3.211 Upgrade - Still Recommend to NOT keep settings?

I am about to upgrade. Is it still recommended to not keep settings when upgrading? What is the risk? And will everything be erased including VPN profiles?

I didn’t see a post for concentrating all the upgrade experiences for version 3.211 which I think is a good idea for every new firmware version.

And thankyou GL-iNet for the great little routers and to everyone here for contributing questions and answers and trying to figure things out together.

It always say not keep settings.

Pls always backup your settings.

What is the recommended method for backing up and restoring custom settings on GL iNet routers?

You can backup and restore settings LuCI → System → Backup / Flash Firmware.

It is okay to try minor upgrades without clearing settings. If there are problems afterwards, then you can clear the settings and set up again.

GL.iNet has so many Beta releases with minor fixes and it would be such a hassle to set up again every time.

I do not work for and I am not directly associated with GL.iNet

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Luci is no longer loaded by default. If we are told we should backup, why is this not part of the default install? Why is this not better documented?

You can do this without Luci so it is not a requirement to do backups (you can copy files using SSH). Luci was removed because most users will not need to use it, and it is an easy way to break something if you don’t know what you are doing. You can do most things with the GL UI. It was also a size restriction i believe. Some routers have very little space remaining, and removing Luci was a requirement to add some of the later features to the GL UI.

You can also always read the latest documentation on the GL site, here is the documentation about Luci, clearly stating it is not installed in some cases:

Also, even though Alfie recommends you backup your settings, in the past a lot of strange issues and random bugs were caused by users saving their settings when doing an upgrade, that is still in my opinion not a recommended thing to do, especially when upgrading between major firmware versions and between stable and testing versions. I personally run a script via SSH after doing an upgrade, that restores all my settings.

The default LuCI backup includes the most common configuration files under the /etc directory.

You can customize the LuCI backup by adding any files and directories you want in the Configuration tab of the backup page.

The generated archive is in compressed TAR format (.tar.gz) that you can easily open in WinZip, WinRar or 7-Zip.

I do not work for and I am not directly associated with GL.iNet

1 Like

@eric

Ok, so it’s time to give you a formal warning. Please read the new community guidelines here:

Nearly all your recent posts have been passive aggressive, have a bad attitude and usually are just complaining and not offering anything to the topic. I have hidden your post above, as the topic creator already has enough information to make up his/her mind on the topic. Please change your attitude, in the future you might get completely ignored and posts removed. Thanks for understanding.

@wcs2228 For you on the other hand, thanks so much for helping recently, your posts are very helpful and welcome, keep it up. :blush::sparkling_heart: