I have a very stable and customized openwrt 23.05.3 running on Netgear wndr3700 v1.
For many years I was able to upgrade openwrt.
However with version 23.05.4 it started to fail. I skipped that version and tried several times to upgrade to version 23.05.5 without any success. The configuration simply is not saved, actually no configuration will be saved. I tried to drop some packages to try to save space. Also no result.
Now I flashed my customized version 23.05.3 back and it is running like before!
I tried to drop nano luci-app-commands iwinfo luci-app-sqm but never got an upgrade where I was able to save my configuration. I was able to do the sysupgrade, connect and login to luci. But even saving the newly set root password did not succeed. I tried the srandardbuild and used software install, but no success as I could not install the required packages due to space issues.
I am surprised that suddenly sysupgrade fails with the package set that I used since years... a pity...
If someone has a wndr3700 v1 (version 1 is important), could he/she try with the package set as shown above?
Packages may be dropped in the order that I listed underneath the whole set.
I cannot/will not share my configuration settings as that would disclose too much of my setup.
As I got already saving issues with the default settings (meaning sysupgrade without keeping configuration) I think sharing my config is also not needed.
I used the online firmware configurator as well as the sysbuilder package (offline) and build it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Both customization building methods failed....
I am aware that I might need to buy another router as wndr3700v1 might not be able to be upgraded anymore!?
Both core and optional packages gets backports in 23.05, it's not impossible that you were already near the limit of the flash space and the selected packages brings it just over the limit with 23.05.5, WNDR3700 v1 only has 8 MB of flash, see https://openwrt.org/supported_devices/864_warning. So check your flash usage either with LuCI or df -h.
Have you tried flashing the vanilla sysupgrade 23.05.5 without any extra packages and check if that works?
Sorry that I was not clear. With fails I meant to say that the router did not start anymore and I had to tftp a factory image to get out of the impasse.
I tested to flash the standard build, which worked ok. Then I use the system software function under Luci to add the packages I wanted (see my list above). When I saved my configuration it looked as if it was a success, but after a reboot I had to specify the root password again. It was clear that nothing was saved.
I have tried so many variants and I am quite familiar with the stuff.
Over time I also got the impression that I crossed the maximum limit, so I started to reduce the installed packages like nano iwinfo luci-app-commands and retried a build. I was not able to find a working combination. You can image this trial and error costs really lots of time as very often I had to repeat tftp with factory img of my 23.05.3 customized build and then repeat the stuff.
I guess I have spend the last months (since the release 23.05.4 and 5) so much days on this, that my lust to experiment further has gone!
Therefore I gave it here a last try. Maybe somebody with a wndr3700 v1 would like to test my (reduced) customized package set and give it a try.
Below is the result of the df -h command on my good 23.05.3 img.
There's some kind of guide here to use that as the overlay filesystem instead of built-in flash.
It does require you to install kmod-fs-ext4 kmod-usb-storage block-mount plus some tools to format the stick first, so you probably need a few kB for that.
Maybe (1) install a blank OpenWrt 23.05.5, then (2) follow the Extroot instructions and after that (3) install all the packages you want on the gigabytes of free space in the new overlay... see if that works?
Actually I used once another USB stick to run Python, SIP/VOIP Asterix, nginx etc on that stick. I think it was with Openwrt 14 or 15... About 7 years ago
I had forgotten that possibility. Thanks for reminding me.
Maybe I give a try, however I am
also considering to replace WNDR3700 with gli-net MT6000 (Flint 2).
So moving to 23.05.5 and further and then using a USB stick might be possible, but maybe not worth the effort.
This Netgear router is however a rock solid device and has serviced me always very good and reliable and still is.
I use a Switch VLAN setup, guest wireless network, wireguard, adblock and some other goodies.
So quite some work to move and change to another router. I do not want to loose functionality.
I guess MT6000 supports also VLAN and has 4 LAN ports, plus plenty of space and speed.
At least a kind thank you for spending time on my request. I really appreciate this. This support and quailty of the open source software makes using Openwrt so phantastic...
That's one of the main selling points of openwrt. You can run it for years, change hardware to a different manufacturer and still keep the same software that you know.
I retired my 3700v1 back in 2019. It was already running out of memory even as a dumb AP. I'd say the upgrade is long overdue.
Since you only have 256K available on overlay with your good 23.05.3 image, I'm guessing this weird behavior is a result of running out of flash. As previously mentioned, you could try running extroot, I don't think the flash space requirements will decrease with 24.10 and going forward.
Thank you all for the support, suggestions and ideas.
What I already suspected, but did not hope for will become soon true: a goodbye to my "lovely" Netgear WNDR3700v1 and a welcome to its successor the GL.iNet GL-MT6000 (Flint 2), which I just ordered. Over 2 days it will be delivered.
Currently the pricing of this Flint 2 device is very attractive and I have seen/read so many positive comments about it and MOST IMPORTANTLY it supports Openwrt out of the box; so this was a kind of no-brainer.
I hope the wifi coverage / range will be as good, if not better than WNDR3700 for both 2.4 and 5GHz.
The coming years I can upgrade further with Openwrt.
Sounds like a great decision, it's got a lot of praise in the forums, I've thinking of getting one myself as well once my R7800 doesn't cut it anymore.
24.10.x will be quite a bit tighter, everything has been growing, we're seeing a two year newer kernel (two LTS kernelversions), apk (should it make the cut) will need another ~100 KB. I've gone through the process of cutting down my package lists for my 8MB tl-wdr3600/ tl-wdr4300 routers running main this week, it's still possible to come up with a sensible configuration, but you do have to drop a lot of very useful packages that did fit before.
Range shouldn't differ that much, but the throughput difference is massively better between 802.11n and 802.11ax.
