How to upgrade OpenWrt?

[@tomcollings]

Upgrading OpenWrt used to be a pain because I had to reinstall all my packages. Thank you Marc for showing this.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi - yes reinstalling the packages hopefully is a thing of the past ;-) I‘ll do a follow up on imagebuilder which allows to do this on premise.

[@0_1_2]

Thanks Marc, you’re the man. You have been my primary source for learning about openwrt

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome thanks!

[@Khundire]

Same here. I am considering to (finally) change the stock Asus RT58U for something "to last" like a x86 router using an old small computer that I have. Pfsense would be the go to in a x86 architecture but I personally prefer to use Linux instead of BSD I think it is much lighter and has much better support (drivers and sofware) so "meeting" OpenWRT throughout your videos has been really nice. This video probably will save me many hours and headaches in the future.

[@heraldreichel1971]

Thanks Marc for providing this guide, and obviously to the folks at openwrt for providing and amazing distro. I just upgraded an x86_64 router with the attended sysupgrade package and it worked perfectly! Granted, it was only from a 21.x build, but instead of hours of drudgery it took less than five minutes. As you like to say: Awesome!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome ;-)

[@lotusridder]

Hi Marc, this has been a wonderful episode. Upgrading is now so easy and not costing me many horrible hours. Many thanks.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Ruud, very true ;-) I felt delighted when I learnt about this.

[@a123qwertz567]

Very nice and comprehensive overview with no unnecessary information.

[@ruthlessadmin]

I already understood overlay filesystems, but your analogy with the pane of glass was the most succinct and overall best descriptions I've heard.

[@hiyoshi177]

im a noob in openwrt and this is very useful, thanks marc, this information is so clear for me.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Luis, glad you like it ;-)

[@duiliobeojoneneto9409]

Just bought a belkin and following all your guides, can't thank you enough for such quality content!!!

[@themanologue2791]

Thank you so much for highlighting this simple path to upgrading OpenWRT, it was so painless! If ASU run from the CLI, unlike in LuCi, you get to see all the packages that are updated. I'm also using the Belkin 3200 via snapshot and was dreading having to reflash everything, get all the correct packages, etc, in order to properly update. Absolute lifesaver

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome, thanks for sharing. Glad it helped;-)

[@ypat90]

Very useful. I haven't used OpenWRT very long and have been wiping in between. Going forward, I'll be more sophisticated in my approach. Thanks to you!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for the feedback. Yes - asu makes the whole thing a lot easier ;-)

[@JrManPT]

I've been using openwrt for over 10 years but I'm learning alot with your videos! Thank you 👍

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome, thanks a lot mate!

[@stevezphone]

Wow! I haven't done any software upgrades in a very long time because it was so difficult. This made it much easier! Thank you Marc, you helped me get updated!

[@seppix]

Dear Marc, I am deeply impressed about the quality of this video!!! You gave me the knowledge to contol my OpenWRT update process !!! Absolutely great job !!!

[@semirauthsala6001]

Thanks Marc. Great video. No need to go through build-root anymore. Recently I installed Openwrt on few devices including Lanner fw-7525. Everything on openwrt now very polished than few years back. The time I was using it on my TP-1043ND V1 :)

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, yes - it's so much easier these days. I love it.

[@alexk6745]

The video is great! So many new things I did not know. Many thanks for this. For me it is quit often a challenge to do upgrades as I do this not often and by the time I need to do it evertything is forgotten.

[@CHeckmann]

Thank you very much! This will save me so much time! In the past I had a script to install all packages I need but this is so much easier! I just bought a new router (GL-MT6000) running docker on it. Looking forward for the next update!

[@IamYuto]

Perfect timing since I installed openwrt for the first time a few days ago and waiting for the next update. Really enjoying your videos btw. Very calm and informative. You're a great teacher!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much ;-)

[@NotThatBloke]

That's a really great video- I now have a much better understanding of how to keep OpenWRT up-to-date.

[@itsawonderfullife4802]

Always looking forward to your very informative and warm videos. Thank you so much.

[@OneMarcFifty]

And thank you for watching- glad you like them.

