Attended Sysupgrade difference with/without "Advanced Mode" selected

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

G'day all,

Current config: ASUS RT-AX53U, OpenWRT 23.05.3 - r23809-234f1a2efa

I've search the forum and then interweb and couldn't find answers to the following, hence this post.

When I go to Attended Sysupgrade and click "Search for Firmware Upgrade" the only option returned is 23.05.05.

If I enable "Advanced Mode" on the Configuration page and click "Search for Firmware Upgrade" I get offered 23.05.05 and 24.10.

A couple of questions:

  1. Why the difference?
  2. What is the best way to upgrade to 24.10:
    (a) leave "Advanced Mode" off and select 23.05.05, then repeat with 24.10, or
    (b) enable "Advanced Mode" (leaving package list as it defaults) and go straight to 24.10?

Thanks in advance.

2

We were just discussing that very topic this morning: https://github.com/openwrt/asu/issues/1202

As soon as my 23.05 backport of ASU app gets in, I'll be working on this.

3

Certain parts of LuCI ASU app's functionality have long trailed behind the other clients, with the biggest missing piece being the "package changes" feature that auc started using when 22.03 came out (adding this feature to LuCI ASU is the primary change in https://github.com/openwrt/luci/pull/7621). Without it, using LuCI ASU to do upgrades across release boundaries is very brittle.

Given that, I'd say it was probably a mistake to expose the release upgrades, even with "advanced mode", but once the above PR gets merged, we will probably expose all upgrade versions without any modality.

4

@efahl, thanks for the info - not sure why I didn't find the reference in your first reply when I searched. I've now had a read of it.

Can you confirm it is ok to set 'Advanced Mode' and then do an Attended Upgrade to 24.10 directly from 23.05.3.

5

Well, it will "work" but it probably won't properly install at least two packages and you'll have to add them manually after rebooting:

  • owut - replaces auc (complete package replacement), if you have it installed;
  • luci-app-package-manager - replaces luci-app-opkg (package renamed), which you almost certainly have installed.

The settings shouldn't cause an issue with your device (unless it was one of those to transition from swconfig to DSA over that release).

If you use auc to do the upgrade, it's a simple auc -b 24.10 and done...

6

Excuse my continued questions but I'm a novice in this regard.

Will auc -b 24.10 preserve my installed packages and settings the same as when doing a LUCI Attended Sysupgrade?

If not, I'm probably better waiting until I see 24.10 appearing in the simple LUCI Attended Sysupgrade. What would you recommend.

Thankyou for your patience and assistance

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7

Yes, auc on 23.05 should work fine for that. Both LuCI ASU app and auc are clients that accomplish the same task of upgrading your device, keeping the installed packages consistent and retaining settings. (And once you get to 24.10, owut will have replaced auc, but it again performs that same task.)

8

Thankyou @efahl, I've successfully updated to 24.10 via auc -b 24.10 and all seems to be working and I can see the two replaced/renamed packages.

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9

I spoke too soon.

I didn't have internet access and ended up re-installing 23.05.3 and restoring my config backup.

I don't know what went wrong but I think I'll wait for a while and see what happens.

10

Hm, I did several attended sysupgrades from 23.05 to 24.10 without issues - and all my devices have luci-app-package-manager installed.

11

I did another upgrade (23.05.5 > 24.10), this time via luci with "Advanced Mode" enabled and got the same result.

At first it seems to work for some websites but not others.

On the Interface page the WAN (ipv4) interface has "error: network device is not present". The WAN (ipv6) did not have any errors.

After a short time, no websites would load.

I've again downgraded to 23.05.5.

I'm happy to run some tests if someone tells me what they'd like me to do.

12

Yeah, probably got picked up as a dependency inside LuCI...