Installing OpenWRT on Netgear WAX630

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I have in the past successfully loaded OpenWRT on multiple Netgear WAX610s. I flashed from the GUI, and then rebooted into the backup firmware. This was on the latest 25.12.2 release. The units work great.

I have recently secured a Netgear WAX630 that I downloaded the 25.12.2 UI-Factory image and flashed it in the same manner as the WAX610s. It said firmware complete and the system rebooted, the power light went green and the two ethernet ports would go green when plugged in, the wifi LEDs were not lit (I expected that because they aren't enabled by default) but I could not ping the unit at all (tried 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.0.100. I also hooked it up to a pihole with DHCP turned on but it didn't grab an IP from there either. If did a quick reset, I would sometimes get one maybe two successful pings while the power light was blue before it transititoned to green but that was it.

https://git.openwrt.org/openwrt/openwrt/commit/?id=2758eebc76cc1b09c2551ef982c8bb28230665a1

I followed these instructions

I was able to get it back to the original firmware flash by unplugging and plugging it several times and then it booted back into the Netgeat firmware.

I have since noticed that different places mention it is supported on 24.10.4 Is this the case or is that a matter of documentation not caught up yet?

Am I missing something on flashing this particulat unit?

2

I don’t have this device myself, but I came across the commit that initially added support for the WAX630:

https://git.openwrt.org/openwrt/openwrt/commit/?id=5e33fdfc47eeb3620536baaa1de13fbd2e6b5d62

From what I can see, the installation procedure described there relies on booting an initramfs image via TFTP and flashing from within that environment, rather than flashing directly from the stock GUI.

Given your symptoms (brief ping during early boot, then no network), I wonder if the device might not have been flashed in the way expected by the current support status.

Might be worth trying the initramfs + TFTP method outlined in that commit, just to rule that out.

3

Yes, I saw that but since flashing from the factory UI is supported I’m trying to figure out what I did wrong with factory UI tar upgrade…

Thanks I may have to go that route….