[@JohnPMiller]

Attended SysUpgrade worked great on my Raspberry Pi except for one thing. I have OpenWRT installed to a 32GB EXT4 partition, and after upgrading, the partition shrunk to a tiny one. I did a poweroff of OpenWRT, then popped the microSD card into a linux box and resized the partition using fdisk, e2fsck and resize2fs. I wish this was built into Attended SysUpgrade, but it still saves time. Thanks for the video!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi John, yes - that's a headache still. Asu does not allow resizing the partitions. It's even worse if you _need_ a bigger partition than what is defined i the image builder (e.g. 104 MB on x86) - There is however an open pull request on the github that would address this github.com/openwrt/asu/pull/416 - let's see if it goes through.

[@eustefan88]

Thanks Marc ! Managed to update my hardware with a few clicks. Looking forward for the PXE multiboot video :)

[@OneMarcFifty]

Excellent! Glad it worked for you!

[@d00dEEE]

How timely! I too had been putting together a script to upgrade an OpenWrt box that has ext4 USB drivers, Syncthing and some other (forgotten) packages installed. I've been using attended sysupgrade on another router, but hadn't spent time to see if it would do released versions (have only used it for snapshot images), so this is quite a revelation.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Excellent- glad it helped ;-)

[@stephendetomasi1701]

That's a lot to run on a router! Why not a separate VM?

[@d00dEEE]

@@stephendetomasi1701 It's not mine, it's my sister's (hence no lab, no extra hardware) one-box replacement for an old Apple Airport Time Capsule. The TC was a router with an HD for backing up all your devices, via proprietary Time Machine software. The RT3200+Samsung 1TB drive was a huge upgrade in both performance, reliability and backup space, more than enough cpu and ram to handle the job (plus it only cost 1/4 as much as the Apple box did 10 years ago).

[@The1927ASR]

Ciao Marc, I installed Openwrt just a couple of months ago on the xiaomi 4a gigabit thanks to you and I was just wondering how to upgrade it. I'm about to start my journey in the IT(Linux and networking), you and a couple of other youtubers helped me a lot choosing the right path for my new career. Thank you so much for your videos. Greetings from your new roman follower, keep it up!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome - great to hear that it could help!

[@Major_Meerkat]

A valuable and timely video now that the newest OpenWRT stable release is around the corner.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Yes - definitely. My first tries with moving from 21 to 22 with asu where successful- I‘ll give it a shot once the release is out;-)

[@rtv1196]

Thanks, Marc. Your videos about OpenWrt are extremely useful for me.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, glad to hear that! Many thanks for the feedback

[@tenisviejos]

Wow, the custom build was a huge surprise. Thanks for the tip! Keep it up!

[@OneMarcFifty]

I will ;-) thanks a lot!

[@dmackle3849]

@@OneMarcFifty so to clarify please: there’s really no remaining advantage in us building locally (other than trusting the software that is returned (& let’s face it, who is doing a full source audit anyway..))?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Basically that’s correct. There are scenarios where the asu won’t work - e.g. x86 systems with large partitions.

[@new_fone_who_dis]

I've just used this to update my RT3200 - thank you!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Excellent! Glad you could use it and thanks for the feedback!

[@KevinVisscher]

Loved all your videos so far, very clear instructions! Appreciate all the work that also goes in to making the screen recordings of all the steps.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Kevin, many thanks

[@omijharjani]

Love your videos about E8450 helped me a lot while installing openwrt and to avoid bricking it with the ubi-non ubi fiasco

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Omi, many thanks for the feedback - glad you could use it! Yes, fiasco is the right word ;-) It's amazing to what depth the OpenWrt developers need to get into a device in order to make it usable ;-)

[@raymondieu]

Superb video Marc. I'll be using and recommending this video as great reference tool for understanding squashfs and overlay file systems in general to explain why it's really important to keep an eye on usable memory when making updates vs. upgrades. I'll definitely be using ASU as part of my update processes going forward and checking it out on a couple of of my physical "sandbox" routers this weekend. Many thanks for making great content!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Ray, many thanks for the comprehensive feedback!

[@samuraijaydee]

Thank you Marc! I really appreciate your videos. You're so talented! Edit: Just finished watching this... EPIC! Such a good explanation of what happens, and what a powerful solution. Thank you!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much!

