An OpenWrt upgrade will replace the entire current OpenWrt installation with a new version. This includes the Linux kernel, the SquashFS partition and the JFFS2 partition.
The common upgrade paths below will automatically preserve much of the OpenWrt OS configuration by saving and then restoring configuration files in specific common locations (including /etc/config). This will preserve things like OpenWrt network settings, WiFi settings, the device hostname, and so on.
The first part of the upgrade process is to prepare for the upgrade. This includes documenting programs and settings that will need to be re-installed or restored after the upgrade, locating and downloading the correct OpenWrt upgrade image for your hardware.
Next is the actual upgrade. There are two common upgrade paths to actually perform the upgrade. One uses the LuCI web interface "Flash new firmware image" command and one uses the command-line sysupgrade
command. You can use either approach.
After the OS upgrade, there are usually some additional configuration steps required to re-install additional packages not part of the base OpenWrt install, to configure new OpenWrt functionality or to update configuration files to reflect new settings or updated packages. Please see the section below with more details.
Both the LuCI and sysupgrade upgrade procedures work by saving specified configuration files, wiping the entire file system, installing the new version of OpenWrt and then restoring back the saved configuration files. This means that any parts of the file system that are not specifically saved will be lost.
In particular, any manually installed software packages you may have installed after the initial OpenWrt installation have to be reinstalled after an OpenWrt upgrade. That way everything will match, e.g. the updated Linux kernel and any installed kernel modules.
Any configuration files or data files placed in locations not specifically listed as being preserved below will also be lost in an OpenWrt upgrade. Be sure to check any files you have added or customized from a default OpenWrt install to back up these items before an upgrade.
This script is from forum member gsenna and was originally posted in the forum discussion "Default packages attitude 12.09rc2 tplink 1043nd" at https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=43480
vi /tmp/listuserpackages.sh
#!/bin/ash echo >&2 User-installed packages are the following: sed -ne '/^Package:[[:blank:]]*/ { s/// h } /user installed/ { g p }' /usr/lib/opkg/status
/bin/ash /tmp/listuserpackages.sh
User-installed packages are the following: snmpd-static
Note that the script may list several packages that are part of the default OpenWrt install and will have their changed configuration files automatically backed up and restored. In addition, packages installed as dependences of other packages may show here. It is only important to note the names of packages that you directly installed manually. Any dependencies of these packages will automatically be reinstalled when the primary package is reinstalled.
An alternative script, that uses awk instead of sed/grep and is much shorter (provided by user valentijn):
vi /tmp/listuserpackages.awk
/^Package:/{PKG= $2} /^Status: .*user installed/{print PKG}
awk -f /tmp/listuserpackages.awk /usr/lib/opkg/status
This script will only output a list of user (and default) installed packages.
This is an alternative to the script above. This command will list all packages related to any file in the whole file system that has changed from the default OpenWrt default version.
Note that the script may list several packages that are part of the default OpenWrt install and will have their changed configuration files automatically backed up and restored. In addition, packages installed as dependences of other packages may show here. It is only important to note the names of packages that you directly installed manually. Any dependencies of these packages will automatically be reinstalled when the primary package is reinstalled.
# this version is for OpenWrt 14.07 "Barrier Breaker" or earlier find /overlay/ | sed s:/overlay::g | while read file; do opkg search $file; done | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq # this command is for OpenWrt 15.05 find /overlay/upper/ | sed s:/overlay/upper::g | while read file; do opkg search $file; done | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq
The LuCI and sysupgrade
upgrades will preserve configuration files:
opkg list-changed-conffiles
/lib/upgrade/keep.d/
(for example, /lib/upgrade/keep.d/base-file-essential)Based on the list of user-installed packages identified above, you may know that you have other configuration or data files that need to be preserved and that are not included in the default set of files to save. Your new files should be added to /etc/sysupgrade.conf. By default, this file just has comments in it.
Go to System > Backup/Flash Firmware > Configuration tab. This will display the current contents of /etc/sysupgrade.conf file and the edit window can be used to add additional lines to the file. Click "Submit" when done editing.
To view all the configuration files that will be saved on an upgrade, click the "Open list…" button.
