Belkin RT3200/Linksys E8450 WiFi AX discussion

Thx for the advise, Daniel. Actually I got it working. I tried powercycling several times, but what worked was just to type reboot using SSH. Afterwards I could flash the installer image. Great work.
Unfortunately I ran into another issue. Just wanted to install OpenVPN and got the following error message.
cannot find dependency kernel (= 5.10.90-1-200597be5decdb54cc9b83cba4aad31e) for kmod-tun
Hope there is a solution for that as this is one of major use case.

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donwload auc

in putty put auc and wait sysupgrade then you can use the vpn normally

Capture d’écran 2022-01-10 à 00.04.06

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How do we migrate to firewall4 from firewall, it owuld be great to post the step for some of us that are still behind. Thank you.

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I am waiting on 408 to get published, how much longer>?

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I would suggest to take the fw4 discussions, including package installability, to a new, dedicated topic - it's not specific to this device at all, but the same for all OpenWrt devices.

The switch between fw3 to fw4 is happening mostly behind the scenes, /etc/config/firewall is the same between both, fw3/ fw4 both take this as input and generate the matching iptables vs nftables configurations out of that. Things where some thought might be needed, are /etc/firewall.user or manual iptables calls, as well as (non-default) addon package that hook in deeply into fw3 internals and will need porting to fw4 (e.g. mwan3, banip, but also others).

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ok i will create a subject or openwrt ninja if he want for our because i'm interested too , thanks

subject create

here

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EDIT: Restoring mtd5 then factory reset was enough and now I have successfully installed UBI OpenWrt!

Thanks daniel.

I used serial console option 2 to flash FW_RT3200_1.0.01.101415_prod.img which allowed it to successfully boot again.

When I load the stock firmware page it says it's a Linksys AX3200 Gigabit WiFi Router E8420. :smiley:

Currently mtd5 contains only sw_version=1.0.0.1.

Would a stock firmware factory reset after flashing a mtd5 backup be enough for another attempt at installing UBI OpenWrt?

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What will happen with respect to the installer when the RT3200 becomes supported by an official OpenWrt release? Presumably individuals will all be on different installer versions. And are we getting nearer to official support?

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Sorry to add one more question to the pool...

Has been solved the problem with the firewall module?

Should I sysupgrade my router that has been flashed a couple of weeks ago ( OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r18437-92820cc5b9 / LuCI firewall4 branch git-21.357.58153-63d9bcb) in order to get possible bugs fixed,or should I wait some more time?

It seems my version has already firewall4 installed, if version description is correct.

I am having some problems activating fast transition 802.11r and management fram protection 802.11w in some android device (android 10 at least).
Some other old windows laptops with wifi can't connect either.

I don't think it is a specific model problem, but it seems that nobody has the same problem here.
I would like to upgrade to see if it has been solved, but don't want to break the router config that now is working OK, if there are still problems with the firewall.

Yes. A fix has been applied and the buildbot has compiled images containing it over night. Everything is back to how it was in that regard, so further intervention needed what-so-ever.

You can just go ahead, there is afaik no reason to wait at this moment.

The problems you are describing sound more like client-side issues which may be solved by updating the wifi drivers/firmware (or Android ROM) on the client.

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May be, I had problems with a windows machine (surface 3) not able to connect that were solve finding a proper driver upgrade (not an easy task).

But Android devices cannot just upgrade the wifi driver you only have firmware upgrades, and manufactures abandoned your devices short after being launched.
That is why I don't lke Android at all nor google's way of doing things.

In the case of the windows machines the have problems connecting to the wifi even with no managemen frame protection or fast transitions.

In the case of android new devices (Android 11) won't connect if you do not activate 802.11w at least as optional, and other ones (android 10) won't connect if you have 802.11r and 802.11w optional at the same time.

So I had to disable fast transitions at all.

Thank you for your answer, I will shortly sysupgrade my router.

The buildbot has completed now so that you can now use either auc on the command line or System -> Attended Sysupgrade in LuCI Web-UI to upgrade to the most recent snapshot. Then you should be able to install also all kernel modules needed, e.g. for OpenVPN.

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I will update the installer to use the released ImageBuilder instead of picking the current snapshot build.
However, everybody already on the UBI layout can of course just sysupgrade to the release images, no need to run the installer again.