[@techydude]

this is wonderfull, Marc, what i’ve been needing for a year! thank you !

[@OneMarcFifty]

You’re welcome- glad you like it ;-)

[@johnmangino3925]

how have i just seen this channel!? it’s fantastic.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi John, great to have you here! Many thanks for your friendly feedback.

[@Scigor]

Thanks!! I almost gave up on upgrading OpenWRT 😅

[@OneMarcFifty]

Yes - it can be painful ;-)

[@squalazzo]

very good, didn't know the last part about custom fw, thanks!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for the feedback- I think it was a revelation for many of us (including me) ;-)

[@Swenthorian]

Thank you so much! That LuCi attended upgrade tool should come standard!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Miles, yes - it’s nice ;-)

[@prajullas]

You earned yourself a subscriber. Love from Kerala.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for subscribing and commenting ;-)

[@GadgeteerZA]

Excellent video! Blows me away that the Attended System Upgrades is not built in...

[@mobiletechbangla]

Sir, Can you make a complete video on How to use band steering/ simultaneous dual band on Openwrt?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, this question comes up quite a couple of times really. I will presumably have a look into band steering at some point in time.

[@kamalrahou2924]

oh man, I learned a lot from you, I really appreciate your efforts and deep explaining, man thanks again and again 👍🏻

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Kamal, thanks for the feedback. I am glad you like the videos!

[@IpunkP]

great tutorial, one thing ican't find is resizing partition while sysupgrade, as i'm using raspberry pi with 16GB storage

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you - the imagebuilder can do that - there‘s settings for the partition size it creates. Video is planned ;-)

[@djmcwill1010]

The ASU portion at 17:15 looks like pure gold! Excited to try this on my next update. Great share.

[@DisectUK]

That was a really good informative video. Learnt heaps from it.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for your feedback;-)

[@nbensa]

WOW! for the custom build and attended sysupgrades! Unfortunately auc doesn't work on my router (gives "Invalid argument (22)') but I just requested a custom build from the web service and I upgraded my (old) TP Link 4300 :-)

[@OneMarcFifty]

First off - the WOW goes to the people who developed it - I have only described it;-) (Thanks anyway;-) ) - I‘ve seen the error 22 on a local build attempt but not on the asu server - is the router that failed x86 with a large partition? That’s something I will talk about in a follow up for sure. Many thanks for your feedback!

[@nbensa]

​@@OneMarcFifty the WOW! was for you for showing us the feature 🙂. I didn't know it existed. As for the auc, I think I have a misunderstanding of how it works. Do I need a build server deployed on my network? I'll do some reading. The router is a TP-Link 4300 (Atheros AR9344/mips).

[@OneMarcFifty]

No you don’t need anything local for asu/auc. Imagebuilder is a different solution that runs locally

[@fredrikrutgersson]

Thanks for this tip. This makes it easier for me to upgrade to the next version. // Fredrik

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much;-)

[@volkervitt]

I never liked OpenWRT, until I found your videos. Now, the Fritzboxes are gone and I run 4 OpenWRT boxes in my home network.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Volker, many thanks for the feedback!

[@黃胤棋-o1q]

Amazing tutorials in just 20 minutes, awesome!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much

[@rvanwaay]

Vielen danke aus Enschede NL, your video's are my favoriet on youtube!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hey Robert, dank jij wel and greetings to the Netherlands!

[@anilgarg57]

Marc, super duper video Thanks for making it.

[@Anonymouzee]

hi Marc... such a good pack of information... and some good and objective data about the use of squashfs and overlay... ?wouldn't be better to use casper to avoid the extra partition... and could have a dynamic size of the 'writable' part??

[@OneMarcFifty]

Interesting idea - I'd have to do some research on casper - I only know it in the context of initramfs and the like.

[@dleivam]

Awesome video, it's just what I need it.. Many thanks.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi David, glad you liked it - thank you for your feedback!

