EA6350 V3 - Revert Back to Stock Factory Firmware?

zakporter · August 12, 2019, 5:53am

My friend wants me to convert his 6350 back to stock , i tried to get him to stay with it but he's not happy.

Do i just flash the Firmware from Linksys webpage over the openwrt 19 snapshot or is it not as easy as that?

Thanks

bobafetthotmail · August 12, 2019, 6:28am

No you cannot use OpenWrt firmware upgrade with the stock image.

The device page in the wiki talks about how you can return to stock firmware
https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/linksys_ea6350_v3

This device has two firmware partitions, if you are lucky the second partition still has the stock firmware.

This is what the "Recovery (Automatic)" procedure does, so try that first. If it goes well the device will boot the Linksys firmware. If it does, upgrade its firmware again with the Linksys image so that both partitions will have stock firmware.

If that does not work, then both partitions have OpenWrt firmware and you have to write the stock firmware image raw in one of the two firmware partitions with dd and then reboot.
Or connect serial TTL dongle to the device and use tftp to send over the image to the bootloader and flash it from there.

I can figure out the commands that should work for that device, so if the "automatic recovery" does not work and you can't figure out on your own you can ask here.

slh · August 12, 2019, 6:36am

NAND and dd are not a good match, that's what nandwrite has been made for (and I think OpenWrt's mtd tool has been taught about basic NAND intricacies as well).

bobafetthotmail · August 12, 2019, 6:44am

Good point, thanks. Yes mtd tool is aware of NAND necessities.

zakporter · August 12, 2019, 7:19am

I originally installed a factory snapshot without Luci and then done 2 sysupgrade snapshots with luci , if i try the recovery will it just revert back to a previous snapshot version?

bobafetthotmail · August 12, 2019, 9:01am

I don't know, OpenWrt does not use two partitions by default. On some devices it does.

I can figure out what should do on that device but I don't feel like doing it when you can just try it and find out in a few minutes.

zakporter · August 12, 2019, 9:19am

I wasn't trying to get you to work anything out , i was just checking and making sure i wasn't going to make the situation worse by doing a reset if i was going to overwrite or move anything about from multiple upgrades.

I only installed openwrt for the first time a week ago and i want to check i can revert mine back to stock first before i do my friends so i can get the procedure right as this is all new to me.

I'll try the on/off reset when i get home tonight and get back to you when i've tried it , thankyou for helping me.

bobafetthotmail · August 12, 2019, 9:23am

No it won't damage anything.
You can discover that both partitions have OpenWrt, or that OpenWrt was using both partitions for itself so the second partition won't boot (and the bootloader will try again with the good one).

In any case you are booting again into a firmware.

zakporter · August 12, 2019, 9:24am

Thanks , i'll get back to you later.

zakporter · August 12, 2019, 11:38am

Just posting this here so i remember later.

Dual firmware partition

Supported by newer Linksys devices

Most newer devices (mostly those with decent amount of flash ROM) have 2 independent firmware partitions. A usage strategy could be, to install OpenWrt only into one of the 2 partitions and leave the vendor firmware in the other partition. No further tools are required to toggle between the two partitions.

Procedure, to manually toggle between the two firmware partitions:

Switch device power off.
3x Switch device power on for 2 seconds, then off again.
Switch device power on, the device should now boot to the alternative partition.

When successfully booted into any of the two partitions, a triggered firmware update will flash the other, secondary partition. The partition that is currently booted, stays untouched.

sammo · August 12, 2019, 11:41am

Thats how I upgrade to openwrt. 3x power on needs to be around 10 secs as 2 secs too short to update the failed boot parameter.

zakporter · August 12, 2019, 11:43am

Thanks Sammo , i'll try 10secs.

zakporter · August 12, 2019, 11:58pm

Well that sucks , i swap between 2 different openwrt snapshots.

OpenWrt 19.07-SNAPSHOT r10293-872cbcc628
OpenWrt 19.07-SNAPSHOT r10287-a941d39460

If it had said on the EA6350 install page to only ever install openwrt-factory.bin from the stock firmware page i'm guessing i would have kept the stock image?

zakporter · August 12, 2019, 11:59pm

@NoTengoBattery

Will your script work?

github.com

NoTengoBattery/openwrt/blob/linksys-ea6350v3-mastertrack/files/bin/BackToStock

#!/bin/bash
#
# Problems? Sugestions? Contact me here: https://github.com/NoTengoBattery/openwrt/issues
#
# This BASH script was written using a sequential pattern. This means that function calls does not
# have side effects except for the return value, if any. Don't use functions if you don't need to.
#
# Keep that style: this is because even if not efficient, this makes the script way easier to
# follow and my purpose is to keep it readable if someone needs to modify it in the future.

. /lib/functions.sh

THIS="${0##*/}"
FI=/tmp/factory.img

# Except for this block which is a function call that exits the program if not argument is given --
usage() {
	echo "Usage: $THIS <image>"
	echo "This program can be used to revert back from OpenWrt to the OEM firmware. This script"
	echo "requieres tools that are not standar in the OpenWrt distro. This script is part of the"

This file has been truncated. show original

NoTengoBattery · August 13, 2019, 12:24am

Yes, zakporter.

bobafetthotmail · August 13, 2019, 12:27am

Yes it would.

zakporter · August 13, 2019, 12:32am

Thanks NoTengoBattery & bobafetthotmail

@NoTengoBattery do you have a step by step guide of how to use the script so i can get this right the first time as i'd rather avoid TFTP if i can?

Thanks

NoTengoBattery · August 13, 2019, 12:57am

No, I don't have a step by step guide to use it.

However, I designed it to make it fairly easy and safe to use (because it makes some checksums and verify the image, etc... you won't be messing up so easily).

It works from OpenWrt and does not matter if you already override both partitions (given that you have the original firmware, downloadable from Linksys).

However, it requieres some modifications to the core of OpenWrt (busybox) in order to work. Those modifications cannot be easily installed (i.e. via opkg), but I distribute a distro that does contain everything and works out of the box.

The only thing you need to do is to grab the original firmware from Linksys inside a removable media, mount the removable media and run the script with the only argument being the path to the Linksys firmware.

zakporter · August 13, 2019, 1:09am

I only installed openwrt for the first time a week ago so this is all very confusing to be honest.

Does this mean i have to install your distro before i can use the script?

Sorry to be a pain but i'm a newbie on a steep learning curve.

NoTengoBattery · August 13, 2019, 1:31am

Yes, it means exactly that.

Don't worry, when you can run the script, you can get back to stock.

As a side note: if you installed my distro first (it works only the first time), it does have a working copy of Advanced Reboot which you could had use from LuCI to revert back to stock in a single click. Sadly, the OpenWrt community does not appreciate my work.
I don't understand why, maybe I don't have enough reputation. LOL.