I don’t know if anyone has encountered this problem before. But after restoring the backup on another Mikrotik, the Wifi network does not work.
I’ll get straight to the point. I have made a backup of the settings ( backup name: My settings.backup ) from my Mikrotik number 1.
Now, when I want to restore this backup file ( backup name: My settings.backup ) on the second Mikrotik number 2. So the second Mikrotik is set up. But the Wifi network does not work.
It behaves like this, that with a smartphone, when I want to connect to this Mikrotik (on which I restored the settings from the backup, which is this named file: My settings.backup ), it looks like the smartphone is connecting to it, but after 2 seconds of connection it disconnects from Mikrotik. I expected that when I make a backup of the settings, it will work on any Mikrotik, regardless of whether it differs in model or operating system version.
My experience is that this problem is and still is, even if I use the same Mikrotik model. I tried it on another model, it’s still the same problem Wifi doesn’t work from this backup, even if I reset the settings in Interface/RS Wlan1/Reset Configuration it doesn’t solve the problem.
I really don’t want to have to set it up again step by step on every Mikrotik, I could spend hours, who knows, even days setting this up
And this is where you are going really wrong.
A binary backup is in principle ONLY to be used on the SAME device.
You can get away with restoring on an identical other device using the same ROS version.
But there will be pitfalls since you will also be restoring all interface MAC addresses (you need to take care of that if those devices will participate in the same network or you’re going to have a very sweet time troubleshooting all kinds of issues).
Also, if your models are really different, wifi settings can be COMPLETELY different.
Wireless drivers and wifi wave2 drivers do not mix.
Even bridge or switch settings can be different.
Export as .rsc from one device.
Import again on new device, block by block, when you are sure config can be applied (and there is no default config present or you get errors).
I really don’t want to have to set it up again step by step on every Mikrotik
And this part… I sense there is another issue underlying here which you are not telling us.
The terminology - as often happens - is misleading.
What is called a backup in Mikrotik corresponds (loosely) to what in the (windows) PC world is usually called cloning, you make an image of a system and when you deploy this image to:
the same PC, in order to recover from - say - a failed hard disk that you replace, you obtain an exact copy (clone) of the original as it was before
another PC with identical hardware, again an exact copy (clone) BUT something will need to be modified
another PC with different - but not too different - hardware, again an exact copy (clone) BUT lots of things will need to be modified
another PC with completely different hardware, very likely an unbootable system
The MIkrotik “backup” contains a number of settings that are specific to the router, mainly the MAC of ALL interfaces besides all the IP addresses (the static ones) and routes (the static ones) and the various other settings in the config (like, for example, system identity, users and passwords), so if you “restore” this “backup” to another router (with similar hardware) you will have to all effects an exact copy or clone.
The moment you have these two Mikrotiks (original and clone) on a same network there will be conflicts.
The intended use of a backup in Mikrotik world is to use it to restore to a new, identical device when the original has failed, or if you prefer there should be only one device with those settings.
But if you want to use the backup to deploy to a new identical or only slightly different device you can:
save/take note of the MACs of the new device “as is”
restore to it the backup of the original
change the MACs on the new device to its original ones
change the other possibly conflicting settings
#1, #3 and #4 are manual steps that you have to perform anyway, they won’t be much different from taking an export copy instead, modify it where needed and import it on the new device..
The first easy test to see if its a device issue or network issue:
Step 1:
Test router 1, without router 2 connected. does Wifi work as you want etc.?
Step 2:
test router 2, without router 1 connected. Does Wifi work?
If this works, then the backup can be used and works on both devices, but your MAC , IP adresses etc. might overlap
or create problems (when a phone connects to Wifi but then disconnects it is often as when they don;t get an IP address).
If above test does not work for device 2, then the backup does not work on the 2nd device.
Okay, thank you all for your answers to my problem.
I would just like to add something that I didn’t mention at first: I’m not running two Mikrotik devices on the same network, but only replacing the older Mikrotik device number 1 with Mikrotik number 2, which is a more powerful and newer model than the first one. That’s why I wanted to transfer all the settings to the new Mikrotik
Or, in other words, a VERY different model (possibly also running a more recent version of Ros than the device on which the backup was made).
You are more or less in case #4 of my PC analogy, or - if you are lucky - in #3.
You can try (it depends on which exact model is the old device and which exact model is the new one) to:
make sure that both devices run the same RoS version
IMO, not worth the potential issues. Same reason why you should not trust configs from third parties found online. In the PC world, it is also a very bad idea. A simple CPU or GPU swap can cause unfixable issues even if the machine boots into the OS…learned the hard way that being lazy is rarely worth it in the end.
I would export your old config and open it in a text editor. Then, use the CLI to copy and paste any settings you need line-by-line, while avoiding any wireless settings. How complex is your config file anyway ?
Your device shipped with and resets to a working config…