[@apricotcomputers3943]

Yes! Please do a video on openwrt server build

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, I might do that quite soon - actually given the fact that OpenWrt now supports custom image sizes with the image builder ;-)

[@apricotcomputers3943]

@@OneMarcFifty excellent. That would be great

[@praneethrv]

Thanks for creating such insightful videos and yes I am a Belkin RT3200 user too - that device is so good! That said, how often do you recommend running attended sysupgrade on the router? I am thinking no more frequently than once a quarter or so given there is a scope for things going wrong, etc.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, I am glad that you are happy with the Belkin! Well, in Theory you should upgrade frequently- but as you say - it’s always a risk etc. I would say it’s much better to upgrade every 3 or 6 months than not upgrade at all. Most users of stock firmware or webcams etc never upgrade - that’s where a lot of the security issues come from.

[@jithinsankar787]

Can you make a video on the 2 Gbps WAN/LAN NAT Routing on ramips MT7621 devices...this discussion is present in the forum.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Jithin, many thanks for the hint. For everyone else: The discussion is here: forum.openwrt.org/t/2-gbps-wan-lan-nat-routing-on-ramips-mt7621-devices/131478

[@jithinsankar787]

@@OneMarcFifty will you be making a video on testing this?😊

[@OneMarcFifty]

Maybe maybe ;-) I want to make a follow up video on the Belkin - might integrate it there ;-)

[@danilojaramillo8378]

Hello dear, excellent video and explanation, then performing the luci-assisted update procedure and compiling the firmware image with all the packages that I already have installed, by loading said image and updating, will I not lose any additional configuration that I had previously? example, interfaces, firewall rules, multiwan rules, etc?

[@jreid90]

Great video! I wonder how many people you influenced to purchase e8450/r3200 routers with your previous videos? You were the reason for my purchase!

[@OneMarcFifty]

So first off - I hope that you are happy with the purchase? I don’t recommend hardware often - but I personally use and like it ;-) I can’t tell you how many - I honestly have no idea - these days it is difficult to find specific hardware anyhow ;-(

[@UzairFarooqui]

Awesome video Mark. Thank you. I just built a x86/64 openwrt on HP T620+. Tried updating using both auc and luci attended SysUpgrade but I am getting error "Bad Message (74) on Auc and "Cound not connect to API" on Luci. running 22.03.1 - r19777-2853b6d652. Update: I tried 15 hours later and it worked. All updated nicely. I did have to resize the root partition again. Looks like there was some glitch on sysupgrade server that got sorted out overnight.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Yeah - keep in mind it's all non-profit free and the like ;-)

[@d00dEEE]

Oh, here's a question (probably better on the OpenWrt forums). What's going to happen when I update from 21.x to 22.x with my iptables/fw3 config into the new nftables/fw4 config???

[@OneMarcFifty]

The fw3 config will be carried over if you sticked to the GUI, i.e. everything that you did in LuCI will remain. Custom rules need to be rewritten

[@francocastilloAR]

I would really like to have my own server to update and have my own settings for the ImageBuilder like Wi-Fi enabled etc...

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Franco - that’s definitely a valid point of view! In my first attempts I could not get it to run locally - but running the imagebuilder is definitely a good choice for that scenario.

[@francocastilloAR]

@@OneMarcFifty The idea is to automate, since this online generator is based on ImageBuilders.

[@tigrodpt]

Great video as all the others. Are you working on the RPI + Switch + Wi-Fi AP as OpenWRT router? That would be awesome.

[@OneMarcFifty]

It's on the list ;-) I've been a lazy bug with regards to new videos the last weeks (wanted to try out a couple of things, see my activities on other platforms such as Github). But I will definitely do something in that space.

[@robertn916]

brilliant videos Marc, i have rbk50 Orbi router and satelite and wondering if a custom firmware will extend the life as i am sure support will dry up soon given new products are out.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Robert, unfortunately there seem to be no official OpenWrt builds for the orbi. However, there also seems to be a github repo github.com/SVoxel/ORBI-RBK50 that offers builds for that device. Unfortunately there is close to no info about who the author is etc.

[@-sunshine-]

Hi Marc, very well explained and highlighted. Many thanks for that. Although I have one question left. My current openwrt version 19. Can I use your procedure to execute the upgrade?

[@OneMarcFifty]

It _should_ work - if asu is available as a package under V 19 - not sure about this. Problems might occur however if your device had been added DSA support.

