Hello friends, I need your help. I’m new here and don’t have any prior experience with OpenWRT, but I got my hands on three Mikrotik RB941-2nD routers. The NAND on all of them failed, taking the license numbers with it. I flashed them with the stock RouterOS Trial using a programmer, and now I’m trying to install OpenWRT. The first part goes smoothly, I can access the web interface at 192.168.1.1, but when I try to upload the 9.07.10-ar71xx-mikrotik-rb-nor-flash-16M-squashfs-sysupgrade image, it uploads and gets stuck in an endless "Checking image..." with the wheel spinning next to "Verifying the uploaded image file." I waited for about 10 minutes, tried disabling firewalls, antivirus software, and used both Chrome and IE, but nothing worked. Has anyone encountered this issue and can suggest a solution? Or maybe someone has a dump file for this router model that I can flash directly to the NAND using a programmer? Thank you.
you could try the ssh method - https://openwrt.org/toh/mikrotik/rb941-2nd#flash_openwrt_to_mikrotik ?
The file copies normally, but after sysupgrade, I get the following:
root@OpenWrt:~# sysupgrade /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-mikrotik-rb-941-2nd-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
Image metadata not found
Killed
Failed to parse message data
sh: out of range
Cannot save config while running from ramdisk.
Commencing upgrade. Closing all shell sessions.
Killed
I wonder if you're running out of memory.
try installing an older openwrt verion (with a smaller RAM foot print), then upgrade to the latest one.
It seems you were right; I uploaded version 18.06.0, and the firmware passed through the web interface, but this led to a continuous reboot cycle for the device. I would appreciate it if you could recommend which version and image option to choose for the Mikrotik RB941-2nD.
Start by resetting the device, unless you asked the fw to do it, when you flashed the older fw.
Unfortunately, I do not have the original dump from Mikrotik, but the router successfully flashes using pxesrv, and I am able to flash any other version of OpenWrt.
I conclude that I have a hardware problem. It's strange that RouterOS worked, but any version of OpenWrt leads to continuous reboots. I access the web interface, click to write the image, and see the message – do not turn off the power, wait five minutes. I wait... After that, the router reboots itself and continues to reboot approximately every two minutes.
You'll need to get serial port access to figure out why it's rebooting...
Thank you for your help. I've run out of optimism for today, so I need to put it on hold for now. Tomorrow, I'll try to transfer the flash chip to another router; it’s possible that the issue is with the router itself, and the other two don't have memory chips. I'll try to perform the same actions on a different board, and if the result is the same, I'll look for a PC with a serial port or an adapter for my laptop.