We all know the reasons we should upgrade, but how is it done, and more importantly, how is it done most conveniently and safely. Below is a quick overview, including both links to more detailed documentation and links to active forum threads. Do not be shy if you have questions, go to those existing threads and clear up any doubts, that's the reason those threads exist.

https://downloads.openwrt.org/ is the repository for all images for all releases back for over a decade. These are the basic builds, no extra packages are included in these images, just sufficient pieces to get a fully functional and robust firewall device working.

The Firmware Selector allows you to create a custom image (or conveniently find the basic image for your device, without having to navigate through the downloads site). You select your device, supply it with a list of packages and it builds a custom image containing those packages. Ask about it, or report issues on the Firmware Selector support thread.

When you have downloaded a basic image from the downloads site, or used Firmware Selector to create an image, you then download it onto your device and use one of the basic upgrade tools below.

• sysupgrade program - this is the “one true” upgrade program, which you can run manually or invoke through various other tools, below. details blah blah
• System -> Backup/Flash Firmware - a LuCI wrapper around the sysupgrade program, allowing access to many (but not all) of its features, such as creating backups and installing new firmware images.

Attended Sysupgrade (ASU) is a system that collects the details about your device (target, subtarget, device profile, file system type, image type and so on), the list of packages installed and any other pertinent details, and ships them off to the same custom image builder used by the Firmware Selector. These on-device ASU clients then download the image automatically and install it, making an upgrade

1. quite robust as these tools don't make mistakes like picking the wrong device or spelling a package name wrong, and
2. very convenient as you typically need only a few button clicks or a single command to perform an upgrade.

The Attended Sysupgrade clients listed below blah blah

• LuCI Attended Sysupgrade ... Questions or issues should be posted to the LuCI Attended Sysupgrade thread.
• owut program for releases 24.10 and newer. Post on the owut support thread with questions.
• auc program for releases 23.05 and older. There is no specific forum thread for auc, so post on the owut thread above for help.

LuCI Attended Sysupgrade, auc and owut all do the same job as Firmware Selector, but free you from looking up all the device and package details; the underlying server that builds the images is the same for all of four (see https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org/).