Bicking linksys EA4500

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi,

I'm new kinda to openwrt.
I wanted to pass an EA4500 from 19.07 to 21.02. I guess I bricked the router.
I used the sysupgrade tool
with
sysupgrade -F xxx.bin
I got the warning message about the difference between image v1.0 and v1.1 but I red several times here it was normal.

It closed all the shells and rebooted.
New the first lan port does not show LED.
the other switch ports works but no dhcp and even with static ip i can't ping the router.
the WAN port works too but I don't think I have connectivity either (did not try that)

So what should I do now? Do I need to reset? I tried to reboot 3 times it did not switch from firmware I guess it does pass the check? Unless that procedure does not work with major upgrade ?

Thanks in advance for all the help you could provide

2

There are three supported versions of this hardware -- v1, v2, and v3. Which one do you have?

In truth, you should upgrade all the way to 23.05.2, but obviously you're stuck now.

What was the exact file name of the file you downloaded?

3

V1 I think (don't really know to identify it unless the exterior aspect and what older openwrt was displaying on the dashboard which EA4200v2/EA4500 so I guess it is the v1.

this is the name of the file
openwrt-21.02.3-kirkwood-linksys_ea4500-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

in thi post it is said that the TFTP falshing is docummented but it is not. Unless we are speaking about the very manual trick of open the router and make a serial cable out of nothing compatible with the serialconnector on the linksys board?

what does the reset button? Does it force to trigger the backup firmware ? because again that's not really clear in the documentation either

4

Usually there is a product info panel/sticker on the bottom of the router. What does that say?

5

simply ea4500 12A10603201980 as for the serial number

6

It's likely a v1 unit if it has no other markings. You'll find all the info for this device here.

Specifically, this is supposed to be a dual-firmware device. So 3 incomplete boot attempts should switch it to the other firmware slot.

You can follow the generic tftp flashing instructions:

→ generic.flashing.tftp

Specific values you need

Bootloader tftp server IPv4 address 192.168.1.10

If that doesn't work, you may need a serial adapter to be able to see what is really going on.

7

this is the page I followed also. But It quite not clear. At least to me.
thanks for the tftp page I'm not quite sure how I m going to manage this since iti s lacking plenty of information, if it is a tftp client or server etc.
And what does do the reset button? Does it trigger to backup firmware by force?

8

The bootloader in the router runs a tftp server. So you'll use a tftp client on your computer to put the file to the router.

On Mac OS, it would look like this:

$ tftp
tftp> connect 192.168.1.10
tftp> binary
tftp> put <filename>
9

any idea of the port number and the function of the reset button?

10

any lan port should work, and the reset button shouldn't be necessary.
The procedure is usually like this:

  • Set your computer's ethernet adapter to use a static IP: 192.168.1.20 will work in this case, with a subnet mask 255.255.255.0
  • start a persistent ping to 192.168.1.10
  • apply power to the router and observe -- you should get ping responses for a short time relatively early in the boot process. Often you will see TTL=100.
  • disconnect power and then do it again -- this time, the moment you see the successful ping responses, put the file into place (I usually pre-type the line and then just hit return when I see the response)
11

as far as I can tell nothing works.
any ports does not answer during boot up to 192.168.1.10 nor 192.168.1.1 not my older ip
the port 1 is deactivated completely after boot up.
The 3 others of the switch continue to be powered up apparently but no answer to any ping.... Unless it is a special SPY IP...
I still don't know what went wrong since I used the sysupgrade.bin each time to upgrade it.

I don't know how to go back to the old firmware and since the process does not go back to the old firmware I guess it is considered as completed and passed (the boot up) ./
I tried the reset button but I onl got the cisco led blinking rapidly endlessly so I had to pull the cord on that at some point.

Am I stucked to try to make a serial cable compatible with this?

12

At this point, I think a serial cable is the way to do it. It is very likely a 3.3V TTL serial connection -- USB adapters for this are easy to find and usually very cheap.

13

well I guess then :frowning:

14

So I've tried one last thing out of despair.
I push reset button after boot. push around 15 sec and magically the router did boot up correctly on the 21.03.

So what would be my next steps besides reconfiguring it but after upgrading to the latest? Is there any other partitio nchange that might screw up my boot? like the 22.xx? Or I can use the sysupgrade function in a positive mindset?

Which command should I use? IS the previous I gave still correct or did I screw up that too?

15

Great... glad that it recovered.

You can upgrading again -- there don't seem to be any specific issues in doing so. However, it is critical that you do not keep settings across the upgrade. Use the -n argument if you run the upgrade via the command line, or uncheck the "keep settings" checkbox if you do it with the GUI.

Upgrade from your current version to 22.03.6, and then you can jump to 23.05.2 after that (same thing applies -- don't keep settings). After the upgrades are complete, configure from scratch (do not restore a backup) and you should be good to go.

For each update, make sure the checksum matches -- this ensures that your downloaded image is intact and has not become corrupt.

16

You have booted to the backup firmware.

You no longer have a good back up firmware so proceed cautiously. Reboot without doing anything.

This should write the backup with present, known good, firmware.

17

okey a big thank you for your assist :people_hugging:

18

okey okey done. But I think that what happened just before when I push the reset button, the flashing between the 2 firmware aprtition did happen at that time (because of the flashing) now it seems to boot normally. I'm going to upgrade and download even from the cli itself just to be sure each time.

19

If you read your Linksys manual, you simply reset everything to default values by pushing the reset button.

Read your manual. It is just good practice.

20

unless that weare not on linksys stock firmware so reset button does not have activate the same code under openwrt I presume. And I was guessing earlier because of the flashing being different from the normal boot up I'm experiencing now and that I was experiencing before my problem.
Beside the fact I'm agreeing with your silverlying which is that a parameters was probably blocking the router to be fully operational even if it was booting successfully (since the backup firmware never engaged at that point ) .