Upgrading Meraki MR33 devices from 22.03.x to the latest 24.1.x builds

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Looking at the release documentation for upgrading ipq40x devices (MR33) from the 22.03.x series to 23.05.x series.

Upgrading to 23.05.6

Sysupgrade can be used to upgrade a device from 22.03 to 23.05, and configuration will be preserved in most cases.

  • Sysupgrade from 21.02 to 23.05 is not officially supported.

  • ipq40xx EA6350v3, EA8300, MR8300 and WHW01 require tweak to the U-Boot environment on update from 22.03 to 23.05. Refer to the Device wiki or the instruction on sysupgrade on how to do this change. Config needs to be reset on sysupgrade.

I cannot find any infromation on wht tweaks needs making and how to do it. So we are stuck with 22.03.x on these devices.

Does anyone have any information on what needs ‘tweaking’ to allow the upgrade from 22.03.x to 23.05.x and then onwards to 24.1.x ?

Any help would be appreciated as we have approx 10 of these devices to upgrade and all are in service so we need a supported way to do it and avoid brickingor creating unresponsive devices.

Cheers

1 Like
2

Do you see any mention of meraki lin that list?

3

Yes, the MR33 is a ipq40xx device. We tried upgrading in the past to 23.05.x but there were many issues with broken networking and radios, you can find me bug tickets out there if you look. So we stuck with 22.03.x now it’s time to get upto date. But, there is no information on what needs tweaking in the uboot to make the upgrade work, nothing on the device wiki page etc. The path to 24.1.x is via 23.05.x first. Then it is supported to go from 23.05.x to 24.1.x and onwards.

Do you have any information that will help?

Cheers

4

Typo error in the title, it's 24.10.x

The tweak you are talking about only applies to these selected Linksys devices. It corrects a kernel size boot issue. It is NOT related to the Meraki MR33 despite sharing the same CPU.

Installation/upgrading instructions don't mention any kind of tweak related to these Linksys devices.

5

I think swconfig->dsa comes in at some point....

6

Many thanks for the replies. We will have a go at upgrading from 22.03.3 to 23.05.6 and see what happens. Then from there to the latest 24.10.x as that looks like a supported upgrade path.

Cheers

1 Like
7

Yes, I forgot about this :clap:

@sparticle do you keep settings when upgrading? If so you musn't: consider reconfiguring from scratch.

8

Keep the backup of 1st release, the switch architecture changes down the road and you need to re-enter network configuration.

9

OK so it sounds like force fresh configuration OOTB config for 23.05.6 as these devices use ath10K I am sure I had read there were radio issues with this release series. I see otehres still talking about ath10k not being fixed in 23.05.x

Cheers

10

Why you are projecting non-extant problems. ath10k problems are on 24.10.

11

So our plan to go to 24.10.x will bring the ath10k radio issues into play?

Cheers

12

-- https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/24.10.5/targets/ipq40xx/generic/packages/

Does not look like it needs custom data file (ipq-wifi-)
But auc/owut/attendedsysupgrade is supposed to handle this case (mostly)

13

Ok thanks for the additional info. We will take it a step at a time and see if we can get an upgrade to 23.05.6 to work first with our configs and settings. We will force a clean install and reconfig from scratch when upgrading.

Once we have 23.05.6 confirmed working. We will then look at taking that device forward to 24.10.x using the attended sysupgrade process which looks like a supported path.

Cheers

14

It will not upgrade at one point, changing switch from swconfig to dsa, you can go start to finish in one jump.

15

Not sure what you mean. 22.03.x to 24.10.x is not a supported path.

We just upgraded one to 23.05.6 and that worked ok. None of the histotical static ip issues on the lan port etc. Just testing now with various clients connecting and streaming loads etc.

Once complete we will try to upgrade to latest 24.10.x build using attended sysupgrade which shows us that 24.10.5 is the latest available once searched for firmware is performed.

Are you saying we can go from 22.03.x directly to 24.10.x?

Cheers

16

You can do unsupported upgrade clearing configuration and re-entering it.
Things that will change:

  • wifi device paths
  • /etc/config/network COMPLETELY
  • you can keep firewall, most of services conf
  • you can use attended sysupgrade to compile next version images with all packages included - then restore their configs after wipe

Basically you need device off service for an hour either way and you cannot splice it to small one-piece upgrades

17

We did the staged update 23.05.6 then attended sysupgrade to 24.10.5 worked perfectly. Testing at present. Both 2.4 & 5ghz readios configured and in use.

Fingers crossed.

Thanks for the support and help.

Cheers

1 Like
18

I think next upgrade will be rejected because of radical switch changes.

19

So you think no forward path to 25.x ?