I have two APs that recently had OpenWRT installed on them. I wanted to flash them back to their original manufactures' firmware, which I downloaded from them manufactures website. I tried to do a normal sysupgrade, but it didn't work. So I did a forced sysupgrade using the -F option.
Now both APs appear to be bricked. I can't get to them over IP. What are my options for recovery?
Debricking:
U-boot can be interrupted during boot, serial console is 57600 baud, 8n1
This allows installing a sysupgrade image, or fixing the device in
another way.
* Access serial header from the side of the board, close to ETH3,
pin-out is (1:TX, 2:RX, 3:GND, 4:3.3V), with pin 1 closest to ETH3.
* Interrupt bootloader by holding '4' during boot, which drops the
bootloader into its shell
* Change default 'serverip' and 'ipaddr' variables (optional)
* Download initramfs with `tftpboot`, and boot image with `bootm`
# tftpboot 84000000 openwrt-initramfs.bin
# bootm
Revert to stock:
Using the tplink-safeloader utility from the firmware-utils package,
TP-Link's firmware image can be converted to an OpenWrt-compatible
sysupgrade image:
$ ./staging_dir/host/bin/tplink-safeloader -B EAP235-WALL-V1 \
-z EAP235-WALLv1_XXX_up_signed.bin -o eap235-sysupgrade.bin
This can then be flashed using the OpenWrt sysupgrade interface. The
image will appear to be incompatible and must be force flashed, without
keeping the current configuration.
https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=1e75909a35a2b361cdfdfcf18a26ad61271b174e
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