Failed OpenWrt Flash on Linksys EA8100 v2

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I am unable to successfully flash OpenWrt on my newly purchased Linksys EA8100 v2. (I thought I had ordered the v1, but as of this writing, snapshots are available for this device: https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/ea8100_v2 so I decided to roll with it.)

Steps to reproduce:

I have tried repeating this process a dozen times, hoping to overwrite anything in a second partition to no avail. I have tried the "power three times" cycle, where I turn the router off with the switch, turn it on under the blinking "linksys" logo disappears for two seconds, then repeat. I have also tried powering down the router and my cable modem, plugging an ethernet cable into the WAN port in the modem, and then simultaneously powering both on at the same time, since I have seen other users run into issues with DHCP addresses being issued that force the router to boot into one or the other partition.

Any help or advice is appreciated! I'm about to return this hunk of junk if I can't get OpenWrt installed.

2

I installed the OEM firmware located on Linsys' Official Support site:

After rebooting, installing OpenWrt, then another reboot I was off to the races with a working OpenWrt install. I'm guessing this is part of the A/B setup they have on some of their devices for saving a "backup" firmware in case an upgrade doesn't work. Until next time, thanks for reading!

3

I have tried for several hours to get OpenWrt installed on the EA8100 v2 today, including installing the OEM firmware and trying to install the current 22.03.5 release and the snapshot linked from the device page. No joy at all; every time, it reboots (very slowly) into the original Linksys firmware. I'm not in any rush to use this device -- I bought it cheap second-hand in the knowledge that it wasn't fully supported by OpenWrt -- but if anyone has any experience or suggestions for a step-by-step to get this working, I'd be glad to have it. One thing I haven't done is connect it to the Internet; I don't want to put it on my network where it will conflict with other devices in 192.168.x.x, so I've been trying to do all this offline.