Upgrading fails with message: device supported but not supported (ath79)

[wowtor]

I'm trying to upgrade a D-Link DIR-825 B1 router from the old ar71xx to ath79. It currently runs:

OpenWrt 18.06.1 r7258-5eb055306f / LuCI openwrt-18.06 branch (git-20.319.49209-ab22243)

Following the instructions, I downloaded and tried to install both 24.10.0 and 24.10.1 it by:

sysupgrade -n openwrt-24.10.1-ath79-generic-dlink_dir-825-b1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

However, both of them fail with the message:

Image not in /tmp, copying...
Device dir-825-b1 not supported by this image
Supported devices: dlink,dir-825-b1
Image check 'fwtool_check_image' failed.

which confuses me because dir-825-b1 is listed as supported, but it fails nonetheless. What happened? Is it safe to force flash?

[psherman]

The image checking functions in 18.06 don't recognize the image from 24.10.

Run the upgrade from 18.06 (ar71xx) > 19.07 (ath79) first. The device must be reset to defaults during the process (do not keep settings). Then, you should be able to upgrade from 19.07 directly to 24.10, but just the same, the config files will not be compatible, so do not keep settings.

[wowtor]

Thanks, that worked!

For the record, I had to upgrade 18.06 -> 19.07 -> 23.05 -> 24.10, because the direct upgrade 19.07 -> 24.10 failed with a warning about the image size being too large for the device.

[psherman]

Great. Glad that it worked. And thanks for the heads up about the intermediate 23.05 step being required.

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Thanks!