Hello all -

Just a word of warning, so you can avoid the unpleasantness that I and a few others have experienced when upgrading from v3.x to v4.x: you must reboot RouterOS after the license update, or it will completely lock you out of the router and cease all routing functions 72 hours later - just as if you had updated to v4.x without updating the license. This happened to me with a RB1000 in production, which fortunately was detected and rebooted right away by data center staff. I then confirmed it a second RB1000 which I had recently pulled out of a data center. The good news is that a simple reboot restores all function.

In both instances, when I updated the license via winbox, the router has dropped my winbox connection right after the license update as if by design, forcing me to start a new connection. If you are not sitting right in front of the router when this happens, it may lead you to believe that the router rebooted itself. But it has not! Don't be fooled by the dropped connection, in neither of my license update did the router automatically reboot itself.

If you are upgrading from v3.25 or later and you follow the upgrade steps in the order given on the download page at mikrotik.com, this will never happen to you, because the license update is done before the RoS version update, which requires a reboot to complete. But if you are upgrading from an earlier version than 3.24, or you are just a non-conformist like me, you'll do the license update as the last step - and that's where you will get into trouble. The current documentation is not perfectly clear that the license update, which must be done within 72 hours of the software version update, *must* include a post-license update reboot. So be advised!

Cheers,
Ed

Thank you

actually this is clearly written on our download page huge note:

http://www.mikrotik.com/download.html

Incorrect - it's NOT clearly written that the router requires a reboot after the license update, irrespective of any other operations. This is from that note:

If you are currently running an older version of RouterOS, where license can't be upgraded to the new format, you can still upgrade, but absolutely make sure that After successful upgrade click on the "Update License" button in Winbox and make sure the new license is accepted. You will have 72 hours to do this, but it's recommended to do this immediatelly

So it says that if you are upgrading from a version older than 3.25, you update the firmware (which requires a reboot), then update the license and "make sure the new license is accepted". I did those things. The note did not instruct me to reboot after accepting the license, so I did not - nor did the licenese update routine force me to do a reboot. 72 hours later the router completely shut down all functions and had to be rebooted to restore them.

C'mon, Mikrotik, you made an omission in the instructions. We all make mistakes! I put in a support ticket on this, and now I've posted the advisory to this board. I'm just trying to help here. It will benefit everyone to correct the vagueness in the instructions. Here's my suggested rewrite, I've highlighted my changes in red - I already sent this to Sergejs in support:

License update required for v4 upgrades within 72 hours
Upgrading procedure for all devices:

1.Update the Bootloader if using a RouterBOARD
2.In your RouterOS v3.25 or newer, Update your RouterOS license
3.Upload new RouterOS v4 packages to the router, and reboot

NOTE: the router *must* be rebooted after a license update in order for the expiration timer to be reset! If you follow the order of steps outlined above, the timer will be reset upon completion of step 3.

If you are currently running an older version of RouterOS, where license can't be upgraded to the new format, you can still upgrade, but absolutely make sure that After successful upgrade click on the "Update License" button in Winbox and make sure the new license is accepted. You will have 72 hours to do this, but it's recommended to do this immediately. NOTE: you *must* reboot the router after performing the license update - this will not happen automatically!

I'm not sure why there's resistance to acknowledging and fixing this omission, but I hope this helps!

But Winbox clearly says to you in a Popup window that you must click yes to reboot, and no to ignore the message. Did you miss that popup in Winbox?

At least that message was always there, maybe something happened to it

Please take a look at support ticket #2010042266000694, there's a lot of information there. To answer your question: after updating the firmware and logging into Winbox, I was presented with a popup dialog box advising me that I must update the license. I clicked Yes (or OK, don't recall which it was), the the router connected to mikrotik and updated it's license. Then the router dropped my winbox connection - this happened with both RB1000's that I used to test the update routine. However, neither router rebooted itself - it simply dropped my winbox connection, forcing me to establish a new one. Then I checked system->license by clicking the 'update license' button, and received the message 'failed: license is up to date'.

So if the router was supposed to reboot itself after the license update, it did not - that's a bug. If it was not supposed to reboot itself after the license update but I am supposed to do it manually, that is not documented, so that's an omission in the documentation. Either way, there's a problem that needs to be addressed.

Between this thread and the support ticket I opened on this issue last week, I've put quite a bit of time in reporting this issue. I hope that Mikrotik now has enough information to make the relevant change.

Thanks!
Ed

Or could your connection have just dropped as an unrelated matter? I've done loads of upgrades remotely and it always says to reboot yes or no and the connection doesn't drop whenever I have done it?

The overwhelming likelihood is that it's a bug of some sort. I had the exact same thing happen twice, once while working on an RB1000 remotely, and the second time with an RB1000 sitting right on my desk next to me, connected to my wired LAN. I really doubt that two unrelated incidents happened at exactly the same moment in both cases - I'd say it's related to some condition of set of conditions I've discovered... assuming the behavior I experienced is not known or expected. The few responses that I've received from Mikrotik on this have been rather vague and not very helpful, quite frankly. It seems they have other fish to fry.

I'm going to have a third chance to test this next week, with yet another RB1000 that I'm rotating out of production and bringing back to my office. If Mikrotik would like to participate in this test by posting some specific steps or things they'd like me to try, I'm willing.

Just so I am clear, did you do your license update as the final step? And did you receive a reboot dialog prompt *after* the license update was done?