Two OpenWrt updates

[Posted April 21, 2022 by corbet]

The OpenWrt 21.02.3 and 19.07.10 updates have been released. These updates contain some security fixes and improved device support. It's noting that this is the last 19.07 update:

OpenWrt 19.07.10 is the final release of the 19.07 release branch, this branch is now end of life and we will not fix problems on this branch any more, not even severe security problems. We encourage all users still using OpenWrt 19.07 to upgrade to OpenWrt 21.02 or more recent OpenWrt versions.

Router distributions are easy to forget about; now might be a good time to check any relevant systems and, if needed, doing an upgrade.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 12:31 UTC (Thu) by arekm (guest, #4846) [Link] (21 responses)

Upgrading openwrt is weirdest thing ever - made mostly of pain.

No simple and sane way. Wiki [1] is full of various methods, including custom hacks, additional scripts to do (and figuring out which are needed, when, why).
sysupgrade wipes out installed additional packages and other upgrade "fun".

1. https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/generic....

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 15:15 UTC (Thu) by fatso (guest, #156951) [Link]

yes i build custom image to avoid this pain but still no fun :(

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 15:19 UTC (Thu) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link] (2 responses)

There is, unfortunately, a trade-off in the form of increased administrative burden when trying to cram as much flexibility as possible into hardware as cheap and limited as what OpenWrt runs on. If the OpenWrt team were to simplify the installation and upgrade procedures by removing major features such as the additional package repositories or reducing the range of hardware it runs on, people would be upset about that, too.

It is true that the documentation could be better, but there are few volunteers willing to keep the documentation current with all the idiosyncrasies of the hundreds of platforms OpenWrt runs on...

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 16:10 UTC (Thu) by Nahor (subscriber, #51583) [Link] (1 responses)

They are able to keep the configuration files, why are they not able to keep track of manually added packages and automatically reinstall them? And why can't they keep track if the default configuration files have changed between the old and new version of the packages and not complain then when the user manually modified it?

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 18:30 UTC (Thu) by Thalience (subscriber, #4217) [Link]

In the snapshot releases, there is now an option to have the upgrade process provide a file with the list of manually installed packages for easy re-installation! There are a bunch of obvious things that could go wrong with having the upgrade process automatically download and reinstall the packages, so handling all the corner cases there would be a lot of work.

Doing something smarter about config files where the defaults have changed would be a desirable feature, although I don't think that automatically accepting the new defaults is always the right answer.

I believe that patches would be welcome in support of either of these ideas.

OpenWrt update fun

Posted Apr 21, 2022 16:25 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (1 responses)

Reasons I use (FreeBSD-based) OpnSense on my router, though it isn't necessarily as flexible as OpenWrt. Upgrades are painless.

OpenWrt update fun

Posted Apr 22, 2022 0:04 UTC (Fri) by sjj (guest, #2020) [Link]

Me too. It’s great.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 16:32 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

Yeah, I managed to apparently brick [1] one of my APs trying to upgrade it to 21.02.3 -- but that's probably my own fault in this instance; I had forgotten it was running a development build that predated a working sysupgrade path.

[1] Even the console UART isn't generating output, but I still need to confirm the serial adapter I'm using is okay. [2]
[2] As usual my stash of dongles and spare parts (including two identical APs) will require a 2.5-hour round trip to retrieve...

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 17:25 UTC (Thu) by hrw (subscriber, #44826) [Link] (2 responses)

Ever tried "auc" command?

My AP runs snapshot as it was too new for 21.02 release. For snapshot to snapshot updates auc is enough.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 18:22 UTC (Thu) by arekm (guest, #4846) [Link] (1 responses)

Upgrade wiki page is silent about it. Which is a big warning already. Does it preserve additionally installed packages?

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 18:52 UTC (Thu) by hrw (subscriber, #44826) [Link]

It grabs list of installed packages and requests image build with them. Then fetch and sysupgrade.

