Hi,
I got back into OpenWRT after the political scene calmed down a bit and it was apparent that there was going to be a unified product moving forward.
That said, I also built an x86 version on an Atom PC in which I used the 18.06 rc series of releases. I resized the root partition before I provisioned and deployed it in my house, but I am now stuck with 2 questions:
- Will the sysupgrade be seamless no matter the root partition size?
- Easy way to get the packages I have installed so I can reinstall them shortly afterward? I replaced most binutils with non-busybox binaries, etc... I cannot seem to find how to distinguish included versus personally installed packages.
TiA,
Greg
tl;dr: Possibly, but not certainly. Back up your data, expect a reset to default partitions after sysupgrade.
Background: It used to be that sysupgrade would indiscriminately overwrite the whole disk and consequently the MBR, resetting the partition table to the default.
That is no longer the case, sysupgrade is now aware of MBR partitions and at the very least leaves the MBR intact if the default partitions are there. My recommendation would always be to leave the default partitions unmodified and create additional partitions for the remaining space on the disk -- you can always just (auto-)mount them into the file system where needed.
If I read the sysupgrade scripts correctly, it might even leave modified default partitions in place and just update the contents. However, I don't feel comfortable promising that.
Now in your case what happens very much depends on your current version of sysupgrade. Expect the MBR to reset to default for at least this upgrade. You will lose any additional data you saved on the root partition anyway, so you will need to back up that additional data. You might as well bite the bullet now and restore the default partition layout and go with the "safe route" of additional partitions from now on, if only for the convenience of never having their data erased with a future sysupgrade.
Thanks you both for the link and info. takimata - I will read the sysupgrade script as well, just thought it might be a simple yes or no answer 
I have been using OpenWRT for a while in the past, so am comfortable reconfiguring everything from the config filers, etc.
Just finding the time when no one is home and recording TV, etc is my hurdle - looks like I need to stay awake one night and knock it out while they sleep - or better yet, just deploy a new one virtually and swing the config when I have time.
I think I'll go that last router - thanks again!
-Greg
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