Bumping this very old thread to provide install guidance for this device since it doesn't seem to appear anywhere else.
Note the warning in the techdata page regarding the wifi performance. This device will have exceptionally poor wifi performance, but will be fine as a wired router.
The EA6300 will not accept the OpenWrt image in the factory firmware's web interface. But the bootloader has a TFTP server that will be active a few seconds into the boot process. This will accept the OpenWrt firmware file.
- Set your computer to a static IP in the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, such as 192.168.1.5/24 (the router will be 192.168.1.1, so do not use that address).
- Connect an ethernet cable between your computer and one of the EA6300's lan ports.
- Start a persistent ping to 192.168.1.1 on your computer.
- Apply power to the EA6300.
- Wait for the first successful ping response -- it should show ttl=100 (this should happen ~5-7 seconds after power is applied)
- Immediately upon seeing that first ping response, "put" the firmware file (see below)
- The device should accept the file and then show intermittent ping returns for a short time.
- When you see consistent ping returns wth ttl=64, you should be able to login to OpenWrt.*
Use the same tftp method to return to stock firmware (OpenWrt's sysupgrade will not properly handle the stock firmware image).
TFTP from a Mac, sending OpenWrt 22.03.5 (latest as of this writing):
tftp> connect 192.168.1.1
tftp> binary
tftp> put openwrt-22.03.5-bcm53xx-generic-linksys_ea6300-v1-squashfs.trx
Sent 8388608 bytes in 17.7 seconds
*If the stock firmware still boots (instead of the freshly flashed OpenWrt), that may be due to the dual partition on this device. Switching the partition should be possible by logging into the stock firmware and navigating to Troubleshooting > Diagnostics > Router Firmware and then clicking the Restore previous firmware button.
From OpenWrt (22.03), you can swtich the boot partition like this (where boot partition is either 1 or 2):
root@OpenWrt:~# nvram show | grep boot
maxpartialboots=3
boot_wait=on
partialboots=3
bootpartition=1
root@OpenWrt:~# nvram set bootpartition=2
root@OpenWrt:~# nvram commit
root@OpenWrt:~# reboot
OpenWrt also has a package to bring this to LuCI: luci-app-advanced-reboot
Dual firmware notes:
Firmware flashed via tftp appears to load into partition 1 (this is possibly just speculation on my part).
If you want to flash the other partition, you must do so via running firmware. This means that if you want to have both partitions on OpenWrt, perform the tftp install, then run sysupgrade using the same file once OpenWrt is running. Or, if you want both partitions to be stock, install the stock firmware via tftp and then upgrade the firmware again (with the same stock firmware file) from the Linksys stock GUI. The theory here is that the firmware will load into the 'other' partition relative to whatever is currently in use and then it will boot from that 'other' partition once the flashing is complete. This provides a tick-tock firmware upgrade process (partition 1 > 2, 2 > 1, etc.) and enables a fail-over back to the previously working partition should a flash fail to boot properly.
The Linksys stock firmware default address is 192.168.1.1. There is no username; the default password is admin.