User NVRAM Save/Restore Utility (R26.2)

[paulbates]

Would the NVRAM Utility , using -m for migration, work with the out-of-box asus firmware as well?

 

[john9527]

Would the NVRAM Utility , using -m for migration, work with the out-of-box asus firmware as well?

Pretty much, but it may require a few touch ups. Asus was for a while releasing so many firmware levels, it became too much work to try and track some of the variables that changed their format between levels.

A couple I remember that you should check if changing the firmware level....
Wireless MAC filters
SSH LAN and WAN access
HTTP and HTTPS LAN and WAN access

If going between Merlin and ASUS...
OpenVPN Client and Server configurations

Worst case, if it doesn't work, you can always do a factory reset and reconfiguration.

 

[paulbates]

Pretty much, but it may require a few touch ups. Asus was for a while releasing so many firmware levels, it became too much work to try and track some of the variables that changed their format between levels.

A couple I remember that you should check if changing the firmware level....
Wireless MAC filters
SSH LAN and WAN access
HTTP and HTTPS LAN and WAN access

If going between Merlin and ASUS...
OpenVPN Client and Server configurations

Worst case, if it doesn't work, you can always do a factory reset and reconfiguration.

This is for someone on another board that has 2 models of Asus, 86 & 87 both stock, and they want to swap roles of the router.. in this case they won't be changing fw versions, I would assume both are latest. My idea was to back up each to a key with NVRAM, and swap which they restore too.

Thanks so much, you have been very helpful to me on several posts about this and its appreciated.

Paul

 

[rodenti]

Just upgraded my router from an RT-N66U to a RT-AC68U using the restore utility and ran across a minor issue. Both routers are running john9527's fork 374.43_2-22E4j9527.

I ran the restore script (MIGR version) and it loaded everything in the AC68U perfectly. I did a reboot and after it booted back up I went into the web console and noticed that there was only one client showing up on the client list - the RT-N68U on 192.168.1.1. Note that before running the restore script the AC68U was 192.168.1.1, but the N66U was set up for 192.168.2.1 so the script changed the IP address of the router and therefore the range of the network. The client list on the AC68U was showing itself but on on the old IP address...

Wireless and wired clients were connecting perfectly to the new router and receiving IP addresses in the 192.168.2.x range, but the client list continued to only show the N68U at it's old IP address. I figured the issue was due to the IP address change so I went onto the LAN page and re-applied the new IP address - this fixed this issue and now all clients are showing in the list.

Has anyone else encountered this issue?

Everything seems to work well now, but is there anything else I should be aware of after migrating the settings between these two routers?

 

[john9527]

Posted an update to R24a......just an INI file only change to bring things up to date with the latest releases.....

LATEST RELEASE: Release 24a
12-February-2017
nvram-save-r24a.zip
Download http://bit.ly/2aaAySO
===============================

Version 24a 12-February-2017

This is an INI file only update (hence just the suffix change to 24a)

INI file Changes

• sync with 380.65 Merlin and V23 LTS fork
• add support for Merlin firmware update
• add support for new ipv6 options
• add support for OpenVPN 2.4
• add support for DNSCrypt (LTS fork)
• add support MU-MIMO options (Merlin/OEM)
• add support for Bluetooth compatibility (Merlin/OEM)
• add support for Facebook WIFI (ASUS OEM only)
• misc updates to wan and wifi variables

Full Changelog history is available in the download directory

 

[Shonk]

me 2

 

[john9527]

Where? please post full output

 

[visortgw]

Where? please post full output

When clicking the download link for the 24a update...

 

[john9527]

When clicking the download link for the 24a update...

Gotta love trying to link Onedrive and Bitly......link has been updated. Give it another try now.

 

[visortgw]

Gotta love trying to link Onedrive and Bitly......link has been updated. Give it another try now.

I can navigate to the link for the zip archive, but nothing happens when I select download.

 

[john9527]

I can navigate to the link for the zip archive, but nothing happens when I select download.

That one I can't help you with....just triple checked and it's now working fine. Make sure you aren't using any of the 'privacy' filter addons which can block access to one-drive.

