Recovering from a broken update on the Turris Omnia

The recent Turris OS update from 7.2.3 to 9.0.0 took down my WiFi entirely. The wired network still works fine, but wireless is completely broken.

Factory reset

It turns out the Omnia has an extensive (and fast) factory reset / recovery mode via the hardware reset button.

Unfortunately, the factory image didn't work for me, possibly because I don't use the stock WiFi radios anymore.

Rolling back with schnapps

Thanks to the fact that the Omnia uses a btrfs root filesystem, and the liberal use of snapshots around updates, I was able to rollback to the pre-9.0.0 state.

First, I connected to the router using ssh:

ssh root@192.168.1.1

Then I listed the available snapshots:

$ schnapps list
# | Type      | Size        | Date                        | Description
------+-----------+-------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------------
  500 | post      |    15.98MiB | 2025-08-09 11:27:48 -0700   | Automatic post-update snapshot (TurrisOS 7.2.2 - hbs)
  506 | pre       |    17.92MiB | 2025-09-12 03:44:32 -0700   | Automatic pre-update snapshot (TurrisOS 7.2.2 - hbs)
  507 | post      |    17.88MiB | 2025-09-12 03:45:14 -0700   | Automatic post-update snapshot (TurrisOS 7.2.3 - hbs)
  515 | time      |    20.03MiB | 2025-11-02 01:05:01 -0700   | Snapshot created by cron
  516 | time      |    20.05MiB | 2025-11-09 01:05:01 -0800   | Snapshot created by cron
  517 | time      |    20.29MiB | 2025-11-16 01:05:00 -0800   | Snapshot created by cron
  518 | time      |    20.64MiB | 2025-11-23 01:05:01 -0800   | Snapshot created by cron
  519 | time      |    20.83MiB | 2025-11-30 01:05:00 -0800   | Snapshot created by cron
  520 | pre       |    87.91MiB | 2025-11-30 07:41:10 -0800   | Automatic pre-update snapshot (TurrisOS 7.2.3 - hbs)
  521 | post      |   196.32MiB | 2025-11-30 07:48:11 -0800   | Automatic post-update snapshot (TurrisOS 9.0.0 - hbs)
  523 | pre       |     4.44MiB | 2025-11-30 20:47:31 -0800   | Automatic pre-update snapshot
  524 | post      |   224.00KiB | 2025-11-30 20:47:43 -0800   | Automatic post-update snapshot
  525 | rollback  |   224.00KiB | 2025-12-01 04:56:32 +0000   | Rollback to snapshot factory
  526 | pre       |     4.44MiB | 2025-11-30 21:04:19 -0800   | Automatic pre-update snapshot
  527 | post      |   272.00KiB | 2025-11-30 21:04:31 -0800   | Automatic post-update snapshot
  528 | rollback  |   272.00KiB | 2025-12-01 05:13:38 +0000   | Rollback to snapshot factory
  529 | pre       |     4.52MiB | 2025-11-30 21:28:44 -0800   | Automatic pre-update snapshot
  530 | single    |   208.00KiB |                             | 
  531 | rollback  |   224.00KiB | 2025-12-01 05:29:47 +0000   | Rollback to snapshot factory

Finally, I rolled back to the exact state I was on before the 9.0.0 update:

$ schnapps rollback 520
Current state saved as snapshot number 532
Rolled back to snapshot 520

Full wipe

As an aside, it turns out that the factory reset functionality is implemented as a brtfs rollback to a special factory snapshot. This is why is so fast, but it also means that doing a simple factory reset doesn't wipe the data on your router. If you are planning to sell your device or otherwise dispose of it, you also need to delete all btrfs snapshots

Conclusion

While this update was very disappointing, especially since it's never happened before with major updates on Turris OS, it made me discover just how great the recovery tools are. It would be pretty tricky to fully brick one of these devices.