People having used different versions of the installer (all above v0.5.3) is ok in terms of being able to just sysupgrade to the upcoming 22.xx OpenWrt release. And yes, as all targets have arrived on Linux 5.10, we are going to branch-off for the release very soon.

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Wel I have sysupgraded to the recent snapshot.
No problems detected for now.

Great to know we are close to be integrated in general master branch.

How do we know the version of the installer we have?

It does no seem to show anywhere in the interface...

If you enter into the recovery image (various methods - I used to end up there when the router crashed, not so much recently) you can check the OpenWRT release string and compare with the releases page.

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The installer itself doesn't leave a version anywhere on the system. You can, however, check the version of U-Boot which created the environment on first-boot, which is hence the version which came with the installer:

fw_printenv ver

To update the recovery image written by the installer, first make sure you have a working production system (to have a fall-back in case something goes wrong). Note that you will loose all configuration as the new recovery image may need more space as the old one and hence rootfs_data needs to be removed during the procedure (it is re-created by U-Boot on reboot).
Boot into recovery and do this:

cd /tmp
wget https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/mediatek/mt7622/openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-initramfs-recovery.itb
ubirmvol /dev/ubi0 -N recovery
ubirmvol /dev/ubi0 -N rootfs_data
ubimkvol /dev/ubi0 -N recovery -s $(cat openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-initramfs-recovery.itb | wc -c) 
ubiupdatevol /dev/ubi0_2 openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-initramfs-recovery.itb
reboot

If you really want to update U-Boot and/or TF-A, you can do so with the serial console attached (there are options for updating in the boot menu) or by writing it using mtd and kmod-mtd-rw. There is no fallback, so if something goes wrong, you have to connect JTAG and have fun with OpenOCD.

insmod mtd-rw i_want_a_brick=1

# to update bl2/Preloader (should never be needed unless you wanna switch to home-brew secure-boot system ;)
cd /tmp
wget https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/mediatek/mt7622/openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-preloader.bin
mtd write openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-preloader.bin /dev/mtd0

# to update U-Boot and ARM Trusted Firmware BL31
cd /tmp
wget https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/mediatek/mt7622/openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-bl31-uboot.fip
mtd write openwrt-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-bl31-uboot.fip /dev/mtd1
# clear ubootenv and ubootenv2 UBI volumes, so environment is re-created by updated U-Boot
ubiupdatevol -t /dev/ubi0_0
ubiupdatevol -t /dev/ubi0_1
reboot

Do not re-run the installer, as you will loose your backups of the vendor bootchain.

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I am having an issue running the latest SS and downloading packages, I keep getting the following error upon refreshing the pkg list via GUI:

Collected errors:
 * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/mediatek/mt7622/packages/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
 * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_cortex-a53/base/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
 * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/mediatek/mt7622/kmods/5.10.90-1-200597be5decdb54cc9b83cba4aad31e/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
 * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_cortex-a53/luci/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
 * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_cortex-a53/packages/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
 * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_cortex-a53/routing/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
 * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_cortex-a53/telephony/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.

If backups have been created, what is the extent of risk in upgrading in things going wrong?

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Thank you, but it seems a complex and dangerous path to upgrade the installer.

I do not fully understand how all the partitions, are organized, it is a complex system with many partitions, revert for stock firmware...

My router came with OpenWRT have baked in it, so I do not really know which partitiosn had been overriden at the first instance, and have no backup of the original stock partitions.

It was in recovery mode, and I could just burn the ubi and sysupgrade the system.

All is working, and I am not really interested in reverting to stock firmware, as I prefer using OpenWrt and be in control of what is installed (even if it is a bit slower in the worse case).
It is working OK and quick.

I have run the provided command and this is the result in the production system:

fw_printenv ver
ver=U-Boot 2021.10 (Oct 16 2021 - 01:00:47 +0000)

it seems it has been first burned in octubre 16.

I have tried to run the same command in failsafe mode (just in case it booted from other partition with other installer) but it returned an error saying it could not find the config file.

Checking against the releases page provided by jpamills, it seems I have a 0.6.1 installer, the last version, so I won't need to upgrade the installer and there will be no problems when sysupgrading to the upcoming 22.xx master release.

Am I right?

Yes you are right. And even if the bootloader and recovery flashed by the installer were not the latest version, this would not be a problem.

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