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Should I even THINK about upgradng packages in OpenWRT?


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Posted

I posted this on Stack Exchange at Should I even THINK about upgradng packages in OpenWRT?, and didn't receive any reasonable answer as the majority of the answers boiled down to "it depends", so I am asking it here.

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Ref: The related posting at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/400231/how-do-i-upgrade-all-of-my-installed-packages-in-openwrt

Note that, though I am not new to Linux per se, I AM new to OpenWRT, especially as applied to routers and such like.

The referenced article, along with this article on the OpenWRT web page, (https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/additional-software/opkg#upgrading_packages), indicates that mass upgrades are potentially dangerous, almost to the point of "Don't even THINK of running e2fsck on a mounted partition" severity - and other sections indicate that individual updates themselves can be a dicey matter.

However, the comments within the original post referenced above vary widely - ranging from "just don't" to others who say that updates are an important part of maintaining system security.

My original assumption, (based on previous "big package" Linux experience), is that package maintainers have a responsibility to ensure that package updates will successfully update an existing package - and if there's a significant incompatibility and/or dependency change, it should be a different, (though related), package.

So, what's the truth of this?  Maybe I should just stick with the stock functionality of my router instead of opening the can of worms that is OpenWRT?

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Any comments and guidance would be gratefully appreciated.

6 answers to this question

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Posted
21 hours ago, Jim said:

So, what's the truth of this?  Maybe I should just stick with the stock functionality of my router instead of opening the can of worms that is OpenWRT?

Hello, Jim 🙂

Nothing is wrong with trying OPKG if you want to configure something that is not possible with the stock firmware.
That being said there is no official support for any OPKG-related issues, so if you have an issue you will have to refer to other users,
e.g., here on the forum or in the OpenWRT community. However, since Keenetic firmware is not OpenWRT the advice you will get from the OpenWRT community
may be not fully applicable.

On the other hand, I would suggest that you just back up your router's firmware and configuration files (startup-config) once you configured the stock firmware
the way you want it. You can do that via the web UI. Even if something goes wrong with the OPKG, you can go the the router's web UI, de-select the USB drive you've installed OPKG to and keep using the stock firmware until you want to try again. If the "something goes wrong" situation is worse and you can't access the web UI -- you will
always be able to restore the stock firmware using the files you backed up *.

* The startup configuration file does not contain encryption keys used in the Wi-Fi system or in WireGuard interfaces. That means that if you restore your router's
configuration using a backed up startup-config file, you will have to re-acquire any Wi-Fi system extenders (if you have them) and re-create WireGuard interfaces (if you use them).

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Posted
3 hours ago, Jim said:

And if I don't install the OPKG files to an external drive?

 

You should also be able do delete everything created by the OPKG installer via the web UI/telnet.

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Posted

Idea:

Find a reasonably large flash drive for the downloads.

Would that work or be too slow?

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Posted
16 hours ago, Jim said:

Idea:

Find a reasonably large flash drive for the downloads.

Would that work or be too slow?

@Jim, installing OPKG (the base system + all the packages you choose) on an external USB drive is the assumed default setup.
It definitely works.

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Posted
1 hour ago, eralde said:

@Jim, installing OPKG (the base system + all the packages you choose) on an external USB drive is the assumed default setup.
It definitely works.

On a SSD/HDD or a flash drive?

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