[SOLVED] ASUS RT-N10+ B1, 18.06 RC1: Configuration does not persist after reboot

Installing and Using OpenWrt
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I've been using 17.01.x (1 to 4) on this router over the last year without any issues. It is an old device and has limited flash and RAM (4/32) but for what I use it has been holding up fine.
My custom configuration has no problem persisting over reboots, backups and restores.

Recently I tried 18.06 RC1, the system boots fine and I can access it via the browser, but any saved configuration, even if it's just setting the password is lost after a reboot.

If I revert back to 17.01.4, then the configurations are persistent again.

How should I proceed?

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This means that your device's flash space is too small for 18.06-rc1 AND your config files.

So, as the device reboots, it creates new config files in RAM each time.

  • You can try to install a SNAPSHOT version, as it does not have LuCI by default. You may gain enough free space.
  • Another solution is to compile your own firmware with some packages (e.g. LuCI) not included.
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OK, thank you, I'll try that, if that works then the problem is the limited flash space.

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That worked, using the Snapshot version worked, I even checked 'keep settings' when I did the flashing and the settings from 17.01.4 are working on the snapshot version.

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Look at my last post in this thread...
I've posted a absolute minimal config.
Probably this will help you to get a feeling what could be disabled...

You could apply this also to the 18.06 branch, but you have to build the image yourself.

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Thank you, i suppose that should be my next step if I want to use LuCI again, I can disable ppp/pppoe for sure, this router gets the internet by being a WiFi client to an AP and creating a new AP with a different SSID, maybe that will be enough to get LuCI back.

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I think the parts that gives you a bunch of free space for other thins will be ppp/pppoe/... and kernel debug stuff.

If you don´t need to install anything after the image is build you could strip down all libraries with CONFIG_USE_MKLIBS=y and strip down the kernel with CONFIG_STRIP_KERNEL_EXPORTS=y.
But bear in mind that this two last steps will probably prevent that you could install packages afterwards...

Edit: Or you could also use the image builder that build only a image without compiling anything and remove here only ppp/pppoe stuff.
But i think the amount of work to build it yourself from the sources or using the image builder is almost the same.

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Part of my startup script is installing cURL and the CA bundle to RAM, if disabling ppp/pppoe and kernel debug is enough, I'll be satisfied, or else I would have to bake cURL and CA certs into the image.

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See also https://openwrt.org/faq/before_installation#which_packages_can_i_safely_remove_to_save_space

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Thank you all,
Using the information you all provided I compiled my own image of the 18.06.0 RC1 branch that is working fine now, my settings persist, and I have LuCI back.

For anyone else interested these are the settings I used for compiling as they differ from the default profile:

Added:
uhttpd uhttpd-mod-ubus libiwinfo-lua luci-base luci-app-firewall luci-mod-admin-full luci-theme-bootstrap

Removed:
-ppp -ppp-mod-pppoe -kmod-ppp
and also in the kernel configuration I removed crashlog, debug info and debug kernel.

CONFIG_TARGET_ramips=y
CONFIG_TARGET_ramips_rt305x=y
CONFIG_TARGET_ramips_rt305x_DEVICE_rt-n10-plus=y
# CONFIG_KERNEL_CRASHLOG is not set
# CONFIG_KERNEL_DEBUG_INFO is not set
# CONFIG_KERNEL_DEBUG_KERNEL is not set
# CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-ppp is not set
CONFIG_PACKAGE_libiwinfo-lua=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_liblua=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_liblucihttp=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_liblucihttp-lua=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_libubus-lua=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_lua=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci-app-firewall=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci-base=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci-lib-ip=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci-lib-jsonc=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci-lib-nixio=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci-mod-admin-full=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci-theme-bootstrap=y
# CONFIG_PACKAGE_ppp is not set
CONFIG_PACKAGE_rpcd=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_uhttpd=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_uhttpd-mod-ubus=y

Thanks!

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