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lodordev edited this page Jul 2, 2026 · 2 revisions

Upgrading

How to move an already-installed card to a new LodorOS release. Verified against the 0.9.0 release zip — your pairing config and saves are not in the zip, so re-extracting over the card doesn't touch them.

The short version

  1. Back up the card first. Copy the whole card to your computer — or at minimum Tools/<platform>/Lodor.pak/config.json (your pairing + transport credentials) and Saves/.
  2. Download the new release zip and extract it over the card root, overwriting, hidden folders included — same discipline as Installation: use a real unzip (unzip -o), not a Finder/Explorer drag, which can silently skip the dot-folders.
  3. Eject cleanly (diskutil eject on macOS; also run dot_clean there). FAT32 has no journal — a yanked card can stop mounting.
  4. Boot. Done — no re-pairing needed.

What's preserved

These are not in the release zip, so extraction never touches them:

  • Tools/<platform>/Lodor.pak/config.json — your server pairing, tokens, and transport setup.
  • Your saves — the zip ships Saves/ as an empty folder only; existing save files are untouched.
  • Downloaded ROMs and box art — anything the device pulled from your server stays.

What's replaced

  • The launcher, the sync engine, and every pak's code (.system/, Emus/, Tools/<platform>/*.pak script/binary files).
  • Tools/<platform>/Lodor.pak/settings.conf — the zip ships a default copy, so options you set in the Settings tool reset to defaults. Reapply them after upgrading.
  • .userdata/<platform>/auto.sh — the zip ships the stock boot script (it already starts the sync daemon, so normal installs lose nothing). If you added your own lines to it, copy them aside first.
  • A few shipped per-emulator defaults (.userdata/<platform>/<emu>/minarch.cfg on some devices) — in-emulator option tweaks for those specific systems reset to the tuned defaults.

Device notes

  • H700 two-card installs (rg35xxplus): re-extract onto TF2 (the LodorOS data card). TF1 (the stock Anbernic card) normally needs nothing — only re-copy rg35xxplus/dmenu.bin to it if the release notes say the boot shim changed. Never reformat TF1.
  • RGB30: re-extract onto the game/data card. The Moss OS card is untouched by a LodorOS upgrade.

If something breaks after an upgrade, see Troubleshooting — and your step-1 backup means you can always restore the old card as-was.

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