Noob trying to understand how owut works

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi All,

i am trying get my head around how owut actually works.

I have a few question:

  1. Will owut upgrade only system (ROM) packages or it will also update manually installed (using apk) packages like vnstat etc.
  2. When owut is upgrading, is it actually flashing new firmware to the device or it is updating packages putting them on overlay?
  3. When opkg was a thing there was clear state somewhere on the forum that only manually installed packages are relatively safe to update. Now when we have owut is it safe to update also packages which initially comes from the image?
2

You could or should make your self familiar with the OpenWrt Image Builder which is used by all these auto update tools.

Dig into use the Image Builder to build your own images (without compiling) to understand what and how it's done... In the end you may not need to online tools anymore.

Edit ps https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/additional-software/imagebuilder

3

owut gets you between releases (major and minor) keeping the packages you installed by hand.

it's a customized (based on your packages) sysupgrade image.

4

@4k3or3et please stop, this is 100th thread you ask kinda noob question then out of a sudden start pressuring on how to inject package into official build server. No it will not work. You have to run your own imagebuilder to add private packages.

5

You must misunderstood soemthing. All packages i have installed were installed using apk add command. How this is injecting packages into anything but my own router?

6

OpenWrt supports packaging only OpenWrt packages - OK? If you want more you run your own infrastructure - OK?

7

simply use owut, problem solved, move on.

8

ok so just to try to undestand it. for example if i install apk add vnstat is it openwrt package or this is what you previously called ā€œprivate packageā€?

9

but will owut then flash new image or will it just upgrade packages puting them somwehre in the overlay?

10

based on what I wrote in 6 posts up, what do you think ?

11

In my understanting of that post the device will be flashed so even if i perform hard reset to factory defaults the packages will stay at that version which owut was last performed. I my understarting is correct, will packages installed manually using apk add command like vnstat for example be also included in the image or i will still have to downlaod them manually?

12

whatever makes it into the sysupgrade image, will remain post reset.

if you add install packages along the way, you can do an inplace owut, to get the package(s) integratedid into the image if you'd ever do a reset.

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13

Understood. Thank you for claryfing that. Is ā€œinplace upgradeā€ simply owut upgrade command or we talking something else here?

14

yes, but you need to --force it, since the from and to version are the same.

15

I see. I really appreciate your kindness and patience to person who just learning.

May i ask in if on your own router, you do owut upgrade ā€“force on a regular basis once some updated being available or rather to wait for minor/major relases to avoid some potential stability issues?

16

I do it when there's a major and major version out, on my lab device.

I only use openwrt on my APs, so if anything breaks, I won't be without internet.
I'd still have the 2nd unit working, if the flash would fail on the 1st one.

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17

It makes much more sense to me now. Thank a lot for your help once again.

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18

--force is only necessary when

  1. there are significant warnings you wish to ignore (at your own peril);
  2. you wish to force an upgrade even when owut detects no changes.

The latter is useful when you want to clean out /overlay and move all your recently installed packages into /rom.

In general, you should almost never use --force.

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19

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