hello,
i have a sxt mounted up on a pole on a tall building with difficult reach and didn’t have courage all these years to update the thing.
is it safe to upgrade from that version to current? i have been reading on the forum that there are glitches and bugs in various firmwares and that devices go into reboot loop when trying to upgrade from a specific version to another specific version.
so - is it safe to upgrade my sxt from that version to a long term current version (v6.42.9 or 6.45.5)?
if it goes to s*it, getting it fixed will cost more than buying a new device, because getting someone to climb the pole will cost over 50 eur.
thanks
I think SXT still has 128M flash. So first partition the flash with 2 partitions, copy part0 to part1, then you can update part0 and when it fails to boot it will boot part1 and you can reconsider things.
(newer devices have only 16M flash so this can no longer be done)
I would certainly recommend to take a number of upgrade steps. So not just jump from 6.35 to 6.45.6, but upload some inbetween versions like every 2 major versions and do the upgrade.
That makes it more likely that setup conversions between the current and final version will run OK.
When you do have direct access to the cable running down, you can also set it to “try ethernet once then flash” bootmode, then connect a PC with netinstall and powercycle it.
Now you can netinstall it to the current version and configure it from scratch. This way you do not run risks of config conversions and there should be no issue.
When your access is only via radio you should be especially careful, as some changes have been made that may make your current radio setting (channel, output power) invalid until you make changes to it, and you could well lose the link.
i have access to the cable.
but isn’t it neccesary for netinstall to keep the reset button pressed? also - i never managed to netinstall a mikrotik unless using a windows xp machine. and at the moment, i don’t have a winxp laptop.
If you set boot sequence to /system routerboard settings set boot-device=try-ethernet-once-then-nand , then you don’t have to press the button for RB to try netboot … it’ll try and if it doesn’t find proper bootp server, it’ll resume booting from NAND.
tnx, it worked.
upgraded via netinstall from win7 .
i have an even older LHG with v6.34 but on that location i don’t have access to the cable so netinstall can’t do. it’s a wireless relay point only.
That is tricky because it may drop the wireless link due to the upgrade.
Newer versions are more strict in checking local regulations and sometimes it may fail even when they are OK.
You can then correct that in the config but of course not when you only have access via radio. So you should be careful.
When you use the method with partitioning you can still rescue it when you have access to the power cable.
(whenever the power is interrupted during the startup sequence, the device will toggle to the other partition)
i tried to netinstall a remote rb931 (just sitting in a home with easy access but i wanted to try to netinstall it from the far part of the network).
anyway - 3 wifi hops away (6 devices) i managed to netinstall it.
but i wanted to ask - how long a device will wait in netinstall mode?
if i reboot a device in “try ethernet once then nand” mode - how long will it sit in netinstall mode prior to autoreboot? is it possible to set up an automatic restart after 5 minutes ?
I think it is only a few seconds. It will try to locate the waiting netinstall program (bootp/tftp) and if not found it will immediately boot the nand again.
I have had my access points in this mode for a long time because they often are in hardly accessible locations and I want to be able to recover them when something bad happens.