Tutorial Minimal backup and restore

[Wadadli]

Lately there have been discussions regarding router backup and restore and how tedious it is. There are instances when a full restore is NOT in your best interest. I have found that the majority of time is spent reconfiguring your clientlist and DHCP reservations. The following has been posted here some years ago however those commands did not work for me. I have modified those commands and have come up with my version that works.

To save/restore custom_clientlist and dhcp_staticlist in NVRAM


Mount a USB thumbdrive as "sharename" on router.
Log into router using PuTTY.

To save: nvram get custom_clientlist > /tmp/mnt/sharename/custom_clientlist.txt
nvram get dhcp_staticlist > /tmp/mnt/sharename/dhcp_staticlist.txt

To restore: nvram set custom_clientlist="$(cat /tmp/mnt/sharename/custom_clientlist.txt)"
nvram set dhcp_staticlist="$(cat /tmp/mnt/sharename/dhcp_staticlist.txt)"

Please don't ask me about linux specifics. I don't know linux from a hole in the ground but I have become adept at hacking my way through a problem.
Hope this is of assistance to someone.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Lately there have been discussions regarding router backup and restore and how tedious it is. There are instances when a full restore is NOT in your best interest. I have found that the majority of time is spent reconfiguring your clientlist and DHCP reservations. The following has been posted here some years ago however those commands did not work for me. I have modified those commands and have come up with my version that works.

To save/restore custom_clientlist and dhcp_staticlist in NVRAM


Mount a USB thumbdrive as "sharename" on router.
Log into router using PuTTY.

To save: nvram get custom_clientlist > /tmp/mnt/sharename/custom_clientlist.txt
nvram get dhcp_staticlist > /tmp/mnt/sharename/dhcp_staticlist.txt

To restore: nvram set custom_clientlist="$(cat /tmp/mnt/sharename/custom_clientlist.txt)"
nvram set dhcp_staticlist="$(cat /tmp/mnt/sharename/dhcp_staticlist.txt)"

Please don't ask me about linux specifics. I don't know linux from a hole in the ground but I have become adept at hacking my way through a problem.
Hope this is of assistance to someone.

Tedious? Restoring a full backup would also restore all your clientlist + DHCP reservations in one swoop. Performing a full restore through BACKUPMON literally takes just minutes, if that. I have tried to make this process as easy and streamlined as possible, and is really the only automated way I know of that will restore your NVRAM, JFFS and External USB drive all at once, getting you back to a stable point in time.

BACKUPMON - BACKUPMON v1.40 -Nov 20, 2023- Backup/Restore your Router: JFFS + NVRAM + External USB Drive! (Now available in AMTM!)

BACKUPMON v1.40 Released November 20, 2023 First off -- HUGE thanks to @Jeffrey Young for sharing his original backup script. His script is the main engine of BACKUPMON, and all credit goes to him! BACKUPMON is simply a wrapper around Jeff's backup script functionality, adding easy-to-use...

www.snbforums.com

 

[JGrana]

He might mean a partial restore - as @Wadadli said “when a full restore is NOT in your best interest”. Like after a factory reset where restoring USB and jffs would be good but nvram a no-no.