I bought this router pre installed with an older version of openwrt, so decided to upgrade the firmware via the web interface to version 21.02.2 while preserving settings. Before the upgrade wifi on the router functioned properly.
After upgrading, the wifi interfaces were not available any longer. With a wired connection I was also not able to access the web interface. I am able to SSH into the router and the install seems to be correct, and I can access the internet through the cli. Luci packages are installed and the wifi interfaces are configured.
Troubleshooting steps tried:
checked that wifi was up
rebooted the router a few times
reinstalled openwrt with the -n option to revert to factory settings
None of this helped. Any ideas what I should try to fix this?
You mentioned "older", can you still verify what was that version? There are a lot of changes that happened and some old configuration is no longer usable on newer OpenWrt versions. The only thing you can do is save your old config, and try to replicate it on a freshly installed image.
Also make sure that your device is fully supported by v21.02.2, You can also try the latest snapshot and see if that fixes your issues.
It was version 17 or so. I thought that might be the issue hence tried to do a fresh install using sysupgrade and the -n option to make sure no config was copied across.
Is there anything else I need to look out for when trying to do a completely fresh install?
The tl-wdr4310 should be (is) fine with current OpenWrt, but yes, the migration from ar71xx to ath79 might look a little confusing.
First of all, make sure that you really flashed 21.02.2 and not a snapshot build (which wouldn't come with the webinterface).
Next step would be letting the router fully boot up (give it ~3 minutes after powering up).
At this point, are you getting an IP address (192.168.1.x) via DHCP?
Clear your browser cache, http redirects can be very stubborn, also have a look at incognito mode or another (not your usual one) browser.
Try to access your router via ssh (if this succeeds, great, flash the correct sysupgrade image again from the ssh shell).
If you didn't have success so far, press the reset button for >10s to invoke a factory reset (again, give it ~3-4 minutes to fully boot up).
In case neither of these steps worked, push-button tftp may be available (if it actually is, depends on the installed OEM bootloader - originally it wasn't available, but it was retrofitted in later OEM firmware upgrades sometime around 2013/ 2014, depends on if that had been installed in its previous life).
If neither of these steps work, you may be up for serial console access or reflashing the spi-nor flash externally, but given the going rate for these devices on the used markets, doing that wouldn't be economically viable anymore (unless you already own all the necessary equipment or have a solid wish to re-use them in the future).
Thanks for all the feedback so far, really appreciate it. This is one of the best forum experiences I've had!
I've made a little bit of progress - doing a hard reset of the device cleared the settings from the previous install, and I can now log in to luci at 192.168.1.1. Next step is to enable wireless as per the instructions here:
However, luci has no menu item at Network>Wireless, and via ssh 'uci show wireless' returns 'uci: Entry not found'.
Thanks - I think I screwed things up more. I decided to try and downgrade to the latest 17.01.7 version. Now I can’t get an IP address from the router so no ssh or web access
Not sure how to proceed now. Lights are so it does seem to boot up as usual, but just can’t log in in any way
Finally figured this out. The router had the breed bootloader installed, rather than uboot. So I was actually able to access the breed recovery page and reflash with 22.02.2 image, this now lets me use one of the wifi interfaces on the router. I can see both Radios & both SSID in the wireless config section, but the second one doesn't work. Any idea on how to get both to work?
