What an excellent video tutorial! It doesn't resolve my question, but it's nonetheless a great link and a very clear explanation for those not already familiar with the information.
Do I infer that you've recently flashed squashfs snapshot sysupgrade images generated with the firmware selector, selected the option to retain configuration, and your network, dhcp and firewall files were not replaced with the default configuration anyway?
I can never rule out careless mistakes or my own stupidity - I've plenty of both. But it's happened to me twice now. On my NanoPi's, network configuration is not retained when I expect it to be. It is retained on other devices when I expect it to be retained.
Looks like I need to look harder in this area then. Thank you for confirming it works for you.
I just did snapshot squashfs firmware selector upgrades with custom packages added on an ER-X and two RAC2V1K's and everything worked as expected. Repeated process again on my R4S and...nope...once again, configuration reverted to default. Very frustrating, but I'll shake something loose eventually.
Looking to purchase a 1GB model. Preferably from Europe to avoid import taxes, with or without a case, new or used as long as it works, this is to test and fix my generated builds on 1Gb models.
FYI I tried to ordered here https://www.ebay.com/itm/314000006183 but received a 4Gb one..... however this is a good deal if you look for this device!
This build has the same config / patches / packages / root size as before, so anyone using one of my previous builds should be able to flash this directly from the web interface. Otherwise if you are switching from a different build, you will need to do a config backup, flash this to a clean SD card and then restore the backed-up config.
ext4 image doesn't have overlay partition that mean ext4 not support reset configuration to default, cannot cross upgrade from ext4 to squashfs. you need reflash sdcard with squashfs image.
Thanks @leendy for the tip.
It's still not working for me - I lose configuration after I re-flash.
Here is what I did - tried it now with just the squashfs image.
I'm download image from official repos & upgraded stable 23.03.2 without any issue, not use imagebuilder. Not know exactly yr issue.
Try omit bs=32M option in dd command, try another flashtool & sdcard.
I just recently upgraded an Orange Pi R1 Plus by flashing a squashfs build in luci over an ext4 build with different root partition size while keeping config, and it actually worked for me in that case. While the ext4 build does not have an overlay, I believe it either tracks changed config files, or maybe it looks at file timestamps or compares them to default files when you flash a new build and backs up any that don't match the default. I wasn't very confident when I pressed the upgrade button, but to my surprise it did indeed work. Not saying it would work in all cases, just that it might work in some cases.
I know this is old but I think I ran into the same issue and found a solution for expanding the filesystem for /overlay on a squashfs image with that error! It cannot survive overwriting the sd card with a new image just like always but I share my findings in case it is useful.
I found that the filesystem on /dev/loop1 is ext4 instead of f2fs with the mount command. root@R4S-wrt:~#mount
/dev/root on /rom type squashfs (ro,relatime)
...
/dev/loop0 on /overlay type ext4 (rw,noatime)
overlayfs:/overlay on / type overlay (rw,noatime,lowerdir=/,upperdir=/overlay/upper,workdir=/overlay/work)
