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Kevin Windrem avatar image
Kevin Windrem asked

Open a venus .swu file?

Does anyone know a way to open a venus software update file (.swu extension)? I need to extract some files from a fresh image of the file system before the system boots. This is to make file sets for my packages like GuiMods.

I have previously used the full disc image (.wic file) and mounting it on my Mac with extFS for Mac but I can't find a way to do a similar thing with the .swu file.

.wic images are available for the non-large Raspberry PI platforms but with the latest large release, only a .swu file is available.

Venus OSfirmware update
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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented ·
Hi @Kevin Windrem,

no guarantee and I even don't know if that makes sense but you should be able to unarchive the swu file. This should result in two files: the archive (gz) and the software description (text file).
Unarchive the gz file will give you another archive (ext4.gz) and unarchiving this results in an ext4 image.

From there you need to mount the image...macOS does not support ext4, but via VM or macfuse/ext4fuse it should be possible to mount.

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johnny-brusevold avatar image johnny-brusevold commented ·

Extracted with unrar

got only one file

sudo mount -t ext4 ./venus-swu-raspberrypi4-20210925203203-v2.80_21-large-23.swu /mnt/image -o loop

All good

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Kevin Windrem avatar image
Kevin Windrem answered ·

Thanks.

I got as far as having the .ext4 image using Stepfanie's approach.

I tried mounting in Mac OS with extFS for Mac installed and got a no FS info failure there. Not surprising but I'd hoped

I tried the mount in Ubuntu and got a "can't create loop device" failure there.

I did not try on a Venus OS device. The mount might work there.

unrar is not installed on Mac OS, Ubuntu or Venus OS by default so I didn't go that route.

I ended up installing the .swu file on a Raspberry PI then turning it off just as it started booting. I mounted the system SD card in my Mac and extracted the files from the card.

I'll look more into the mounting issue when I have more time.

Again, thanks for the info.

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Kevin Windrem avatar image Kevin Windrem commented ·
Tried the mount on Venus OS and it worked. Not sure what's going on with Ubuntu but don't care at the moment.


Thanks again.

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stager answered · 
sudo mount -o loop venus-image-large-raspberrypi2.ext4.img /mnt
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