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Comment by lowry | Hacker News Reader

I have several hAP ac Mikrotik routers and upgrading them is a pain. You can not just download an image from their website, flash and reboot. If you do so, your router will likely be locked in a bootloop.

I managed to have consistent upgrades by using only the main package and Netinstall, but it is still a huge pain in the ass.

Mikrotik makes stable routers, but they messed up the upgrade process completely.

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Huh? With the exception of them converting all master > slave port configs to bridges in 6.41 I believe, I have never had any issues using System > Packages > Check for updates, selecting bugfix as opposed to current branch and downloading and installing in Winbox. SwOS devices I need to download a binary and upgrade through web (no Winbox) but still have never had any issues.

Try doing it through the web interface, you'll be unpleasantly surprised.

I just upgraded my last hAP ac from 6.39.2 to 6.42.9 through the web interface, entered the bootloop, then did the Netinstall of the system package only, then manually restored the configuration.

I exclusively use the web interface and haven't seen this after thousands of upgrades.

Upload the package to the router(make sure it completes)

Reboot the router.

Upgrade the bios "Routerboard firmware"

Reboot the router.

And done.

This is why we do backups :) I always assume something will go wrong, but make sure to have a backup of any critical device that is being updated (mikrotik or not).

Did your hAP run out of flash disk space? I notice that it only has 16MB.

I recently purchased their outdoor wAP ac (same amount of flash) that deletes any "backups/exports" on disk after reboot. I'm not familiar with CAPsMAN but I wonder if there's a mechanism to backup to either the controller or external repo. There's always the scripting route to ship configs elsewhere etc.

I email the backups to myself (routerOS scripting) using a dedicated gmail account, but the backup is also written to an external USB stick on my device.

Yes, the web interface for automatic updates (where the router is responsible for downloading the firmware) is very poor at updates. However, who uses that in the first place?

The only method I have ever used is dropping the .npk packages into the root of the filesystem via sftp or ftp, and rebooting. No Netinstall required.

I've done this something like 50 times, on multiple models covering multiple architectures (Mips, PPC, x86, Arm), and never once had any issues.

Uploading them one-by-one via the web interface or Winbox (via the Files section) and rebooting also works just fine, but why bother when you can do them in one shot as above?

And if you have to upgrade a large number of routers, best of all is write your own script that pulls firmware from your own private repository on your management VLAN, and reboots. And seriously, anyone who is managing a large number of routers and is not bothering to test image upgrades in a testing environment before deploying to live deserves any trouble they get.

I don't see it any more cumbersome than Juniper, Cisco, or any other enterprise hardware manufacturer(not saying that Mikrotik is enterprise hardware...) I manage several networks totaling 500+ Mikrotik routers.

Once or twice I have run into upgrade issues that had to be resolved with a technician on site (broke vlan configs)

Just once the update wiped the config.

This is out of several thousand successful updates. I've run into similar issues with other big router manufacturers.

Like most companies, you do not want to be on the 'bleeding edge' of their updates unless absolutely necessary. They do have a significant problem with regressions in their updates.

What? I have updated all my MikrotikDevices by literally just dropping the new firmware image onto the device and restarting the device. That's it.

I also have several hAP ac routers and had no issue upgrading them. I only had a problem with an older routerboard (first time I tried upgrading my first ever Mikrotik), but that was because I did not know how the upgrade works and I cut off the power during the reboot (I was under the impression I have to reboot it manually).

I never use the web interface though - winbox is way better.

Only issue I sometimes had with updates is limited memory (on the lowend hap lite devices). Often a reboot before upgrade download was enough to solve that.

But the standard upgrade procedure is to put the new firmware image in the filesystem root (scp, update button via UI, etc) and reboot the device.

It takes literally two clicks on their website to download an image for whatever version of their OS you need.

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