[@bladesrompolos]

Hi! First of all good to find you, great tutorials for our favorite openwrt. Secondly liked, subsbscribed and commenting since you asked :D The question is, can I upgrade from 21.xx to 23.05 with attended way? Thank you

[@tobiasfellmann7692]

Love the channel! Have you used openwisp? As I am bound to use unifi at work, so it's nice to manage from a central point...

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, no I haven’t (yet). I am rather trying to standardize on Ansible.

[@sanionline]

Thanks Marc. What seemed to be the most boring topic turned out to be an incredible timesaver. Now if you can find a way to give me the hours wasted on upgrading rpi & rpi zero with single interface (so much more amusing on pi zero with the usb/micro usb dongles and adapters to unplug replug while making sure to fit in between the ip config rollback time)!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hey, thanks for the feedback! You know, I wish I could get my own hours wasted back as well ;-)

[@bigfoz50]

Marc Great video very helpful and in laymans terms

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Andrew - thanks a lot!

[@eyzinn91]

I'm probably gonna have to build a custom firmware for my router again for update to include specific memory offset patch for WiFi on my netgear r6850

[@OneMarcFifty]

Is that a known bug/issue?

[@eyzinn91]

@@OneMarcFifty I think my reply got deleted because I included a link. But yeah I think it's a known issue, I found the fix on openwrt forum thread called Netgear R6850: very low transmit power on 5GHz

[@yeralexey]

Your videos are definetly cool! Thaks!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thanks for watching!

[@hamalantti]

Thank you, what a time saver!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Antti, I am glad that it could help you ;-)

[@andygonzalez7012]

Hello Marc. Like your videos. Question on this LUCI software upgrades. I went to the upgrade tab and went thru each file needing upgrade but except for upgrading individual files it did not install the 22.03 openwrt software. So how can i do this short of imaging the sd card all over again. I am using this as a travel router and the only files on it are the configured files needed for the added wlan adapter and vpn. I am interested in 22.03 to see if it supports AC1200 usb wireless adapters, etc.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Andy, you may use asu/auc as outlined in the video for this. However,I don't know where we stand with support for 5 GHz USB sticks really (not so much an issue of OpenWrt but rather the underlying kernel version)

[@MrAasi4]

Good video. I hope you make come back soon.

[@StanyoPeti]

Hi Marc! I have a special HW configuration with OpenWrt. My TP-Link router does not have enough storage space, so I connected a CF card via USB, and the overlay partition is on it. I would like to carry out the attendend sysupgrade, but I don't know that it will also work with the CF card? Do you perhaps have experience with this or give any advice? Thank you in advance!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hmmm... I have used extroot in the past and totally stopped doing so because upgrade is a nightmare. What I ended up doing was to remove the extroot, upgrade and do it again. I am sure you could do it with some sophisticated rsync script or the like. But - sorry - I am not using it any more :-(

[@StanyoPeti]

Thank you! I will try it… 😎

[@jurie_erwee]

Another great video. Thank you!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Jurie, thanks a lot ;-)

[@rustyp21]

Great video Marc! I have that exact same router, and I already have 22.03.1 and am researching upgrading the firmware to 23.05.0. This is an excellent video for me - especially right now! Any quick tips?

[@eugrus]

When upgrading from LEDE 17 to OpenWRT 22 should I use the sysupgrade image or the initramfs image?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Evgeny, I'd go with the sysupgrade image then.

[@eugrus]

@@OneMarcFifty thank you!

[@aletarg]

Excellent, thanks for the info!

[@miriamramstudio3982]

Great video. Very helpful. Thanks

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much!

