## Comments ### Comment by Radu on 2016-07-16 11:01:58 -0400 Thank you, Logan! After reading the entire upgrade page on OpenWrt which was too extensive for me I luckily came across your guide which explained a lot better what the steps are and what should be taken care of. The upgrade process from BB 14.07 to CC 15.05.1 was straightforward on my Archer C7 thanks to your guide, I spent some time though trying to backup all settings and remember all packages installed and why I installed some of them 2 years ago :). A few notes that got my attention in your guide and a few hints I came across while upgrading: -your URL ends in -factory.bin while you clearly state that we should use the one ending in sysupgrade.bin. I chose the latter and it worked fine: https://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05.1/ar71xx/generic/openwrt-15.05.1-ar71xx-generic-archer-c7-v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin -the default wget cannot download files via https so you need to install the real wget: opkg install wget (suppose you already updated the lists with opkg update) -after installing wget, you will still have trouble getting files via https because of missing certificates. The steps are: mkdir -p /etc/ssl/certs export SSL\_CERT\_DIR=/etc/ssl/certs source /etc/profile opkg install ca-certificates -one will probably encounter the TRX error but it’s ok: The “TRX header not found” and “Error fixing up TRX header” errors are not a problem as per OpenWrt developer jow’s post at https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/8623 (from their page) -if your 5GHz radio still cannot start you should simply delete the “option txpower ‘xx'” from /etc/config/wireless and restart the network service: “/etc/init.d/network restart” -one might always look for the least used channel around house/office in order to get the most out of the WiFi connection (look for some tools that check which channels are most used and pick the last one. Macs have a built-in tool for that) -don’t forget to secure your router: allow login only via SSH with keys, disable password login, install luci-ssl for https access, etc Thanks again for the simple guide, looking forward for other useful posts. Bosch ### Comment by Logan on 2016-07-18 09:24:13 -0400 Bosch, Thanks for pointing out the incorrect link, I’ve updated it! Also, I’m using the BusyBox version of wget and it’s working with HTTPS… `root@c7:~# wget -v
wget: invalid option -- v
BusyBox v1.23.2 (2016-01-02 18:01:44 CET) multi-call binary.

Usage: wget [-c|--continue] [-s|--spider] [-q|--quiet] [-O|--output-document FILE]
[--header 'header: value'] [-Y|--proxy on/off] [-P DIR]
[-U|--user-agent AGENT] URL...

Retrieve files via HTTP or FTP

-s Spider mode - only check file existence
-c Continue retrieval of aborted transfer
-q Quiet
-P DIR Save to DIR (default .)
-O FILE Save to FILE ('-' for stdout)
-U STR Use STR for User-Agent header
-Y Use proxy ('on' or 'off')` ### Comment by HEAD KANGAROO on 2016-11-19 12:23:45 -0500 Very helpful guide. Easy to follow, and to the point. Thank you very much Logan. ### Comment by kenshin on 2017-02-25 20:06:36 -0500 I just removed the ‘s’ character from “https” in the image download link and I was able to use wget like normal. This was done from the Chaos Calmer 15.05 version using what I believe was the default (unmodified) version of wget. Happy Hacking ### Comment by Patrick on 2017-10-10 13:30:42 -0400 Hi, Many thanks for this great article. At my home, I use an Archer C7 v2 (which I initially flashed with Barrier Breaker and upgraded to Chaos Calmer 15.05 some time ago) as gateway in my LAN. As I found out lately that there is a new version of Chaos Calmer (15.05.1), your article was very welcome and I decided to follow it. I added a step before sysupgrade where a list of the custom packages I installed (see https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/generic.sysupgrade -> listuserpackages.sh) was generated, though. The upgrade was successful and my C7 is up and running w/o problems so far I could see by now. Here are some of the issues I ran into, maybe this is helpful for others. 1. After reboot, login worked, but no internet connection was possible. “netstat -r” (route) was okay, “ping 8.8.8.8” was possible, so DNS was apparently not working => The problem was that the dhcp lease file was configured to be on external USB drive but as the USB drive could not be mounted (yet.. due to yet-to-be-installed packages) dnsmasq was not working 2. The custom user packages list I created contained every package in one line. To be able to install all of them at once via “opkg install pkg1 pkg2 pkg3 …”: => sed ‘:a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g’ user\_installed\_pkgs.txt > user\_installed\_pkgs\_one\_line.txt => opkg install \`cat user\_installed\_pkgs\_one\_line.txt\` For already installed packages thats also working (was the case, my file listed many already installed packages), opkg then tells e.g. “kmod-usb2 (3.18.23-1) installed in root is up to date.” 3. Some errors were printed out during opkg install: 3.1 “Configuring dbus. Unknown group “netdev” in message bus configuration file” => I ignored it, because regarding https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=385495, it seems a non-critical bug in avahi 3.2 “Configuring block-mount. this file has been obseleted. please call “/sbin/block mount” directly block: mounting /dev/mtdblock2 (squashfs) as /mnt/mtdblock2 failed (-1) – Unknown error -1 block: /dev/mtdblock3 is already mounted block: mounting /dev/sda1 (vfat) as /mnt/sda1 failed (-1) – Unknown error -1″ => This was caused by dependency problems (e.g. “Configuring kmod-fs-vfat.” came later, “already mounted” is not really a problem and squashfs was fine after reboot 3.3 “Collected errors: * resolve_conffiles: Existing conffile /etc/vnstat.conf is different from the conffile in the new package. The new conffile will be placed at /etc/vnstat.conf-opkg. * resolve_conffiles: Existing conffile /etc/config/vnstat is different from the conffile in the new package. The new conffile will be placed at /etc/config/vnstat-opkg. * resolve_conffiles: Existing conffile /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf is different from the conffile in the new package. The new conffile will be placed at /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf-opkg.” => This was resolved by diff’ing and adjusting the files manually 4. Luci auth/login appears for each page After the initial login, I only could see the Status page. No matter what I clicked in Luci afterwards lead me to the login page again (in Firefox). => It turned out to be that rpcd was not running, with “/etc/init.d/rpcd start” (+ enable) the problem was gone (found the solution here: https://github.com/openwrt/luci/issues/547) Thanks Patrick ### Comment by Logan Marchione on 2017-10-11 09:21:10 -0400 Patrick, thanks for sharing! I haven’t used OpenWrt in some time (I’m currently using Ubiquiti gear). Have you considered switching to LEDE? I heard OpenWrt development was stopping. ### Comment by Patrick on 2018-01-22 07:13:03 -0500 Yesterday, I switched to LEDE from CC and so far I didn’t encounter any problems. I did it like an OpenWrt upgrade. After checking OpenWrt Website yesterday I read that LEDE and OpenWrt will unify again 🙂 ### Comment by Logan Marchione on 2018-01-22 08:51:03 -0500 Nice, thanks for the reply! Yes, I read that as well. Glad the two are finally on friendly terms again.