OpenWrt 21.02 status

[Daniel Golle]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 10:30:20PM +0200, Adrian Schmutzler wrote:
> > The last time I tried it was very confusing. When I first read about "new fresh
> > installation", I thought: "install without keeping settings".
> > However, OpenWrt returned an image check failure, even when I did not
> > keep the settings (sysupgrade -n). It was the same type of error (image
> > validation failed) that would happen if I selected the wrong firmware (but
> > maybe with a different content). The only way to install it was forcing the
> > operation, which might also allow an incompatible image to be installed
> > (bricking the device). Please reconsider some form of upgrade path that
> > validates the image and allows the user to upgrade without a force or going
> > back to factory before reinstalling OpenWrt with DSA. Something like
> > "update package foo to version n.m.z or upgrade to 19.07.9 before installing
> > 21.02 for proper image validation". Most users will not be confident to apply
> > a forced installation.	
> 
> That would be nice, but unfortunately it's not so easy. The problem is that the upgrade mechanism is baked into the _old_ image.
> Any upgrade can only do what the old firmware supported. Thus, I was really glad that I was able to hack this message into the device detection mechanism at all. Otherwise, we would not have any message at all for old installations.

I believe what he meant to say was to make another 19.07.x point
release with an updated sysupgrade mechanism which would improve the
situation when upgrading to 21.02.x and, for example, allow
flashing with non-matching DEVICE_COMPAT_VERSION already when
specifying the '-n' flag to not keep configuration, but not require
the '-F' flag which is scary for regular users (for good reasons).

> 
> > 
> > From wiki upgrading to 21.02 page:
> > 
> > "Don't worry - If you try to upgrade with the wrong target, sysupgrade will
> > refuse to proceed with an error message like this:
> > Image version mismatch. image 1.1 device 1.0 Please wipe config during
> > upgrade (force required) or reinstall. Config cannot be migrated from
> > swconfig to DSA Image check failed"
> > 
> > My experience and the message content indicates that it will show for all
> > migrations from "swconfig" to "DSA" and not only for "wrong target".
> 
> Yes. For the old sysupgrade, we simply match two strings (the board name from the device against SUPPORTED_DEVICES from the image). Either it's successful, or it's not. If it's not, the message displays the name of the SUPPORTED_DEVICES. That's what we got. So I have to hack all of the message into the SUPPORTED_DEVICES string.
> 
> > 
> > I tried to start a discussion about it in an email "Usability issues for DSA
> > upgrade" (jun/28) but I got no answer.
> 
> We can discuss this for the future, i.e. for updates starting at 21.xx, and we can discuss the exact wording of the message.

Not saying that I'm fond of it, neither that I'm volunteering to do it,
but we **could** also update 19.07.x....

> 
> > 
> > It would also be great if we could detect a config from a pre-dsa system and
> > restore everything but skipping or renaming DSA relevant files (nework,
> > wifi?) DSA) with a suffix like '.pre-dsa'.
> 
> We had a very long delay due to DSA and nobody was even slightly interested in creating a migration script.
> For partial migration, I suspect that implementing something here that is general will be much more complicated than just having the user select what he wants/needs.
> 
> Best
> 
> Adrian
> 
> > 
> > DSA is missing a lot of docs. For example: is there a simple, secure way to
> > detect a system is using DSA for a specific switch (or device)?
> > Is it possible to exist a device with two switches and only one of them uses
> > DSA?
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > openwrt-devel mailing list
> > openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
> > https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel



> _______________________________________________
> openwrt-devel mailing list
> openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
> https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel