But I'm still not able to flash the router with the latest OpenWrt 23.05.4 sysupgrade image via web flashing method as instructed: every time I try it, I just get the same message telling that the uploaded image doesn't contain a supported format. I have also rebooted the router but that doesn't help. Otherwise, the router is functional with the present firmware, but for sure, I would llike to install the latest supported version of OpenWrt. Can somebody please tell what is the problem and how could it be fixed?
Well, I just had a look at the earlier stable release OpenWrt 22.03.7 to test whether it would behave the same way. And to my great amazement, when I tried it, there was no message about incompatible image format but the web flash gui provided sha256 checksum that was exactly same as that provided with the sysupgrade image and was ready to start flashing. After some hesitation, I continued with flashing. As I'm writing this, I have now been able to set up and configure the router with that firmware. Ok, I have had strange problems with losing internet connectivity after some basic configuration of wifi interfaces, like naming SSIDs and defining security settings for the traffic, the nature of which issues I don't understand. But now I have a basic working configuration. Next I'll start looking into installing and configuring WireGuard. But before getting into that, I'll have a break and save my configuration first.
I would be glad if somebody could explain what is this mess with these images: why some of them appear incompatible and others not???
In the flash web gui of that snapshot image I started with as per the instructions, there was no checkbox for forcing. There was checkbox for preserving config but it was instructed not be checked. I'm pretty sure of that because I had a look at those settings several times. Now in this release the flash operations look completely different. I gave a try for the 23.05.4 sysupgrade image in this firmware and the result looks like this:
And? Create config backup and type it back in next version? Uncheck keep config and check force upgrade. swconfig switch cannot be migrated to DSA. Installation never failed because you never tried.
I dont get your religious adherence to 23.05.4. Use latest stable 23.05.5.
This was the first time ever I tried to install OpenWrt. I've had the Asus RT-AC58U router for four years at least and it's been fine, but as it is not getting any new firmware and I'd need to set up a VPN using Wireguard, I decided to try out OpenWrt. So my my knowledge of OpenWrt was very limited and I had practically zero experience with it as well when I started this 'experiment' this week. During this time, I think I've learned something; for example, now I know more about those things you mention, like forcing sysupgrade. The reason why I posted here was simple: I asked for help from those who know. With my very limited knowledge, I thought the flashing failed when I got the message about incompatible image format. Now I know that I could I have forced it. But at that point of time I didn't. And I don't have any 'religious' adherence to 23.05.4: as I didn't know about forcing sysupgrade, I was testing with releases, and as it just happened that 22.03.7 went fine, without forcing, I'm now on it (look, not on 23.05.4 ). But now that I know, I'll take your advice and will upgrade to 23.05.5 next. I'm convinced that you, brada4, are much more knowledgeable than me when it comes to technicalities of OpenWrt. Therefore, would have been great to have more of your knowledge and advice earlier on rather than this late with this matter.
I'm in the same boat w/ the 'same' model (technically I'm using RT-ACRH13, but it's also listed in openWRT's ac58u page)
I also received the error: The uploaded image file does not contain a supported format. Make sure that you choose the generic image format for your platform. w/ no further choices. I think the additional verbiage might have been added in future versions of openWRT, and since we're having trouble flashing, our options are less available.
Before finding this thread, I tried to flash older versions of openWRT:
Edit: I have since flashed to old-stable and then force flashed (using the GUI) to current stabled (23.05.05 as of 11/24). No issues as of yet, one quirk was that the flash appeared to hang indefinitely but it was just that the connection had dropped after the flash. I left the 'running' browser tab as is and went to the openWRT home page (http://192.168.1.1) in a new tab, which established a connection to the updated firmware.
TL;DR: If you are having issues w/ current-stable, flash old stable and then you have the option to force update to current-stable without any command line kung-fu.
Yep, I did the same with my then stable version 22.03.7: I force flashed it to 23.05.5 using the web gui. It's been fine, and since then I have installed some additional software packages, like DDNS client (ddns-scripts) and WireGuard (wireguard-tools), and have been experimenting with them. My WireGuard configuration is still not complete for the peers (as I cannot access them now remotely over the WAN but only on site), and I have been struggling with DDNS setup as for the proper identification / registration of my WAN IP address. But they are subject to separate topics. Of course, there is a lot to learn. I used to have pretty good Unix skills in 1990s, but those days were long ago.
But for anyone who faces the same issues as @macAttack and myself did, you can follow this guidance:
Follow the "Easy installation" method. You can then install a stable sysupgrade version using webgui, like 22.03.7, or 18.06.9, like @macAttack did, which doesn't require forcing.
Or if you know what you are doing, you can do that in command line with the following, even in that case where you are getting the message about incompatible image format and there is no force option available in the webgui:
sysupgrade -F -n filename, where filename is the name of the stable sysupgrade binary.
The flag -n does the upgrade without trying to preserve the existing configuration. This is perfectly safe because you typically don't have any working configuration to be saved after a fresh new installation.
