i have a remote Netgear D7800 running openwrt 18.06.x, i want to update it to 19.07.x (or even 21 if that's released). i'm a bit nervous about it as i rely on wireguard/openvpn to connect to it, and it's running extroot as well. i have written scripts on it that should download, install and configure wireguard/openvpn on a reset, but i imagine the extroot is going to interfere with that.
is there an easy way to get it updated remotely? i assume that after the upgrade it is not going to boot 'into' the extroot, and even if it did the packages on there would be for 18.0.6. any ideas?
Maybe you could try to make an image using ImageBuilder and "bundle" everything including scripts, packages, extroot support into one flashable image and then kick that flash off remotely.
As far as i know there was a change in the partition layout/kernel space which makes it necessary to upgrade via tftp firmware loading or to flash back to original and then to the new one. But i don‘t know if this was befor or after 19. release.
And i would definitly use imagebuilder to build the complete image with all needed packages (and even configuration) only not to forget a missing dependency. Also some packages have a changed name (e.g. wpad vs wpad-basic)
Sounds problematic. You would at least need an image with connectivity (but not with extroot).
Build an image with settings included and VPN included, but likely exclude the extroot activation from fstab. And flash without keeping settings in order to apply the new settings from the image. So that after flashing you get config access but no extroot with old incompatible packages. Then you could boot it, connect to it, and mount the extroot volume manually and copy new stuff there before activating it as extroot again.
I am not really familiar with extroots, but some approach in that style is probably the best.