Monitor client enhancements for better operational visibility

The Monitor Client 1.4.2 release includes targeted improvements for effective monitoring, including clean, actionable logging and reliable alert mechanisms.

• Optimized logging: USB disconnect events are now redirected to the system journal instead of separate log files, reducing filesystem I/O and integrating better with standard Linux logging infrastructure.
• Enhanced flapping detection: Improvements to the flapping detection algorithm prevent false positive alerts that could trigger continuous, erroneous notifications.
  
  

Connection management improvements

Mender Connect 2.3.1 introduces enhanced connection management features, avoiding improperly managed connection issues that can lead to device isolation and operational gaps. Ultimately, mender-connect conducts recovery faster in case of network interruptions. 

Platform and build system updates

The Mender Client 5.0.2 release includes several platform compatibility improvements:

• Modern compiler support: Full compatibility with Boost 1.87 ensures developers can build Mender Client using current development toolchains, maintaining access to the latest compiler optimizations and security improvements.
• Large filesystem support: New improvements ensure Mender works correctly across diverse hardware configurations, including older embedded systems with expanded storage and 32-bit systems with rootfs partitions larger than 4GB.
• JSON processing improvements: Enhanced string escaping in JSON generation prevents data corruption issues when processing artifact metadata, ensuring reliable deployment tracking and reporting.

Meta-Mender integration updates

The meta-mender layer provides essential Yocto Project integration, enabling embedded Linux developers to incorporate Mender into custom distributions.

• Updated component recipes: Support for all latest component versions, including Mender Client 5.0.2, Mender Connect 2.3.1, and Monitor Client 1.4.2, ensuring Yocto-based builds can leverage the latest improvements.
  
  
• Enhanced GRUB integration: Enhanced ARMv7 support and improvements for partition numbering edge cases.
  
  
• Flexible U-Boot configuration: New support for redundant environment storage in separate locations.

Upgrading to Mender Client 5.0.2

The Mender Client 5.0.2 release is immediately available for download and integration.

For existing Mender Client 5.x users: The upgrade is seamless, with no configuration changes required. It is available through your standard Mender Client update channels. The improvements are automatically active upon installation.

For users upgrading from earlier Mender Client versions: Follow the standard Mender Client upgrade procedures outlined in the Client upgrade documentation.

Note: It is always recommended to test any upgrade in a non-production environment first. .

For new Mender users: Start with our Get Started documentation and sign up for a Free Trial account to evaluate Mender's capabilities with 10 devices free for 12 months.

For developers: Updated recipes and build configurations are available in the meta-mender layer for both Kirkstone and Scarthgap Yocto releases.

Share your feedback

Share your feedback about the Mender Client 5.0.2 release and suggestions for future improvements in the Mender Hub General Discussions forum. If you encounter any issues with the new release, please report them in the Mender JIRA issue tracker with detailed reproduction steps and system configuration information.

We hope you enjoy the new features and look forward to hearing from you.