Update for UBNT-ERX from 19.07 to 21.02

Installing and Using OpenWrt
2

Hi @plunet,

There are different issues here, so let's tackle them one by one.

First, in OpenWrt 19.07, the device identifier for your device was ubnt-erx. However, in OpenWrt 21.02 this has changed to the more complete ubnt,edgerouter-x form. This is no big deal.

Second, OpenWrt 21.02 introduced the new DSA switch driver for the ramips/mt7621 devices (which your UBNT-ERX is). You may want to check these links before upgrading: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/dsa/dsa-mini-tutorial and https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/dsa/converting-to-dsa. This means that the switch that drives the 5 physical Ethernet ports will be handled differently, and there is no automatic way to migrate it (hence the sysupgrade error message you are getting Config cannot be migrated from swconfig to DSA).

Before doing anything else, do a backup of your router's settings (via: LuCi => System => Backup).

Now you basically have two (well, maybe three) options:

  • flashing the OpenWrt 21.02 image without keeping the previous settings with sysupgrade -n -F (-n to not keep settings, -F to skip the DSA error message), and configuring the router from again scratch
  • flashing the OpenWrt 21.02 image without keeping the settings with sysupgrade -n -F, and import the previous backup except for the network configuration, which should be configured manually again
  • (flashing the OpenWrt 21.02 image keeping the previous settings with sysupgrade -F, which may end up with your device having a weird network configuration which you'll have to fix manually)

The first and second options will require some more work, but they're the safe path to follow. If you try the third, you should be at least familiar with the OpenWrt recovery mode so that in the likely event that something goes wrong you can rescue your device.

Best,

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