Hello:
Yet another happy OpenWRT user.
Because I was able to put in on my WD-MBL instead of having to throw in the bin.
OpenWRT adapted beautifully to what it may well be a small corner use case for it. ie: not a router, a limited hardware and unsupported NAS with no RAID capability.
But not so much of a minority: just how many thousands of these thinguies are still out there looking for a new lease in life?
... the majority of real routers ...
... devices like x86, Nas, etc., ... where a real drive is on play.
Indeed ...
The WD-MBL is certainly not a router and the OpenWRT firmware is written to HDD.
... edit the title to be more specific ...
I have just seen it this morning and don't know if it has been edited by the OP but it is clear to me.
That being the case, the question posed by the OP is one I also need an answer to.
Like most WD-MBL users out there running OpenWRT.
I installed OpenWRT on my WD-MBL and, after much mucking about/help with this forum, was able to modify a number of things (software/hardware) to solve some issues. eg: flexibility, graceful shutdown, bad shutdown recovery, etc.
The drive in the WD-MBL is the OEM 1Tb and I originally partitioned it in this manner:
After making a few changes and adding quite a bit of software from the repository, I ran out of space in the rootfs but solved the problem (off-line) with gparted.
Which brings me back to OP's question which specifically applies to this case.
ie: OpenWRT not flashed on a chip (like it would be on a router) but installed on a HDD (like it would be on an x86, Nas, etc. device).
My question is, does a sysupgrade wipe & reinstall
- the entire disk including partition table (this would be bad) or
- just the contents of the kernel and root partitions?
Can I rely on a sysupgrade not destroying / removing additional partitions on the system block device? This would be mandatory for NAS devices like the MBL.
While "people knowing those devices types" may have an answer based on their experience with a WD-MBL+OpenWRT, I think that only the devs who wrote the sysupgrade routine/scripts have the right/definitive answer to this question.
Thanks in advance.
Best,
PCL