I recently updated my Netgear R6260 Router to OpenWRT 24.10.4, but it wasn’t as simple as uploading the .bin file.
When I updated the firmware and kept settings, my two Wi-Fi connections were unable to reach the internet. I could only access it if I was connected to the router via Ethernet. The next step I took was to reset the configuration to default and re-upload my configuration files I backed up before I made the firmware upgrade. Now my router’s Wi-Fi is working but I wanted to know if this is a common issue that occurs with my model or other models of routers supported by OpenWRT.
When crossing major release boundaries (which always comes with a Linux kernel version bump) it is often the case that the underlying Linux device interfaces change (specifically the network and wifi devices), so it is quite common for this to happen. Usually you can just delete the /etc/config/network and /etc/config/wireless files from the backup and keep everything else, but sometimes you need to start from scratch.
Some devices have been transitioning from swconfig to DSA for their switch architecture, which also causes loss of network connectivity when upgrading.
No radical changes on mt7621 architecture in this version jump.
Try luci-app-attendedsysupgrade for infrequent upgrades preserving configs and package setup.
(this is template text, just show the pre-upgrade state maybe we could figure out what could have gone wrong)
Please connect to your OpenWrt device using ssh and copy the output of the following commands and post it here using the "Preformatted text </> " button (red circle; this works best in the 'Markdown' composer view in the blue oval):
Remember to redact passwords, VPN keys, MAC addresses and any public IP addresses you may have:
ubus call system board
And extract and clean up config files from config backup
cat /etc/config/network
cat /etc/config/wireless
cat /etc/config/dhcp
cat /etc/config/firewall