Chk images rejected by factory firmware (Netgear r8000, possibly other models) Patch in bug report

mjevans · December 20, 2018, 1:34am

After a few days of stumbling around, I've identified and created a patch to the mkchkimg.c file that solves my issue with installing on a fresh from the box Netgear (r8000) Nighthawk X6.

https://bugs.openwrt.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=2009

github.com

openwrt/openwrt/blob/master/tools/firmware-utils/src/mkchkimg.c

/*
 * 	Make CHK Image
 *
 * 	This utility creates Netgear .chk files.
 *
 * 	Copyright (C) 2008 Dave C. Reeve <Dave.Reeve@dreeve.org>
 *
 *	This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *	it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 *	the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 *	(at your option) any later version.
 *
 *	This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *	but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *	MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 *	GNU General Public License for more details.
 *	
 *	You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
 *	with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
 *	51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

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Summary:
The 'reserved' bytes are a build-stamp which encodes the version of the firmware. OpenWRT's values for these bytes appear to be too low and the .chk files are thus rejected by higher-versioned factory firmware.

My patch is to set these to a decimal of 1.9.99.99.99.99.99 which worked for me on my device allowing installation via the factory firmware's standard upgrade management page.

Sparks · January 1, 2019, 11:00am

just ran across your post in the bug tracker and notice no one has responded yet , so thought I'd say job well done!

MetallianFR68 · February 4, 2020, 8:07am

I'm getting nuts about this issue. I just bought an R8000 on Amazon and can't upload openwrt because of this new firmware check. Openrouter my ass !

Is this patch beeing implemented in OpenWRT soon ?