[@umangsharma4392]

This was a really helpful video. I can now upgrade without having to install those non default packages separately. Can you make a video on ipv6 configuration on openwrt (preferably using Luci)?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Let’s see how much traction the IPv6 video gets on monday. If it does then there will be a video on IPv6 with OpenWrt

[@matrix20201978]

Thats a great guide and a very useful way to save time on upgrades! My only question is, how to upgrade between different major releases. I was able to upgrade from 21.02.1 to .5, but I can't seem to find an upgrade path to 22. Is it possible?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, yes - this is perfectly possible. It does depend on your hardware though. Currently the only reason why upgrades between major versions (from 19 to 21 to 22) should not work is that your hardware might have been ported to the DSA architecture between the releases. Besides that, going from one major release to another is perfectly possible and works exactly the same like within a version. You might need to check on package dependencies e.g. on IPTables for example though as Version 22 is now using nftables (for example SQM relies on IPTables)

[@matrix20201978]

@@OneMarcFifty Thats the thing, I have Xioami Mi 4A Gigabit edition, so 21.02 was already migrated to DSA. Not sure why 22 is not showing up as a possible upgrade.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Are you using uac or attended sysupgrade in LuCi? Might be worth checking the “advanced” tick box and/or update those packages?

[@matrix20201978]

@@OneMarcFifty Hey, thanks a bunch! Clicking advanced did the trick. Now proudly running 22.0.3.3 (latest from just 2 days ago).

[@matrix20201978]

I have to add an important warning. Ticking advanced works, but there is an unexpected complication. It doesn't install nftables and firewall4! As a result, the router still uses iptables and luci shows blank page in firewall status. The solution (it worked for me) is to install the appropriate packages from the package manager. In my case installing fw4 brought all the prerequisites. Just in case I also added ebtables-nft and arptables-nft (not sure I had to do that, but did just in case).

[@typodar]

Very useful! Thanks Marc!

[@OneMarcFifty]

You’re welcome- thanks for the feedback!

[@gijzzzdude]

Hello Marc, asu is being replaced by owut, can you do a video about owut?

[@doditv6467]

Hi marc, how to install openwrt to ubiquiti M5 AC Lite ?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, I think there is a generic installation procedure for Ubiquiti devices: openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/common

[@lrlemos0]

This video brought light 💡

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Leonardo - thanks for the feedback- glad you could use it!

[@Kirigaya__Yuuki]

i noticed that, using firmware selector to make a custom build, doesn't contain luci....i am running openwrt on archer a7v5 and the official package contains luci webui, but if i create a custom build and add/remove some packages, luci is not there in that list by default.....this makes me wonder, what other packages are skipped...is there some info in docs related to this?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hmmm... the snapshot releases typically don't contain LuCI. The release versions should.

[@rklauco]

Thanks, learned something new here. Question - I am thinking about building a router based on x86-64 platform. Wherever I go, everyone recommends pfSense for it. I like OpenWRT. Can you clarify what would be the benefits and downturns between using one or the other?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Robert, you may use pfSense, OpnSense and/or OpenWrt on x86 hardware. Generally speaking, people recommend what they know and what they have made good experience with. Also, there are not many people using both solutions. That would explain why someone recommends the one or the other. Also, if we look at the history of both products, then you see that pfsense has come from being a firewall solution while OpenWrt comes from being a Firmware for the WRT54 router. The main focus of both products is hence different. Unfortunately the discussion around both sometimes is quite emotional. Objectively speaking there are strengths and weaknesses of each product compared to each other. Things that you can easily do with pfsense but that are difficult to achieve with OpenWrt are for example Intrusion detection and protection, transparent proxy, application-layer firewall and the like. So if your focus is to have a router focusing on security then pfsense might be a good choice for you (or OPNSense of course). If however you have different hardware (i.e. a consumer router with few memory and non-x86 architecture) and/or you want to use 5 GHz Wi-fi then the preferred choice would be OpenWrt as it has much better Wi-fi support. For home usage it doesn't really matter, both solutions work great as routers and ip firewall. pfsense needs more resources though, so if you have a really weak system then OpenWrt might have some advantages. I personally am using OpenWrt mainly because I know it well, because I use it for over 15 years now and because I have a lot of non-x86 Wifi hardware. In a nutshell, if anyone tells you "forget the one, the other is better" - do not hesitate to question that statement. Hope that helps and has not added to the confusion ;-)

[@rklauco]

@@OneMarcFifty Thanks for excellent answer, really appreciated!

[@alexk6745]

From one side I liked the attended sysupgrade from shell. But from another side I do not like it. The reason is that after some time it might turn out that a certain package is no longer needed and replaced with another. E.g. developers of an app stopped using something and started using some other package. If we doing always attended sysupgrade from shell we can accumulate some no longer needed packages which could have some issues.

