Hi, I've got an RT-N16 that's been playing up on 17.01.2, sporadic reboots.
I'd welcome advice on how to get the root cause, however it's also overdue an upgrade.
The hardware openwrt page suggests 21.02.03 is compatible. If I want to upgrade such a big gap, what is the process, please? I really don't want to end up losing my router functionality as I'm now working frm home, so please let me know the risk (if any).
Should I just flash the firmware from the web gui? Or upgrade from the cmd line with sysupgrade? Or something else.
This is not true. You can upgrade from 18.06 and it should also work for 17.01.
This specific quote from the release notes refers to the situation where a user wants to keep their settings. Keeping the configuration is not supported for 18.06 and earlier, but direct upgrades (without maintaining settings) are often possible. There are some nuances here, but in your case you have a bcm47xx based system, so it should be possible to upgrade directly from 17.01. Do not attempt to keep settings.
Make a backup before you do anything else. The backup will be useful for reference only -- attempting to restore this backup to a running 21.02 system will likely cause major problems. After you take your backup, I'd recommend that you reset your router to defaults before upgrading to 21.02.
Also, keep in mind that the wifi performance of bcm47xx based systems is poor when running OpenWrt due to the closed-source drviers.
The OP never stated that preserving settings was a requirement. Not losing router functionality may refer simply to not bricking the unit.
As I said before, this is not true. However, if you had explicitly said something like "in order to preserve settings, you would need to be on 19.07 to upgrade to 21.02" -- that would be true and I wouldn't have said anything.
I see that you are now able to see my posts again - or at least some of them. I'm not sure why you have what appears to be an adversarial attitude towards me, but it would be great to work this out in PMs -- this saltiness doesn't help the forum, but a collaborative and constructive relationship does. Care to try to settle our differences? Please feel free to message me directly.
Nah, nothing you have done. There's a bit of a history here.
Thanks for the confirmation on this. That is what I had interpreted from your OP -- glad to know this was correct.
Yes, you can upgrade directly. You will be given the option to keep settings when you run the upgrade -- make sure that box is unchecked.
EDIT: Just for grins, I took my Linksys E3000 (also bcm47xx) back to 17.01.7 and then upgraded it directly to 21.02.3 -- works perfectly fine. The complete flash process was slow, so don't be afraid if it takes several minutes .
I didn't say flash directly to the latest version...
I would flash to 19.07, without keeping the configs, and re-configure 19.07 from scratch...using the 17.01 configs you backed up as a guide (what I suggested in the first response).
Then, flash to 21.02, keeping the 19.07 configs.
Bottom line is it might be less confusing (and less time consuming) for you to go that route, than configuring 21.02 from scratch.
@bmf - since you are in tech, you’re probably fairly safe configuring from scratch. The advice from the other person on this thread doesn’t really make sense, as configuring 21.02 isn’t all that different from 19.07 — it is not like one is significantly easier than the other.
In many cases, keeping settings through true sequential version upgrades may be fine (unless there are major architectural changes). But best practice in general is to reconfigure from scratch across any major upgrade. This is another reason why it doesn’t make sense to flash to 19.07 without retaining your settings, then configure19.07 and finally upgrade to 21.02. That is just not a great approach.
The most straightforward and least risky approach is to go directly from 17.01 > 21.02 without keeping settings, and then configure from scratch on 21.02.