Importing an existing configuration

If you already have a router running, you do not have to start from scratch. The configurator reads an /export and maps it onto the fields in the tool, so you can adjust it, extend it or simply review it.

Making your export

On the device, in the terminal:

/export hide-sensitive

With hide-sensitive, passwords and keys stay out of the output. That is fine for importing: the configurator asks you to fill those in again later. If you do want them included, use /export show-sensitive, but then be careful where you paste that text. Prefer a file over a long copy and paste? /export file=config writes config.rsc into Files, ready to download.

Importing

Above the device grid on the first screen sit three ways in, side by side: Edit an existing configuration, Moving from RouterOS v6? and Open a file you saved earlier. The first one takes you to the import screen.

There you paste the text into the large box, or pick a .rsc or .txt file. Above the box you choose whether the export comes from v7 or v6; a v6 export is recognised from its header line and switches that choice by itself. Then press Read configuration. Text that does not look like an export is refused, and so is anything over 2 MB: that is more than a router export should be.

Your configuration stays in your browser. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored with us.

Which device

The configurator recognises your model from the model line at the top of the export. When that fails, it derives the device from the interface names the configuration mentions: how many ether, sfp and sfp-sfpplus ports there are, whether there are wifi or wlan interfaces, and whether an lte shows up. The report says which of the two it was, so check it: with a derived device the port names are right, but the tool knows nothing about PoE, radios or the switch chip.

What happens

The rule is that nothing is thrown away. Every command in your export either lands on a field or is kept verbatim. Never both, because then the same rule would be in the new script twice.

• Mapped — ports and bridge, VLANs, addresses, DHCP, DNS, firewall and NAT, Wi-Fi, WAN, routes: those land in the right fields and you can edit them as usual.
• Kept unchanged — parts the tool has no field for, or where mapping would quietly change your configuration, are carried over verbatim into the section Carried over from your configuration. For example: a guest SSID in a bridge of its own stays exactly as it was, because otherwise it would end up on the main network. The same goes for a second bridge, and for firewall rules that are not the standard set: those are preserved, and the standard set is then deliberately left out.
• Reported — the report says, point by point, what was taken over and what you should check yourself.

The report

At the top of the report sit four numbers: how many lines were read, how many commands that was, how many were recognised and filled in, and how many were carried over unchanged. Under it is a table with those same two columns per section, so you can see where the tool understands your configuration and where it does not.

Then come the notes. They are about the things you have to finish by hand: that the administrator password is never in an export and has to be filled in again under System, that a user without a password was found, that an interface is in the WAN list without an uplink setting to go with it, or that the IPv6 rules were preserved and the standard set therefore skipped. Lines the parser could not read are listed separately, with their line numbers.

Afterwards

Open and edit puts you in advanced mode, with every part laid out separately. The checks run over your imported configuration too, which often turns something up right away: a rule that does nothing, a subnet that clashes, management left open.

The export you pasted is remembered for the comparison at the bottom of the script screen. It shows line by line what is added, changed and removed compared to your running device, so you only have to paste that part instead of redoing everything.

The preserved lines sit near the end of the new script, just before the administrator password. Read them before you use the script: the order that worked on your device is not automatically the order that comes out here.

Does your configuration come from RouterOS v6?

Then use the v6 import. It first converts what changed name in v7 and warns you about the things you have to do by hand. See From RouterOS v6 to v7.

Further reading: Advanced and Using the script.