Router reverting back to previous state no matter what I try

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I am currently running OpenWrt 21.02.1 on a TP-Link Archer C7 v5. I recently noticed that any changes I made to my router weren't persisting. Today I sat down to figure out what was going on and discovered that any changes to the system I make are lost following reboot. This includes deleting old scripts, removing software packages, etc. Once the router reboots they're all back it's like the router is consistently restoring back to around a month ago.

My research indicates that this is often the result of no space but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The output of mount; df -h is:

> mount; df -h
> /dev/root on /rom type squashfs (ro,relatime)
> proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime)
> sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime)
> cgroup2 on /sys/fs/cgroup type cgroup2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate)
> tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime)
> /dev/mtdblock9 on /overlay type jffs2 (rw,noatime)
> overlayfs:/overlay on / type overlay (rw,noatime,lowerdir=/,upperdir=/overlay/upper,workdir=/overlay/work)
> tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=512k,mode=755)
> devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,mode=600,ptmxmode=000)
> debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,noatime)
> none on /sys/fs/bpf type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime,mode=700)
> Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/root                 3.5M      3.5M         0 100% /rom
> tmpfs                    60.3M    364.0K     59.9M   1% /tmp
> /dev/mtdblock9            9.6M      3.5M      6.0M  37% /overlay
> overlayfs:/overlay        9.6M      3.5M      6.0M  37% /
> tmpfs                   512.0K         0    512.0K   0% /dev

I've tried performing a reset in LuCi, and then performing a hard factory reset in the command-line using umount /overlay && jffs2reset && reboot now. The router resets and then pops right back up with everything still intact. Interestingly the command dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/loop0 bs=1M; reboot returned this output:

> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/loop0 bs=1M; reboot
> dd: error writing '/dev/loop0': No space left on device
> 1+0 records in
> 0+0 records out

So perhaps I am out of space after all? I've also tried performing a manual factory reset using the physical button but the same thing happens. I am at a loss for what caused this to happen in the first place and what I can do to fix it. Any help would be much appreciated - thanks!

2

Any mention of failed writes or read-only in dmesg? Perhaps the flash chip itself could be refusing writes (it might be worn).

3

No nothing like that. But it seems very stubborn about not updating. I'm wondering if I should try updating in failsafe mode or try moving it back to stock?

I recently set up a script on my home server to automatically backup the router weekly the archive /tmp and then transferring it over to the server. I'm not sure if that could be responsible for this issue but it seems to roughly line up with when new data stopped being saved.