Well that the old firmware has to judge it could be contributing, but it has some information that it is due to DSA and that it actually is compatible with the device, but not with the old config. So it could have made the error less confusing. At least when I read it when upgrading my e4200v2 also made me check twice. Even when I hit the upgrade button I was not 100% sure it was compatible (could I maybe have picked the wrong file?).
Also at the time of 19.07.8 it was known that this DSA upgrade was coming so they could have prepared, and to be honest I think they did resulting in the above warning.
Anyway, it is not that big of a deal, but more people will doubt if they did it right or will ask here.
Maybe one other thing to note, if possible in a next version also add a warning not to set back the old backup?
In particular: "install 21.02.0", all guides say from original firmware use the "factory" image (this does not match for me, I have 18.06) and the other solution is to upgrade using sysupgrade which leads to the error message. Therefore I propose to elaborate a bit the install versus sysupgrade.
It sounds more like another symptom I had in 19.07 but with the WRT3200ACM.
“Microcuts” as symptom can be caused by a lot of reasons but since Sweden only in general have IPv4 for the short and probably long future I turned of everything with IPv6 in the router and for me all the “microcuts” and “strange lagging symptoms” then disappeared and have never reappeared since then.
This is a subject and symtoms that appears on the forum from time to time, OpenWRT and the DHCP server seems to have trouble handling both IPv4 and IPv6 if anyone of them are unconnected to the world.
But to be honest this fault should be handled as a unique post in the forum and not in this release news of 21.02 since I doubt it has anything to do with 21.02 release. It will just drown in the chatter and disappear in this mega post.
I have found that the ER-X is completely unreliable using openwrt. I thought I had things running well after disabling IPv6 on each device(bridge, etc), things only run well until you reboot. I then enabled allow localhost (or something similar under eth0) which again seemed OK until a reboot.
Reporting WRT1900ACSv2 successfully running 21.02.0 - First Stable Release upgraded from 21.02.0-rc4 keeping old configuration. Reinstalled the following packages. Up-time Day 19: few minor issues.
Below are my WRT1900ACSv2 configurations for improved WiFi performance, kept since rc2:
Installed irqbalance. Change 'enabled' from '0' to '1' in '/etc/config/irqbalance'. Essential.
Enabled SQM. Highly Recommended.
Disabled 802.11w (previously known to provide issues on mwlwifi). May not be necessary.
Patched firmware-88w8864 mwlwifi specific high latencies by disabling tx_amsdu. Essential. Add in luci > startup > local startup (nano /etc/rc.local) the following commands:
Intermittently noticing lag on 5ghz (WPA2/WPA3) with iPhone requiring reconnecting device to network. Does not seem as frequent as in previous iterations, but is unclear. Certainly not as bad with above fixes. iPhone works fine on 2.4ghz.
Intermittent failure for 5Ghz networks (wlan0) internet connectivity after scheduled reboot.
daemon.err modprobe: failed to find a module named act_ipt
daemon.err collectd: rrdtool plugin: rrd_update_r failed: /tmp/rrd/OpenWrt/cpu-0/percent-softirq.rrd: opening '/tmp/rrd/OpenWrt/cpu-0/percent-softirq.rrd': No such file or directory
daemon.err collectd: rrdtool plugin: rrd_update_r failed: /tmp/rrd/OpenWrt/cpu-1/percent-interrupt.rrd: opening '/tmp/rrd/OpenWrt/cpu-1/percent-interrupt.rrd': No such file or directory
kern.err kernel: wlan0: failed to remove key (0, xx.xx.xx.xx.xx.xx) from hardware (-5)
kern.err kernel: wlan0-1: failed to remove key (0, xx.xx.xx.xx.xx.xx) from hardware (-5)
I don't agree with people here saying not to use factory.bin
Back in the LEDE days I used to use that instead of sysupgrade with no harm.. though I did later switch to using just sysupgrade w/ keep settings.
"With OpenWrt 21.02, the ar71xx has now been removed and users must use ath79 instead. If you are still running with the ar71xx target, it is recommended to reinstall OpenWrt 21.02 from scratch. Users already on the ath79 target can use sysupgrade to upgrade to OpenWrt 21.02."
"Sysupgrade from 18.06 to 21.02 is not supported."
It is not necessary to flash back to OEM firmware and then back to OpenWRT.
It is not necessary to flash to 19.x and then to 21.x.
You can go straight from 18.x to 21.x with the factory.bin firmware.
What do I care if it changes everything? I am not keeping settings for a 18-21 change combined with an ar71xx to ath79 change. This isn't some sort of broadcom device where it uses all sorts of glitchy nvram variables.
No not sure I did my DSA config correct as it's the first I've used it. Found the guide in the forum to figure out my situation as I don't recall seeing anything in there about a vlan tag on the WAN. The only thing I needed to change for DSA config is my WAN is tagged with vlan35, which seemed straight forward.
After reboot no settings are lost and firmware doesn't get rest. My connection goes to crap, can't load this forum, reddit doesn't load or partially loads. Lots of other sites don't work or only partially load. Just a generally flaky internet experience, my pppoe connection stays up though.
That's very false, as the upgrade process is not a "Known Working State" until you can actually witness if the resulting upgrade actually works.
Please refrain from "preaching" OpenWrt rather than actually rely on facts : The OEM partition is a "Known Working State" from which to recover from in the event OpenWrt failed to install properly.
That's a fact and keeping the OEM partition is a guarantied way to avoid Bricking the hardware, period.
I love OpenWrt, but in not event would I overwrite the OEM failover, that would just be useless risk taking.
Maybe, having put myself in quite dysfunctional state with OpenWrt, I can't particularly vouch upgrading from there as upgrading from "Known Functional State". The failover is now dysfunctional and an upgrade from there is not guarantied to get you out of trouble.
If you are a pro at OpenWrt, then maybe you have a point or wouldn't care less because you can "solder" yourself out of trouble (serial connection), but for many of us, keeping the OEM is the only guarantied way to recover from a mess and start a fresh install.