What recommendations do Mikrotik have in terms of updating RouterOS and bootloader?
Should I always update the bootloader version to the current installed version of RouterOS?
Should I downgrade the bootloader version when downgrading RouterOS?
What combinations of RouterOS and bootloader versions are allowed when upgrading or downgrading?
I can’t speak for Mikrotik, but my impression is that they would want users to select certain version channel (long-term, stable, testing or development) and then regularly upgrade to newer versions as they publish them selected channel.
Generally this seems a good idea. For mature products (the ones introduced at least a few years ago) most likely there won’t be any changes in bootloader (except for version number), hence “upgrading” won’t change anything. For recent models upgrades may include some bug-fix or functionality improvement.
Due to reasoning about previous question I would not downgrade bootloader unless there are some severe problems with the newer one.
Usually there are no hard requirements about versions of both. Sometimes there’s some ROS version which actually requires to upgrade bootloader to some recent version before upgrading ROS itself. IIRC such requirement comes with ROSv7beta (needs recent boorloader version 6.46 or newer) as newer ROS doesn’t boot properly if bootloader is not recent enough.
Thank you, some clarity has been provided. Namely, that you should choose a branch (long-term, stable, testing or development) at your own discretion and update both RouterOS and the bootloader (what is good practice). In case of problems - downgrade RouterOS only. Will use these recommendations in the future.