Moving from Snapshot to 25.12.0-RC / Stable – Best Approach with Custom Config & Packages?

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi all,

I’m currently running a Snapshot build (r32359 at the time I built it) on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a ZDE ZP595 PCIe dual 2.5G NIC.

To get the NIC working initially, I had to bake the drivers directly into the image. I added:

kmod-r8169 r8169-firmware pciutils luci

That resolved detection issues on Snapshot.

Now that 25.12.0-RC (kernel 6.12) is available — and stable isn’t too far away — I’m considering moving off Snapshot.

However, I’ve accumulated quite a bit of:
• Custom config (network, firewall, VLANs, DDNS, DHCP, DNS records, much more )
• Additional packages
• Some manual tweaks

So I’m trying to work out the cleanest and safest migration path.

My understanding is:
• Snapshot → Stable isn’t recommended via sysupgrade with package retention.
• It’s better to flash a fresh image and restore config.
• 25.12.0-RC should already include the necessary r8169 drivers for this NIC, so I may not need to explicitly add them anymore.

Questions:
1. Is it best practice to:
• Generate a fresh 25.12.0-RC image with the same packages baked in?
• Or flash vanilla RC and then reinstall packages manually?
2. Would restoring only /etc/config (and selectively other files) be the safest route?
3. Any known gotchas moving from Snapshot → RC on bcm27xx / Pi 5?

I’d rather do this cleanly than carry over Snapshot weirdness.

Appreciate any guidance before I break a perfectly working setup :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

2

I'd try owut, since it creates an image with the additional packaged included.

Config should be kept but if you have your own customizations, you could them to the sysupgrade.conf in /etc.

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3

Thanks — that makes sense.

So if I understand correctly, the safest approach would be:
1. Install owut
2. Let it generate a 25.12.0-RC image including my current packages
3. Perform sysupgrade while keeping config
4. Add any non-standard files to /etc/sysupgrade.conf beforehand

That would avoid the Snapshot → Stable package mismatch issue, since the image is rebuilt against the target release, correct?

Also — given this is bcm27xx / Pi 5 — are there any known issues preserving config across Snapshot → RC jumps?

Appreciate the guidance :+1:

4

Package mismatches are really only a snapshot issue.

Haven't seen any recent reports about snapshot <> RC transion issues at all.

1 Like