The initramfs installed correctly. Upon reboot and attempting to install the sysupgrade image via sysupgrade I get an error saying no image metadata and won’t install unless I —Force it. Both images are obtained directly from the firmware selector page at O-WRT.
Any idea why the no image metadata concern?
For the record I did try the -Force option. This results in a kernel panic on reboot and enters a boot loop.
The only thing I recall from when I flashed the same device was that I had to flash OpenWrt to boot partition 0 for it to work properly. So basically making the firmware in bootpartition 0 active and then boot from that partition.
Whether thats anything to do with your issue couldn't say but may be worth checking.
As mentioned by hogkite, you need to make sure you are installing the OpenWrt factory image (initramfs image) to the first image partition. The original commit message contains more info on how to do this via the serial console, but it should also work via the original web interface.
After installing the initramfs image, you have to install the sysupgrade image to complete installation of OpenWrt. The sysupgrade image should contain the required info to ensure you don't have to try force-flashing the image.
That said, I would actually recommend you install the latest 24.10-rc, since that will give you around 6MB of extra disk space to install package.