BPI-R3 sysupgrade issue

I have a BPI R3 running OpenWRT (on eMMC):

OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r25578-081cd769fc / LuCI Master git-24.077.26240-f2a4910

I built a new image and copied it to the device:

openwrt-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb

When I run sysupgrade from command line. It backs up the files but then it fails. It boots back up with the same old version. The last message from sysupgrade is:

Thu Sep 12 08:14:36 EEST 2024 upgrade: Commencing upgrade. Closing all shell sessions.
Command failed: Connection failed

Is there a known solution to this problem? How does one update the device in this situation?