Edit /etc/sysupgrade.conf with an editor. For example:
vi /etc/sysupgrade.conf
## This file contains files and directories that should ## be preserved during an upgrade. # /etc/example.conf # /etc/openvpn/ ## customization: preserve sudo files /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.d/
Luci has a separate set of settings in the "config extern 'flash_keep'" section of the file /etc/config/luci relating to configuration files that should be preserved.
In the past, it appears this list was used by LuCI (see https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=100739#p100739). However, at least as of OpenWrt 14.07, the LuCI OpenWrt upgrade procedure actually calls the sysupgrade script and so it appears the flash_keep settings in /etc/config/luci are now ignored.
For x86 systems there is no "sysupgrade" image, just be sure to use the new firmware image has the same family of filesystem (if the current firmware uses squashfs then the new will use squashfs as well and if the current has ext the new will use ext filesystem. Note that an upgrade from ext2 [10.03.1] to ext4 [12.09] seems not working. Tested 10.03.1 squashfs to 12.09 squashfs, working ; 10.03.1 squashfs to 12.09 ext4 failed; 10.03.1 ext2 to 12.09 ext4 failed)
/tmp
directory is stored in RAM (using tmpfs), not in the permanent flash storage.
# example downloading the OpenWrt 15.05 upgrade image for a TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND ver. 1.x router cd /tmp wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05/ar71xx/generic/openwrt-15.05-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin # check the integrity of the image file wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05/ar71xx/generic/md5sums # the desired result is that the downloaded firmware filename is listed with "OK" afterwards md5sum -c md5sums 2> /dev/null | grep OK
If your device's /tmp filesystem is not large enough to store the OpenWrt upgrade image, this section provides tips to temporarily free up RAM.
First check memory usage with the free
or top
or cat /proc/meminfo
commands; proceed if you have as much free RAM as the image is in size plus an some additional MiB of free memory.
root@openwrt:/$ free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 29540 18124 11416 0 1248
-/+ buffers: 16876 12664
Swap: 0 0 0 |
In this example there are precisely 11416 KiB of RAM unused. All the rest 32768 - 11416 = 21352 KiB are used somehow and a portion of it can and will be made available by the kernel, if it be needed, the problem is, we do not know how much exactly that is. Make sure enough is available. Free space in /tmp also counts towards free memory. Therefore with:
root@openwrt:/$ free
Mem: 13388 12636 752 0 1292
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 13388 12636 752 |
root@openwrt:/$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 2304 2304 0 100% /rom
tmpfs 6696 60 6636 1% /tmp
tmpfs 512 0 512 0% /dev
/dev/mtdblock3 576 288 288 50% /overlay
mini_fo:/overlay 2304 2304 0 100% / |
One has actually 752+6636 KiB of free memory available.
opkg
packages file:
rm -r /tmp/opkg-lists/
sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
rm /etc/modules.d/*80211* rm /etc/modules.d/*ath9k* rm /etc/modules.d/b43* reboot
The wireless drivers, usually take up quite some amount of RAM and are not required (unless you are connected via wireless of course ), so an easy way to free up some RAM is to delete the symlinks in
etc/modules.d
so these are not loaded into memory at the next reboot.
/etc/sysupgrade.conf
(Attitude Adjustment)/etc/sysupgrade.conf
(Previous versions)
sysupgrade -v /tmp/filename-of-downloaded-sysupgrade.bin
Saving config files... etc/config/dhcp etc/config/dropbear etc/config/firewall etc/config/luci etc/config/network etc/config/snmpd etc/config/system etc/config/ubootenv etc/config/ucitrack etc/config/uhttpd etc/config/wireless etc/dropbear/authorized_keys etc/dropbear/dropbear_dss_host_key etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key etc/firewall.user etc/group etc/hosts etc/inittab etc/passwd etc/profile etc/rc.local etc/shadow etc/shells etc/sudoers etc/sudoers.d/custom etc/sysctl.conf etc/sysupgrade.conf killall: watchdog: no process killed Sending TERM to remaining processes ... ubusd askfirst logd logread netifd odhcpd snmpd uhttpd ntpd dnsmasq Sending KILL to remaining processes ... askfirst Switching to ramdisk... Performing system upgrade... Unlocking firmware ... Writing from <stdin> to firmware ... [w] Appending jffs2 data from /tmp/sysupgrade.tgz to firmware...TRX header not found Error fixing up TRX header Upgrade completed Rebooting system...
Note: The "TRX header not found" and "Error fixing up TRX header" errors are not a problem as per OpenWrt developer jow's post at https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/8623
![]() | For unknown reasons such a cold reset has often been reported to be necessary after a sysupgrade. This is very very bad in case you performed this remotely! |
After the initial update, it is good to check for any updated packages released after the base OS firmware image was built.
opkg update opkg list-upgradable
opkg upgrade luci-lib-ip luci-theme-bootstrap luci-app-firewall luci-proto-ppp luci-mod-admin-full luci-base luci-proto-ipv6 luci-lib-nixio luci
opkg list-upgradable
After a successful upgrade, you will need to reinstall all previously installed packages. You made a list of these above. Package configuration files should have been preserved due to steps above, but not the actual packages themselves.
opkg update
opkg install snmpd-static
The new package installations will have installed new, default versions of package configuration files. As your existing configuration files were already in place, opkg would have displayed a warning about this and saved the new configuration file versions under …-opkg filenames.
The new package-provided configuration files should be compared with your older customized files to merge in any new options or changes of syntax in these files.
The diffutils
program is helpful for this.
For example:
# install diffutils opkg install diffutils # locate all -opkg files find /etc -name *-opkg # compare old customized /etc/config/snmpd with new generic file /etc/config/snmpd-opkg diff /etc/config/snmpd /etc/config/snmpd-opkg # merge in any needed changes to the active version of the configuration file vi /etc/config/snmpd # and clean up by removing the package manager-version of the configuration file rm /etc/config/snmpd-opkg # or if the new version provided by the package maintainer should just replace the old config file then just swap it in mv /etc/config/snmpd-opkg /etc/config/snmpd
/etc/init.d/snmpd enable /etc/init.d/snmpd start
The upgrade is fully complete now. It is a good idea to do a test reboot and ensure all expected functionality is working as before.
reboot
The OS upgrade options are much more manual than using either LuCI or sysupgrade. They are only needed in unusual circumstances.
sysupgrade
is not supported for your embedded device, you should use mtd
instead:mtd -r write /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-wzr-hp-ag300h-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin firmware
Netcat could be employed if you cannot free enough RAM. See netcat. Netcat needs to be installed first.
![]() | This method is NOT recommended! |
nc -q0 192.168.1.1 1234 < openwrt-ar71xx-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
nc -l -p 1234 | mtd write - firmware
This method is fine for self built firmwares.
You should check how much RAM you have currently available.(In case you do not have enough left, consult Free up RAM.)
free
cat [specified firmware].bin | pv -b | nc -l -p 3333
nc 192.168.1.111 3333 > /tmp/[specified firmware].bin
The port 3333 an IP address 192.168.1.111 are just examples. The command 'pv -b' is optional for tracking progress but maybe you have to install pv to your system previously.
sysupgrade -v /tmp/[specified firmware].bin
OR |
mtd -r write /tmp/[specified firmware].bin firmware
I have tested under Ubuntu 11.10.
Make sure your router has enough memory.
root@OpenWrt:/# free
Make sure you have set the password for your router (you must set a password for your router to enable the SSH). See First Login for more details.
On your Linux PC run:
linux$ scp openwrt-ar71xx-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin root@192.168.1.1:/tmpInput 'yes' to estabilish authenticity, then input the password of your router. Wait
scp
command finished.
Now you can see your firmware in /tmp directory.
root@OpenWrt:/# sysupgrade -v /tmp/[specified firmware].bin
192.168.1.1 is the ip address(may be called GateWay) of your router. Check by run:
linux$ ip ror you can check the the /etc/config/network file, 127.0.0.1 is the loopback ipaddress, the other one is the ip address of your router.
root@OpenWrt:/# grep ipaddr /etc/config/network