So I'm sitting here waiting for a new ( well, actually used ) Netgear R7800 that I bought specifically to run OpenWrt. I have used it before - a LONG time ago....on an original Linksys WRT54G.
I decided to do this because my current router - a Linksys EA9200 - is doing strange things. It is not routing certain stations. Basically, they are connecting to the wifi and can
ping the router, but they can go no further. I thought of putting the thing into bridge mode and using an external router, but that doesn't seem to be an option. I tried a software reset, then a "remove the power" reset.
Cruising Amazon for a new router - basically there are no good wifi routers! Regardless of which brand, they may ultimately - or quickly - die. There is no support beyond people with accents reading scripts. And warranties are imaginary, beyond the generous Amazon return policy.
To have a little more control over the wifi situation, I decided to go open source.
The R7800 seems to be a popular choice.
I have a reasonable background to tackle this. For 13 years, I coded firmware for a networking equipment company.
Nothing really to do with me, but one of my coworkers back then was a dude named Mark Merrill. He is currently the CTO of Netgear. Until COVID, I often saw Mark at the Silicon Valley ham radio swap meets. He would come out in his ancient VW bus, loaded to the gills with flotsam and jetsam from the Netgear development labs. He was always a good source for wall warts :).
So the R7800 arrived today. What a beast! It's big. And the lights are VERY bright. Why so bright? Also, it runs hot. Wonder if I should gin up a fan for it?
Actually, the brightness of the LEDs is not an issue - because the router will live on a high shelf in the garage.
Adventures so far: I reset the unit to factory defaults, then downloaded the latest stable openwrt, and promptly bricked it. Oh, you need to use tftp because the new kernel is bigger? OK.... I hooked up an enet cable to a Raspberry Pi 400 I had laying on the desk, loaded the image onto it with sneakernet ( a thumb drive ) and did tftp. Whew, that worked. Luci came up. And I have SSH access.
I have connected the WAN port to my localnet just to play with it and get to know it. Installed Openvpn.
That still doesn't work - I have an openvpn process running, but no tun0 device.
Getting files into it has been interesting. sftp didn't work at the WRT ssh command line. I would log in with my server username and password, and see an sftp prompt for a moment, and then it would immediately drop back into the CLI.
But it did work from my Linux server after I installed sftpd on the unit.
Alas, it is bricked. I was playing with openvpn. I reset it and it did not come up. At first, it did answer pings, but that's all. No ssh, no LuCi. I tried the "reset to factory defaults" ( hold the reset button down for a long time ), no joy. Waiting for tftp? Tried that, no joy.
True, it is connected to my localnet, and I defined an IP alias at my server to talk to
192.168.1.0/24. That's a little more complicated than having a cord going to it from a PC, but not much.
The lights do various interesting things while I try to tftp - is there any reference to what they mean?
Alas, it is bricked. I was playing with openvpn. I reset it and it did not come up. At first, it did answer pings, but that's all. No ssh, no LuCi. I tried the "reset to factory defaults" ( hold the reset button down for a long time ), no joy. Waiting for tftp? Tried that, no joy.
True, it is connected to my localnet, and I defined an IP alias at my server to talk to
192.168.1.0/24. That's a little more complicated than having a cord going to it from a PC, but not much.
(time passes)
....OK, now I think I did a successful tftp. More or less. I have a page at 192.168.1.1,
" LuCI - Lua Configuration Interface"
...when I click on that, nothing happens. The web browser waits a while, and then says
"The connection has timed out
The server at 192.168.1.1 is taking too long to respond."
The r7800 is really hard to brick, unless you intentionally clobber bootloader/ ART (and those partitions are marked read-only by default). Yes, you may need failsafe or tftp, but the later should 'always' work.
OK, it's unbricked. The webpage weirdness was my own fault - I had a PC with two network interfaces, and things got a little confused. And the web browser had cached the entry page.