How to upgrade OpenWrt?

An upgrade of OpenWrt can be done in many ways - Upgrade with LuCi, Upgrade with sysupgrade or Upgrade OpenWrt with the new Attended SysUpgrade functionality asu through the OpenWrt Firmware picker or using the OpenWrt Attended Upgrade Client, acu. We will talk about the OpenWrt Imagebuilder in a following episode.

0:00 why upgrade? - upgrade at a glance
2:33 update vs upgrade
4:16 Why re-image for upgrade?
7:13 read/write storage
9:30 what is kept after upgrades?
12:13 how opkg keeps track of packages
15:28 attended sysupgrade (asu)
17:14 asu from the router
19:17 asu from the shell
20:20 one last thought

[tomcollings]

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

[__]

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

[aqwertz]

Very nice and comprehensive overview with no unnecessary information.

Thank you so much for the clear explanation. Even 2 years later this really helps.

[heraldreichel]

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!

[lotusridder]

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

[hiyoshi]

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

[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.

[JrManPT]

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

Thank you 👍

[ypat]

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!

[duiliobeojoneneto]

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

[themanologue]

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

[itsawonderfullife]

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

[semirauthsala]

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 :)

[alexk]

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.

[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!

[TheASR]

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!

[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 !!!

[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!

[tenisviejos]

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