Flint 2 - Upgrade

[fabreg]

Yesterday I tried to install last beta firmware: it worked fine but at the end I have to reinstall many luci packages (opkg install x, y,z etc etc.)
Is this normal?

Thank you.

[admon]

Yes, that’s normal.

Installing the firmware will reflash the OS image.

[fabreg]

Is there a way to take a backup of Luci? So after the upgrade I can restore easily without reinstall every single package.

Thank you

[admon]

Yep, here you go:

HOW-TO: Script: List My OPKGs (to a file for backup)

Keywords: backup, opkg, plugins, list, howto, script, shell, luci, restore, ipk, tarball, conf Description List user’s (your) installed packages, writing them to a text file that can be used to reinstall the binaries of what a user manually installed. The resulting .list file will be use to opkg install to pull from the feeds. That is done with two commands in one execution. The GL GUI doesn’t feature a backup function. Creating & restoring a backup achieve (.tar.gz, aka tarball) of all your…

[fabreg]

Thanks a lot!
There is also the option from the Luci gui: System → Backup / Flash firmware / Generate archive (I did not notice that)

[admon]

Would not do it that way because it could be problematic when the config isn’t suitable for the newest firmware.

[bring.fringe18]

I wouldn’t worry about that too much; most user installed ipk are going to be incremental in nature so the confs should be relatively re-usabe. Worse case scenario is to just reflash again after a bad configuration fr the restored archive, then cherry pick thru the tarball for individual confs (7-zip is free for those on Windows).

I could see that being the case if/when GL finally pushes out OWRT 23.05 based builds & all the custom iptable confs everyone’s backed up go to shyte. That’ll be interesting.

https://www.7-zip.org/

[GLrs]

Firmware v.3 offered after upgrades a list of the formerly installed packages for easy reinstall, doesn’t v.4 do the same?

[fabreg]

Basically the script re-install all the packages, the gui all the configuration files. You should use both (and naturally double check is the configuration is still valid with the new pkg)

[bring.fringe18]

Exactly. Text files are easier to store than trying to muck around with dd or rsync just to dump full copies of the onboard storage’s partition contents.

[slesar]

Does have a special hidden storage for reset factory? I noticed GUI have option Reset. I wonder if upgrade firmware and will be overwrite all inside storage and lost reset factory

[bring.fringe18]

It doesn’t seem so but major releases require complete overwrites w/ out option to save current confs, (eg: 3.216 → 4.3.7) IIRC.

root@flint:~# blkid
/dev/ubi0_2: UUID="bcfe3adf-298d-4ff3-90d2-c20e0b988f72" TYPE="ubifs"
/dev/ubi0_1: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/mtdblock9: UUID="1252580573" TYPE="ubi"
/dev/mtdblock12: TYPE="squashfs"

f/w 4.4.6-r1