Hello Experts!
Yesterday I sysupgraded my LinkSys EA8300 from OW 23.05 to 24.10. I built the fw image via sysupgrade request and downloaded the fw to local laptop. Then I booted into an alternative partition which had OW 22.05. I flashed from that partition, with option to preserve the settings. As the router booted into alt partition, I assumed it will flash the current that is alt partition. However, it flashed the main partition, thus overwriting the 23.05 version.
The flash ended in a soft brick. But no worries, I had alt partition made exactly for such a contengency. So I used the switch-on-off-thrice trick, booted into the alt partition ( ow 22.05 ) and reflashed OW 24.10. This time I opted not to preserve the settings. And it was a success. Of course I already took the luci-config-backup. So restored from that and everything was back to business as usual.
The learning point for me is sysupgrade should never be attempted with preserved settings. Instead, restoring from a config backup is far more stable and hassle free way.
It seems the flasher keeps the currently booted partition intact and flashes the spare partition ( source : https://forum.archive.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=50173&p=180 post # 4477 ). I took an env dump by fw_printenv, but could not spot any obvious place to set for next flash. Does anyone know any?
Could we have an explicit control or at least a warning for this behaviour? Just like advanced booting page shows two or more boot options, could the flash panel indicate which partition will be overwritten?
Thank you for reading.
-Gamma