TL;DR: What is the default behavior of a reset on this router? Is this behavior different from other routers running OpenWRT?
I picked up the Linksys E8452 2-pack (seems to be just a boxed pair of E8450's) on a steal-deal $35 shipped, and flashed to 24.10.4 them both according to the wiki directions, using
I currently have #1 set up as my gateway/router, and #2 as one of my Bridged AP's connected by ethernet. Working nicely with 802.11kvr, except for a slight 2.4-stickiness - which I can live with.
While setting up #2 as a Bridged AP, several times I inadvertantly made mistakes in entries, and found myself unable to connect to the device. So, I did the Standard Factory Reset (power on with rst pressed, for 10 sec, then release). I was surprised to see that I was back at the ubi-installer-initramfs - rather than the Sysupgrade running at default values. I went ahead and reflashed the ubi-sysupgrade image, and was back in business... but this seems clunky and not what I was expecting. It happened twice (repeated of my mistakes - doh), so I'm confident it wasn't a one-off or fluke.
Is this the intended behavior?
If so, how do I do a reset then simply restores the default values of the Sysupgrade and boots you into that install, rather than the 'previous' installation.
Maybe this specific router/device acts differently?
That is not "the standard factory reset", but -depending in the individual device- usually a way to enter bootloader based disaster recovery, such as here. See https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/troubleshooting/failsafe_and_factory_reset for generic details. According to your description, the e845x behaves just as expected - and similar to what other devices would do (except that those typically drop you into push-button tftp recovery, instead of the installer's initramfs environment).
Thank you for the correction of my pretty basic misunderstanding. I'm pretty sure that I simply conflated what I read in the "AI Overview (*)" with what I had done on some select Broadcom routers...
I see now that slowing down and reading the actual --docs-- at openwrt.org make it clear.
On devices with a physical reset button, OpenWrt can be reset to default settings without serial or SSH access.
Power on the device and wait for the status led to stop flashing (or go into failsafe mode, as described above).
Press and hold the reset button for 10 seconds.
Release the reset button.
The device will do a hard factory reset (see below) and then reboot. This operation can be slow on some devices, so wait a few minutes before connecting again.
Re-reading this a few times seems to suggest that I had perhaps been sending to boot into a backup partition (where the openwrt-24.10.0-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-initramfs-recovery-installer.itb was installed).
Of note, the AI Overview makes no mention of waiting for the status LED to stop flashing.
factory reset is commenced by the fully running system, so it needs to be booted up completely before pressing the reset button for 10s.
failsafe mode is evaluated/ entered by OpenWrt's early boot scripts, so after the bootloader has handed off to the kernel (that's why you can spam the reset button repeatedly in short succession - just don't keep it pressed, if the LEDs don't give you a hint about the appropriate time)
powering on the device with the reset button pressed continuously is usually evaluated by the bootloader and enters a device/ vendor specific bootloader based recovery (yes, in case of the ubootmod layout for the e8450 that happens to be the installer initramfs, usually it's a vendor u-boot (tftp recovery or simple web based recovery interface)