Is restoring previously saved settings safe?

[JoeSchmoe007]

I've never tried it. Searched this forum and several people reported bricking their routers when doing it.

I have RT-N66U

 

[cofetym]

I've done it multiple times without any problems.
Why would it brick the router?
That's what it's designed to do!

 

[joegreat]

I've never tried it. Searched this forum and several people reported bricking their routers when doing it.

I have RT-N66U

1. Yes, it's fully safe - as long as you stay on the SAME FIRMWARE VERSION.
   
2. If you change the firmware version (up- or down-grade) YOU BETTER DO A FACTORY RESET after the firmware installation and you are safe again - go to point 1.

With kind regards
Joe

 

[john9527]

Just need to keep in mind the limitations of the firmware save/restore.

(1) You can't use it to transfer settings from one router to another. I believe that the restore won't even start if you try. The saved settings are only good on the router they were saved on.

(2) You can't (shouldn't) use it to transfer settings from one code level to another, especially if the major version changes, i.e. 374.xx to 376.xx
There are code level specific parameters stored that may change between levels and could cause problems (although I never heard of it bricking the router)

I put up a utility a while back that only saves most of the 'user' setup parameters that could be used in both the above cases or if you needed to do a factory reset to try fix a problem/upgrade code levels.
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=19521

 

[RogueSpear]

I've restored in the past with perfect success. Last night however, that string of good luck came to a halt. Backup and restore both from merlin's .47. It was a long night. I ended up having to do a fw restoration using the latest available from Asus. The first thing I tried was a factory reset and somehow that only half worked (2.4 was still the same, but 5 was reset ). I have no idea what righted the ship, but my 68U was close to the trash can.

At this point it takes me roughly an hour to reconfigure from scratch and that's the path I'm taking from now on. The number of hours I wasted yesterday is more than I care to think about and I certainly don't want to do it again. The real bummer is that I no longer feel like trying to implement any more scripts for fear of repeating yesterday's aggravation. Nothing crazy either, just stuff like updating DDNS (I'm double NAT thanks to Fios) so that I don't have to keep using an old WRT610N with DD-WRT for the singular purpose of keeping DDNS up to date. I suppose there's worse things than keeping an old router around.

 

[RMerlin]

Settings saved with Asus's stock firmware might randomly fail to restore. This is a problem caused by the way OpenVPN keys are encoded - Asus doesn't filter out the end of line byte (CR and LF), and these can randomly be incorrectly encoded by the backup process (depending on the random salt value they pick). In my firmware, I convert these to a ">" character to ensure proper encoding.

 

[TonyH]

I've never tried it. Searched this forum and several people reported bricking their routers when doing it.

I have RT-N66U

Hi,
Why would there be save/restore routine if it is dangerous? You can brick any router if you play with it without knowing what you're up to. Most of time bricked router can be unbricked. Only router I couldn't unbrick was one which
literally smoked.

 

[cofetym]

I can usually figure most stuff out but I need baby steps to get johns utility to work.
No problems with unzip extract but stuck big time after that

 

[john9527]

I can usually figure most stuff out but I need baby steps to get johns utility to work.
No problems with unzip extract but stuck big time after that

This is probably the easiest way to get started.....a lot of things are managed via telnet or ssh so it's a good idea to install....

First, on the router go to the Administration/System page and click the radio button to enable telnet

Next, copy the files from the .zip to a USB stick on your computer then plug it in to the router

If you are on windows, this will tell you how to install telnet....
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...#1TC=windows-7

If Linux, open a terminal window and type telnet

once you get the telnet prompt enter

o 192.168.1.1 (that's the letter 'o' for open)

You will then be prompted for your logon info (same info as you use to logon to the router gui)

at the telnet prompt enter

ls /mnt (you should see the name of the USB stick)
cd /mnt/name_of_usb (change to the USB stick directory)
chmod 755 nvram-save.sh (this makes the file executable)
nvram-save.sh (this executes the script, you should Saving messages)

you now have a script on the USB that will restore the user settings named
nvram-restore-yyyymmdd.sh

If you want to look at the contents....

cat nvram-restore-yyyymmdd.sh | more

to execute the restore just enter
nvram-restore-yyyymmdd.sh

Hope this helps.....Please let me know if this works (or suggestions for improving the directions) and I'll add it to the original post

 

[cofetym]

John, thanks for the quick reply. Will give it a shot when I have more time.

 

[RogueSpear]

Settings saved with Asus's stock firmware might randomly fail to restore. This is a problem caused by the way OpenVPN keys are encoded - Asus doesn't filter out the end of line byte (CR and LF), and these can randomly be incorrectly encoded by the backup process (depending on the random salt value they pick). In my firmware, I convert these to a ">" character to ensure proper encoding.

Indeed, I maintain separate cfg files for stock firmware and for your firmware because I saw you mention this in the past. At this point I am nearly beginning to wonder if there is a bad RAM chip in my router. After getting everything setup (again), I made the audacious move of turning on QoS. It never recovered from that. Either my router is going bad before my eyes or Asus introduced something not so good into the latest codebase.

 

[cofetym]

John unable to change to the SanDisk Cruzer USB stick directory.

 

[john9527]

John unable to change to the SanDisk Cruzer USB stick directory.

I just ran thru things again to double check and still works here....so we need to find out what's different.

Can you do a screen capture of the telnet session and post it?

Also, I see you are using a SanDisk Cruzer.....did you enable the encryption utility they give you?

 

[cofetym]

Encryption Utility is enabled keep getting -sh:cd: can't cd /mnt/(usb directory) that I've assigned in the Utility.
This just might be a sign that I just leave this router alone.

 

[john9527]

Encryption Utility is enabled

You need to use a USB stick without encryption. The Cruzer encryption is a Windows executable....when you plug it into the Linux on the router, it just appears as garbage.

 

[cofetym]

Having a tough time finding anything on amazon/google without encryption.
So!Where is everyone purchasing from or can I remove the encryption from the Cruzer?

 

[john9527]

Having a tough time finding anything on amazon/google without encryption.
So!Where is everyone purchasing from or can I remove the encryption from the Cruzer?

Let's make sure we're talking the same thing.....what I was referring to was a SanDisk app (SanDiskSecureAccess) that you run that creates a 'vault' on the USB stick. You then access the drive thru that app. Is that what you have? If so, you can move anything you want out of the vault to another location, then format the USB stick to remove it.

 

[cofetym]

This is getting to be more of a chore than I thought it would be. John I appreciate all the help.
I have the vault on this USB stick.
Might try messing about with this when I have a bit more time during the week.

 

[john9527]

Understand...not a problem.

For this application, I would get the cheapest USB stick I could find to play with and get things debugged. Drive size here doesn't matter either, even the smallest stick available today has more than enough space.