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Comment by mtmsr | Hacker News Reader

I do love OpenWrt but the upgrade experience is still a pain because user-installed packages need to be reinstalled manually. More so if your WAN connection relies on these packages (USB modems), then you have to either pre-download them or build a custom image.

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There is a VERY elegant solution to this problem, called "attended sysupgrade", that is not as widely known as it should be.

It's probably best explained in a video on what may be the best youtube channel on OpenWrt-related things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFTPA6GkJjg

Or, if you prefer textual information: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sy... (OpenWrt's infra is kinda slow today for me, must be many people checking out the new release :))

Wow, I've been running OpenWRT for years and never heard of this, thanks. Although I suppose it does nothing to resolve config upgrade issues, right?

It does exactly as much as using `sysupgrade` with any other suitable image will or would do :) So yes, limitations apply - but for most users with a bunch of custom installed packages, this is enough of a game changer regardless.

> I do love OpenWrt but the upgrade experience is still a pain because user-installed packages need to be reinstalled manually.

Just use image-builder. Or better, create a script which uses image-builder for you.

For me, upgrading to newer releases for my 7 OpenWRT devices, is mostly just updating a version number and waiting for the build to complete (a few minutes at tops).

It's not really hard.

I may have gone in a bit over-the-top, with makefile and dependencies at all[1], but at the core of things, it's not really hard.

[1] https://github.com/josteink/openwrt-build/

You could also make the OpenWRT router connect trough your phone’s hotspot feature temporarily, while you set up your primary connection. Three clicks in the GUI is all that’s needed to join a wireless network for WAN connectivity.

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