At least this is how I understood that tool.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 21, 2022 17:32 UTC (Thu) by bmork (subscriber, #88411) [Link]

You could try out the Sysupgrade server for a more streamlines upgrade experience: https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org/

This will build and install a customized image with all your packages. More docs on https://github.com/openwrt/asu

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 22, 2022 0:10 UTC (Fri) by sjj (guest, #2020) [Link] (1 responses)

Uh, it’s not like package managers are a new invention on Linux. I haven’t used openwrt in a decade or so, but I didn’t remember it being this user-hostile.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 22, 2022 3:45 UTC (Fri) by champtar (subscriber, #128673) [Link]

Fitting a whole OS in less than 8Mo removes a lot of options from the table. Also see bmork comment about the sysupgrade server, if you don't want to build images yourself there is a server that will do it for you.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 22, 2022 5:54 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (4 responses)

My TurrisOS (OpenWRT based) install was automatically upgraded across major versions and I didn't even notice it happened until some time later.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 22, 2022 6:12 UTC (Fri) by arekm (guest, #4846) [Link] (3 responses)

I have one Turris router and indeed - it works well there, without touching anything. Nicely automated (if desired by user) and I only get email notifications about what has changed/upgraded, when reboot activating these (like new kernel) is going to happen. Very nice.

OpenWrt is like in stone age of package managers and upgrade path (and yes, everyone knows "patches welcome"). Small size is not a reason for this but probably lack of capable people interested in improving this, including devs.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 22, 2022 8:47 UTC (Fri) by pbaum (subscriber, #4514) [Link]

I have also a Turrix Mox and I love it.

But comparing the hardware of the Mox and the hardware of my APs, which run pure OpenWrt, make it very clear that you have to reduce some features to make such a powerful system run on such small hardware.

I just say thank you OpenWrt dev team for your hard work which allows me to run an open source system on this critical infrastructure.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 22, 2022 18:42 UTC (Fri) by bmork (subscriber, #88411) [Link] (1 responses)

> Small size is not a reason for this

Sure it is. There is a vast difference between devices like the Turris routers - designed for software flexibility with plenty of flash, and the average OpenWrt device - designed for a feature limited vendor firmware with price tag as the first (and only?) priority.

OpenWrt also strives to maintain compatibility with the vendor firmware, which often means that only a fraction of the small flash chip is available for OpenWrt. The original boot-loader decides the flash partition layout. Many devices with almost no flash at all still use dual system images for some sort of "failsafe".

Cramming all you need into such devices means compromising. One very important compromise is to put as much as possible of the required software in a compressed read-only file system, and use an overlay file system for configuration and optional packages. Software installed in the overlay will waste much more flash than software installed in the initial read-only file system. For this reason it's not obvious that such packages should be automatically re-installed on upgrades. And I believe the OpenWrt default is intentional. The OpenWrt base system comes with everything required for common use cases. Most users are much better off carefully reviewing their list of optional packages on every upgrade, than accumulating flash waste. Automatic re-install would also come with a significant risk of running out of space, since everything tends to grow.

Users wanting a large number of optional packages should consider the auc tool and sysupgrade server. This both ensures automatic upgrades of all packages, and saves as much flash space as possible by moving everything to the compressed image.

In the old days, before the sysupgrade server, you had to build your own image to achieve that.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 22, 2022 19:30 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> One very important compromise is to put as much as possible of the required software in a compressed read-only file system, and use an overlay file system for configuration and optional packages. Software installed in the overlay will waste much more flash than software installed in the initial read-only file system.

Add-on packages could also be installed as discrete compressed read-only filesystem images to be overlayed on top of the root filesystem, rather than unpacking them into the uncompressed read/write filesystem.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted Apr 24, 2022 11:00 UTC (Sun) by pharm (guest, #22305) [Link] (1 responses)

> Upgrading openwrt is weirdest thing ever - made mostly of pain.

This is true, but for some reason the most straightforward & least hassle upgrade method isn’t mentioned on the main website.

The sysupgrade service will take your package list & build you a custom image that can then be used to automatically upgrade your system, preserving the currently installed packages & then re-using the existing configuration. It “just works” (tm).

1) Go to https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org/ & follow the instructions.
2) Never suffer the pain of OpenWRT point release upgrades ever again.

(Full versions will still require a re-install IIRC - this method doesn’t support upgrades across major release versions.)

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted May 5, 2022 11:45 UTC (Thu) by Gollum (guest, #25237) [Link]

auc worked flawlessly from 21.02.2 to 21.02.3, apart from a missing dependency on rpcd, which I had to install manually.

Two OpenWrt updates

Posted May 14, 2022 16:56 UTC (Sat) by anatolik (guest, #73797) [Link]

I second that. OpenWrt package and release management are weird and very inconvenient. Keeping an OpenWrt router up-to-date is a frustrating experience.