Trying to upgrade from 22.03.3

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Should I be able to use either the Luci or CLI (auc) method of attended auto upgrade features from 22.03.3? If I try through Luci, it only gives me the option to go to 22.03.7, but when I try to actually do that, I get the following error:

Screen Shot 2024-12-26 at 15.11.27
Screen Shot 2024-12-26 at 15.11.271218×556 50.9 KB

Via auc, trying the -c option results in:

auc -c

auc/0.3.1-1
Server: https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org
Running: 22.03.3 r20028-43d71ad93e on ath79/generic (tplink,archer-c7-v2)
WARNING: cannot determing currently running branch.
Invalid argument (22)

and trying other options certainly doesn't improve things.

I'm fine giving up and doing it the old way but if there's a chance this should work and I'm just missing something, it sure would be nice to avoid having to reinstall and reconfigure all the packages I've already installed.

On that topic - it seems like the suggestion for non ASU upgrades from Luci is to not preserve config unless doing a point release, but the CLI instructions seem to suggest you should, then just diff configs. Why the disparity?

2

You can make a custom build with the firmware selector. Just include the packages you want in your build.

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3

The ASU server no longer supports building versions older than 23.05, so your request will be rejected regardless of how you submit it (auc, LuCI ASU app, Firmware Selector).

$ owut versions
Available 'version-to' values from https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org:
  23.05 release branch
    23.05.0
    23.05.2
    23.05.3
    23.05.4
    23.05.5 (latest)
    23.05-SNAPSHOT
  24.10 release branch
    24.10.0-rc1
    24.10.0-rc2
    24.10.0-rc3
    24.10.0-rc4 (latest)
    24.10-SNAPSHOT (installed,requested)
  SNAPSHOT main branch
    SNAPSHOT (latest)

You can try auc -B 23.05.05 -b 23.05 and see if that works for you.

Well... It's probably the case that things have evolved, so you're running into conflicting suggestions from different "eras". I've done completely successful upgrades across the 22->23 boundary on several devices, but none of them had to deal with the DSA update (all that had been handled in 21->22 for them). Likewise, I've upgraded/downgraded some between the 23, 24 and SNAPSHOT builds without issue.

My best advice is 1) make sure you have backups; 2) verify that you have backups; 3) give a keep-config upgrade a try and see if it works. You did retain a backup, right?

4

Yes, I definitely have a backup!

Just read up on DSA, and it appears that I'm still using swconfig in my current 22 config. It seems that DSA is device dependent, and that at least initially only the TP-Link TL-WR941ND ath79 device used DSA. Has that changed in 23?

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5

Not yet, ath79 as a whole is still swconfig.

Technically DSA drivers are available for it, and it did work in the past, but there's a (new) bug on big endian which prevents its introduction on ath79. Besides that, ath79 is an immensely large and diverse target, with many special quirks, it's a major undertaking to actually do this switch for all devices, without breaking others. All other platforms that migrated to DSA so far were a lot more uniform, but ath79 has been on the market for almost a decade, with several SOC generations and quite different hardware combinations, fun...

2 Likes
6

Got it. Thanks! Upgraded with a custom built image with the packages I needed pre-installed, with existing config and it's all working great.

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7

You can also sysupgrade with generic image then add packages which will perform one-time upgrade routine when installed.