I’m setting up a new (out of the box) SXTsq-5HPnD. It had router OS version 6.40.4 and firmware version 3.41. There is no suggestion to upgrade the firmware.
After upgrading routerOS to 6.42.6 the information in (Winbox) System/Routerboard suggests upgrading to firmware 6.42.6.
It seems like the firmware and routerOS versions are following each other, but not on new devices… Is there a reason for this? Is it a good idea to stick with the fw version that is installed on from factory - or is it just the version numbering that confuses me?
It was (unfortunately) changed at some time between those versions.
Before, firmware versions were independent from RouterOS versions and the suggestion to update appeared only when the running RouterOS contained a newer firmware image than the router.
Now, the firmware version is always the same as the RouterOS version and the suggestion appears after every update.
However, likely the firmware is not changed and that 3.41 release is byte-for-byte the same as the 6.42.6 release except for the number.
You can select an option now on that screen to update the firmware automatically after RouterOS upgrade, and forget about it.
(however there still are useless requests to reboot in the log after each “update”)
If it’s the same then this is something Mikrotik should fix and do it automatically and ONLY when needed. It is misleading to increase the firmware without any changes and really unnecessary and I am sure it would save many people from a lot of unnecessary reboots and firmware upgrades. It would definitely save me from that.
I guess the issue was that when people were asked “what version are you running” they looked in that firmware version field and came back with “3.41” which of course was useless when looking at RouterOS issues.
So they changed it to be the same as the RouterOS version.
However, to me that isn’t an improvement. At least those 3.x versions could easily be detected as “probably not the RouterOS version” and now that is no longer possible.
