Preserving OpenWrt packages

See also: Attended Sysupgrade, Opkg extras, Hotplug extras

Manually removed/installed packages are not preserved by default during firmware upgrade. There are different solutions to this problem.

Include user-installed packages in your backup with sysupgrade.

# sysupgrade -h | grep -e -k -e _packages
       /sbin/sysupgrade [-q] [-i] [-c] [-u] [-o] [-k] <backup-command> <file>
	-k           include in backup a list of current installed packages at
	             /etc/backup/installed_packages.txt

Show the package list from the backup.

sysupgrade -k -b - | tar -O -z -x -f - etc/backup/installed_packages.txt

Copy opkgscript to your router. Ideally in a directory which will be preserved after flashing so you don't have to copy it again. Make it executable:

chmod +x /path/to/the/opkgscript.sh

Create a snapshot of the installed packages:

/path/to/the/opkgscript.sh -v write

By default the script will save the list in /etc/config/opkg.installed, which is preserved over flashing. When you log back in after the upgrade configure the internet connectivity, run and wait until it finished with the installation:

/path/to/the/opkgscript.sh -v install

Default packages attitude 12.09rc2 tplink 1043nd

cat << "EOF" > /tmp/listuserpackages.sh
echo >&2 User-installed packages are the following:
sed -ne '/^Package:[[:blank:]]*/ {
    s///
    h
}
/user installed/ {
    g
    p
}' /usr/lib/opkg/status
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/listuserpackages.sh
/tmp/listuserpackages.sh

This script will only output a list of user and default installed packages.

cat << "EOF" > /tmp/listuserpackages.awk
#!/usr/bin/awk -f
/^Package:/{PKG= $2}
/^Status: .*user installed/{print PKG}
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/listuserpackages.awk
/tmp/listuserpackages.awk /usr/lib/opkg/status

Shows every package installed after the rom was build (flash_time), if no packages are depending on it. Packages, that are manually installed may be omitted, since one of the listed packages must depends of such a package, all manually installed packages will be installed, if the listed packages are installed.

cat << "EOF" > /tmp/listuserpackages.awk
#!/usr/bin/awk -f
BEGIN {
    ARGV[ARGC++] = "/usr/lib/opkg/status"
    cmd="opkg info busybox | grep '^Installed-Time: '"
    cmd | getline FLASH_TIME
    close(cmd)
    FLASH_TIME=substr(FLASH_TIME,17)
}
/^Package:/{PKG= $2}
/^Installed-Time:/{
    INSTALLED_TIME= $2
    # Find all packages installed after FLASH_TIME
    if ( INSTALLED_TIME > FLASH_TIME ) {
        cmd="opkg whatdepends " PKG " | wc -l"
        cmd | getline WHATDEPENDS
        close(cmd)
        # If nothing depends on the package, it is installed by user
        if ( WHATDEPENDS == 3 ) print PKG
    }
}
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/listuserpackages.awk
/tmp/listuserpackages.awk

Identify packages to be re-installed after system upgrade

This command will list all packages related to any file in the whole file system that has changed from the default OpenWrt default version.

Note that the script may list several packages that are part of the default OpenWrt install and will have their changed configuration files automatically backed up and restored. In addition, packages installed as dependencies of other packages may show here. It is only important to note the names of packages that you directly installed manually. Any dependencies of these packages will automatically be reinstalled if required.

# OpenWrt 14.07 or earlier
find /overlay \
| while read -r FILE
do opkg search "${FILE#/overlay}"
done \
| sed -n -e "s/\s.*//p" \
| sort -u
 
# OpenWrt 15.05 or later
find /overlay/upper \
| while read -r FILE
do opkg search "${FILE#/overlay/upper}"
done \
| sed -n -e "s/\s.*//p" \
| sort -u