 

[john9527]

Worked in Edge! Not in Firefox. Thanks!

I just tested in Firefox.....works fine for me.

 

[visortgw]

That one I can't help you with....just triple checked and it's now working fine. Make sure you aren't using any of the 'privacy' filter addons which can block access to one-drive.

Oops!

 

[john9527]

Not on my system...it varies a bit, but generally each core is at about 50-60% (AC68P)...1:40 sec runtime.

 

[john9527]

Sorry, can't recreate. I even moved the execution from a USB3 key to a slow USB2 drive...and it only increased a couple of seconds (to 1:48). Execution is logged in the syslog.

Mar  1 06:21:57 nvram-save.sh: NVRAM User Save Utility - Version 24
Mar  1 06:21:57 nvram-save.sh: Saving settings from firmware 374.43_2-23E1j9527
Mar  1 06:21:57 nvram-save.sh: Runtime options: -clk
Mar  1 06:21:57 nvram-save.sh: Using standard NVRAM variable file: nvram-merlin.ini Version=24a
Mar  1 06:21:57 nvram-save.sh: Running in Backup Mode
Mar  1 06:23:41 nvram-save.sh: Complete: User NVRAM saved to /tmp/mnt/Router_Share/ASUS/nvram-restore-201703010621-EC58.sh
Mar  1 06:23:45 nvram-save.sh: Complete: JFFS directory saved to /tmp/mnt/Router_Share/ASUS/jffs-201703010621-EC58

If you are trying to overclock your AC88, see my response to your other thread.

 

[Denna]

@john9527,

After reading 26 pages of this thread, I'm unclear as to the completeness of creating a backup.

If you use the "Restore/Save/Upload Setting" WebGUI and are restoring that backup to the same router, what won't be backed up ?

If your script is used to perform a backup and you are restoring to the same router, what won't be backed up ?

In both methods, are mounted USB drives backed up ?​

 

[john9527]

@john9527,

After reading 26 pages of this thread, I'm unclear as to the completeness of creating a backup.

If you use the "Restore/Save/Upload Setting" WebGUI and are restoring that backup to the same router, what won't be backed up ?

If your script is used to perform a backup and you are restoring to the same router, what won't be backed up ?

In both methods, are mounted USB drives backed up ?​

The nvram can be thought of to contain two sets of settings.....system level settings that are unique to the particular firmware level running on the router (which are not visible to the user) and user settings, i.e. options that are set up in the gui. There is also a separate backup option in the gui for backing up the jffs space.

The 'Save 'setting in the gui, backs up both of those sets of settings, and the 'Restore' should only be done to the same router running the same level of firmware as when the save was done.

This utility only backs up the user portion of the settings, and there is an option (migrate) that further restricts what is backed up. This way you can restore the settings across different firmware levels after a factory reset, or if using the migrate option transfer your settings between different routers, even if different models, when using Merlin firmware. A backup of the jffs space is also automatically taken. The backups are timestamped to easily maintain multiple backups.

Neither of the methods backs up USB drives.....you are responsible for backing those up if you believe it's necessary.

 

[Denna]

@john9527 ,

So if you're only upgrading the firmware on the same router, don't use the WebGUI's Save and Restore functions.

Use your script instead, correct ?

And to backup the contents of a router's USB drive so the permissions are correctly restored, use tar ?​

 

[cybrnook]

bump for this, worked great, again.......

Not sure if a bug or just by design. But in "Parental Controls", "DNSFilter", I only have 2 x custom DNS server addresses. I purposely delete out the default Google DNS 8.8.8.8 that is populated in Custom DNS server line 3. After making a backup/restore using 24a, I see that the third option of 8.8.8.8 is back.

 

[john9527]

@cybrnook - Right now it's by design. I don't backup 'empty' keys to save processing time. So when you do the factory reset between the save and restore, the default value is restored. And then since I didn't back up the empty key, the default stays after the restore.

I'll have to think about this one a bit....offhand I can't think of a place it would be required to override a default value to empty other than for cosmetic reasons.