Resetting router, switching from optware to entware

[Thorton]

I have AC87U running optware. Since I have many issues with the router (DLNA stops working randomly, VPN stops working randomly), I want to completely reset everything and flash the 380.60 version of Merlin.

The router runs optware + transmission. After reset, I want to switch to entware. How would I proceed with reset, so everything is completely clean and no old config/unnecessary files are left? The only thing I want to leave is files on USB drive. Everything else (optware, transmission, additional swap file for transmission, custom configs, etc.) should be gone (so no conflicts occur later).

I don't think that restoring default factory settings via admin interface is enough? Plus, I also want to reset JFFS partition.

Thank you for your suggestions!

 

[deusx]

I did something similar recently on the same router. My experience and short advices:

Optware and entware use different libraries and swaping one for the other is not possible, ie, I don't believe you would be able to run optware's transmission using entware. So keeping the USB drive intact is not going to be possible without manually customising both entware and optware so that they not mess with each other. I just backed up the usb, jffs, and nvram on the mac, and formatted the USB (to ext4) before doing anything else. I think entware will create a swap too.

As for resetting/restoring the router, I'm not sure I remember exactly which steps and the order I followed, but an approximation would be:

I restored factory default settings.
Cleared the nvrarm (with nvram erase) from command line.
Flashed latest (beta 1) firmware from the recovery environment.
Restored factory default settings.

And finally went on with configuring the router, re-creating the jffs scripts, USB disk and entware installation.

I myself want to use a few libraries and utilities from optware, while having the entware system installed, but haven't yet figured this out. Will try to see how it could work later today. Will update in case I have any success.

 

[Thorton]

I don't believe you would be able to run optware's transmission using entware. So keeping the USB drive intact is not going to be possible without manually customising both entware and optware so that they not mess with each other.

I will be using entware's transmission, since I want to remove optware COMPLETELY (to make sure no possible conflicts occur later). Does it still mean that "keeping the USB drive intact is not going to be possible"?

 

[deusx]

I will be using entware's transmission, since I want to remove optware COMPLETELY (to make sure no possible conflicts occur later). Does it still mean that "keeping the USB drive intact is not going to be possible"?

Because you mentioned that you wanted to keep the files on the USB drive, and I assumed that you wanted to keep previous optware files including trasmission. My bad. Of course you don't have to radically format the USB, as I did, but make sure that system folders are for sure cleaned up before installing entware. That will be the following directories: bin etc/init.d lib/opkg sbin share tmp usr var/log var/lock var/run. But instead of manually cleaning up the drive, why don't you back up the files, format it, and copy the files you need after you install entware?

 

[Thorton]

Well, the drive has about 3 TB of files, and my PC only has 750 GB drive, so I would like not to format USB drive. Anyway, going to try resetting everything now...

 

[deusx]

I See. Move all files in a single directory, clean everything else, tune jffs post-mount scripts in the new installation to properly mount USB drive, and install entware using the instructions. After reconfiguring everything else, it should be ok I believe.