[@ronmanalili2206]

Hi.. how about the interface and vlan that i made from the old version. if i upload a new version of firmware is there a possibility that will lost also?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Ron, if you do not have a change from swconfig architecture to DSA between two updates then it should be saved. You can also check the /etc/sysupgrade file to see what is actually kept and what not.

[@ronmanalili2206]

Thank you marc👍

[@ns7354]

If a Openwrt is using an old package from 2017, how do i update the source for that one package to the latest?

[@OneMarcFifty]

You would need to check the source code repo and potentially recompile it if there is no newer version in newer repos.

[@usetheheadphones]

I have a problem when I restart the device, the settings are not saved

[@KryptoJanusz]

Good Content. A lot of information.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you!

[@oneoff9848]

Hi Marc, thanks for this excellent help. I want to upgrade from 19.07.7 to the latest stable build using the CLI. Would you recommend doing it step by step in major releases? So first to 21 and then to 22? Thanks in advance!

[@a892728]

Current stable release - OpenWrt 23.05.0 The current stable version series of OpenWrt is 23.05, with v23.05.0 being the latest release of the series. It was released on 13. October 2023.

[@fahadkarimhussain3965]

Can we install ntopng in openwrt like netdata.?

[@OneMarcFifty]

I doubt it as it contains a full webserver etc… also you‘d need to compile it - might be possible on x86 hardware in a docker container though

[@alexanderwingeskog758]

Love OpenWRT but sadly I experiment a lot and now I'm in a boot loop (my own doing ofc)... But I don't know how to get out of it... I did a stable reflash, bought a 32GB USB stick, did a extroot (which worked like a treat!) and did something (now I can remember what) bad (installed something, not working or made a really bad config) and it sort of boot looped... booted, and restarted so and an on... So tried to get into failsafe mode (which worked) but with a really limited shell as (again probably the USB failed, which contained more then half the root dir) and with much limited commands I could do pretty much a "firstboot" and nothing else (still boot looped ofc)... So where do I go from here... removing the USB is the only thing that gets you into failsafe shell, and with it in it just boot loops... Got drunk and mad formatted the USB (guessing it would go into more of a failsafe :-) but na same thing... Maybe the onboard flash got crazy/corrupt but I don't think so... I think my extroot went haywire and sadly the onboard flash points to it. Mount works, VI works, and reboot, firstboot but not much else... I guess I can not TFTP flash it again (failsafe does not start a TFTP client?) what to do? is it semibricked? I'm sad.. and a bit drunk :-)

[@davidboughman138]

When I download a rooter version, what is the difference between basic fw and full? The full is a larger file

[@dopamyth]

Vivement 22.03 👍👌😅 bientôt

[@OneMarcFifty]

Oui, absolument;-) Ca ne devrait plus tarder ;-)

[@goppinaththurairajah760]

As usual, very well explained. This is one of the topics I would like to have a deep dive and thanks for your effort, Marc. By the way, I have two very short questions. I am using Raspberry Pi 4 as a home router and using SQUASHFS as the filesystem. What is the right filesystem for the Raspberry Pi with SD cards? SQUASHFS or EXT4? After installing the OpenWRT on the SD card, I have to manually resize the filesystem to make use of all available space. Is there any better alternative for this approach? I am eagerly waiting to see a video on the topic of installing OpenWRT on Raspberry Pi.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Tough question really. If you use squashfs then you'll have an overlay file system. If you use ext4 then there will only be one filesystem. Maybe squashfs is safer... From a wear-out standpoint OpenWrt should not put too much load on the card in either case because it makes extensive use of the RAMdisk

[@vegaskidd555]

hi im 2 years late.. when i upgrade to latest version do i use normal or ubi firmware?

[@MasterVader510]

Great content, thank you lots!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for the feedback and thanks for watching !

[@JS-fv7io]

Hi Marc, Thank you for your guide. Does it work for snapshot firmware ? on Luci I got an error "Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'luci-app-attendedsysupgrade') "

[@mostafahussein7946]

what about extroot do i need to format usb and reapply extroot steps after every upgrade?! or there is a better solution