How to use auc correctly?

[reukiodo]

I have tried so many times to use auc from the commandline, but it has never succeeded:

root@U35WF:~# auc 
auc/0.3.2-1
Server:    https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org
Running:   23.05.2 r23630-842932a63d on ramips/mt7620 (kimax,u35wf)
Available: 23.05.3 r23809-234f1a2efa
Requesting package lists...
No data available (61)
root@U35WF:~# auc -y
auc/0.3.2-1
Server:    https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org
Running:   23.05.2 r23630-842932a63d on ramips/mt7620 (kimax,u35wf)
Available: 23.05.3 r23809-234f1a2efa
Requesting package lists...
No data available (61)
root@U35WF:~# auc -b 23.05 -B 23.05.3
auc/0.3.2-1
Server:    https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org
Running:   23.05.2 r23630-842932a63d on ramips/mt7620 (kimax,u35wf)
Available: 23.05.3 r23809-234f1a2efa
Requesting package lists...
No data available (61)
root@U35WF:~# 

Meanwhile attended sysupgrades from the web GUI have never failed:

According to https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sysupgrade#example_use that's all I need to do? What do I need to do to get a new firmware generated and downloaded with auc from the command line?

[efahl]

You are are using auc correctly, but seeing errors because the ASU server's metadata for 23.05.3 has not been populated yet. See my note at OpenWrt 23.05.3 - Service Release - #35 by efahl

[reukiodo]

The main reason I ask is because I tried to start using auc for upgrades a few versions ago, but maybe it was never ready when I had always checked to upgrade. I've been using the GUI for as long as I've known about it, and tried to start using auc for at least a year but have never seen it succeed. I just assumed I was doing something wrong though all the documentation said it should be so simple.

[reukiodo]

Does auc use a different backend than what the GUI uses?

[efahl]

No, both auc and LuCI Attended Sysupgrade talk to the ASU server (albeit using the build API slightly differently). You can usually count on them producing identical results, but I think they also use different metadata to arrive at the same solution, so in some cases you might see one fail and the other succeed on the same build.

Also, the Firmware Selector uses the ASU server build system, but it bypasses the whole metadata issue by building its own directly from the download.openwrt.org site; again, similar but different enough from what the ASU server is doing that you might see one working and the other one not.

(The ASU server's build backend is basically just using the standard "image builder" environments published on the download site, and doing a bunch of the manual labor that would be required for target selection, custom package selection, file system selection - squashfs vs ext4, and that sort of thing.)