Omada Controller Recovery

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Omada Controller Recovery #

Getting the Omada controller on the builder back when an upgrade goes wrong or its data is damaged. Everything here restores from a data snapshot. How snapshots are taken, and how upgrades are done, is in Omada Controller Upgrade.


Runs as	`mbentley/omada-controller` under podman, `omada-controller.service`, on `dv00bld001p01`
Data	`/opt/omada-controller` (`data`, `work`, `logs`)
Current	`6.3.0.45` since 2026-09-10. TP-Link released it on 2026-09-04.
Fallback	`6.2.14.11`, staged and rehearsed
Last resort	`6.1.0.19`, what ran before
Snapshot	`/opt/omada-controller-backup/omada-6.1.0.19-data-2026-09-10.tar.gz`
Web UI	`https://10.20.99.95:8043/independent/index.html#login` (6.3 moved it from `/login`)

**A controller cannot open a database that a newer one has upgraded.** Starting an older image on the current data is therefore not a way back. Every path here starts from a snapshot, and **anything configured since that snapshot was taken is lost**: adoptions, networks, SSIDs, accounts. Today's only snapshot predates the 6.3 upgrade. Falling back is cheap while 6.3 is new and has had little configured on it, and it gets more expensive with every change. If 6.3 is going to be abandoned, decide early — ideally during the first adoptions, not months later.

Do not use playbooks/upgrade-omada.yml in the builder collection for any of this. It hard-codes a fresh install and deletes the data directories.

OpenBao Drills

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

OpenBao Drills #

Two exercises, and they prove different things. Both were written from a run against the live mobile site on 2026-09-17; every command below is one that was actually issued.

Drill	What changes	What it proves	Destructive?
Key change	a new PKI issuer and a new Transit key version	the site survives keys it has never seen before	No — every step reverses
Snapshot restore	the instance is replaced and its data restored	the data survives at all ( ADR-0014)	Yes, on a scratch instance

Why both. A snapshot restore brings back the same issuer and the same Transit key, so nothing about a changed key is exercised — a certificate still verifies and a stored secret still decrypts. The three defects INC-0003 found were all in the key change path, and none of them would have appeared in a restore.

Recovery on Deevnet Infrastructure Platform

Omada Controller Recovery

Omada Controller Recovery #

OpenBao Drills

OpenBao Drills #