Hi. Can someone please kindly shed a light on Armbian / Debian / Sunxi release information that is confusing me:

I run Armbian Buster on two Cubietruck systems - one was freshly installed, the other upgraded from a previous installation. 

Both systems were apt-updated/apt-upgraded most recently with identical /etc/apt/sources.list, and subsequently rebooted.

Both systems report identical "uname -a" (=Linux ... 5.4.30-sunxi #20.02.9 SMP) and /etc/debian_version (=10.3) information. The /boot folders have identical zImage resp. uInitrd links pointing to identical targets.

Still the /etc/armbian-release resp. /etc/armbian-image-release infos differ:

VERSION=20.02.1  vs. VERSION=5.90 resp. VERSION=20.02.0-rc0 vs. VERSION=5.75

Are both systems running the same Armbian as indicated by identical "uname -a" and /etc/debian_version, /boot files, and complete apt-get update/apt-get upgrade .... or are they still running somehow differing OSes as indicated by the different /etc/armbian-release files ? In latter case: what needs to be done to get them identical (aside from cloning the OS installation) if apt-get update/upgrade don't fix these assumed differences.

Help kindly appreciated - Thx in advance - Regards - Robert

(attached a side-by-side comparision of the all version infos)

relinfo

Hi,

 

Just to make sure before trying:

-You already read the  FAQ on the download page for your device?

-You already looked at the Documentation?

 

// sent from mobile phone //

Thx for yr response. Yes, I checked docs and FAQ, and googled - I still do not comprehend why for identical hardware boards the apt-get update/upgrade of an earlier Armbian release for the board leads to a different content of the /etc/armbian-release file, compared to a fresh installation of the Armbian provided for this board (in the above case the 5.90 stamp shown is from 7/2019 according to the Armbian changelog doc, the 20.02.1 from 2/2020).

I am aware that an apt-get update/upgrade is a complex operation, but at least in respect to the resulting version identification of Armbian after the update/upgrade it should be unambiguous, compared to a fresh installation of the newest board Armbian image. Also, I do not comprehend why there is a difference between /etc/armbian-release and /etc/armbian-image-release, in the fresh installation case as well as in the update/upgrade case (see previous post). Plz note that both installations are running perfectly, so it is not an urgent problem - just a nagging confusion on my side regarding unique unambiguous version identifications.

Regards - Robert

Armbian changed his release model and versioning not long ago and I guess what you experience are some side effects while upgrading.

 

28 minutes ago, Werner said:

his release model and versioning

apart from that..

 

6 hours ago, stroess said:

one was freshly installed,     the other upgraded from a previous installation

As OP wrote this. To get Armbian more stable it will not update a stable system kernel wise IIRC.

However, IIRC within armbian-config you can change this behavior and Igor will correct me if I was wrong.