Quick heads-up: 24.10.5 release is available on Releases · dutchmillbytes/openwrt
Tested with v2 and v3 devices.
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Hi @gschanuel. You could haev saved yourself a new router by switching to OpenWrt 
Thank you for your offer. The v3 devices are the most common and give the least problems. You should be able to run a v3 firmware from Releases · dutchmillbytes/openwrt without issues. There is a new major release coming up (25.12.0) so you are welcome to help with that.
The intent is to make this device supported through official releases. Preparing the PR takes time and - understanably - many boxes needs to be ticked.
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Indeed it is 
I was trying to flash it from the original firmware web-ui, and since it didn't work, I assumed it was not ready
Now I did it from tftp and it's working!
Well..
I was searching for an excuse to buy a wifi 6 router anyway.
At least now I won't need to throw them away
Thanks for your hard work @dutchmill !!
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Hi @dutchmill, Happy New Year! Thanks for your continued support of bringing the latest openwrt version to the deco m5 community.
I installed the latest 24.10.5 version to my v1 units, everything works fine but this latest builds have the 8MiB flash memory capacity issue which was fixed a while back, at least on the v1 build. Can you please rebuild them with the fix? I only knew about the issue when trying to install the python3-speedtest-cli package and got the flag about insufficient memory. Best regards.
Apologies @JP89 I missed this change while doing some cleanups.
The firmware images for 24.10.5 have been updated and offer 10MiB capacity now.
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Thanks a lot! @dutchmill
Hello,
I have 5 Deco-M5s (v3 EU) of which one (the ‘main-deco’) is connected via cable to an x86/64 OpenWrt mini-pc.
The other 4 are connected via wifi to the main deco.
Now I want to flash OpenWrt to one of the non-main deco’s, in order to start migrating to OpenWrt on all my decos
I want to flash the 24.10.5 firmware from Dutchmillbytes.
Is there a tutorial available how this is done?
I have a Ubuntu 25.10 laptop that I can use to connect via cable to the Deco M5 in order to get this done.
Thanks for your support.
PS: I tried already to flash from ‘tplinkdeco.net’ using a ‘ local upgrade’ on the selected Deco M5 using the image from Dutchmillbytes. This was however not successfull.
Try device support thread IPQ4019: Adding support for TP-Link Deco M5 - #563 by JP89
It looks like the tool from Dutchmillbytes is written for Windows. How does this work in Linux (Ubuntu)?
Detailed info here. Setting up the TFTP server is indeed described for a Windows machine. I will add a section on how to do this for Linux.
In the meantime maybe https://askubuntu.com/questions/201505/how-do-i-install-and-run-a-tftp-server helps. An attention point is that the server must run on the IP address 192.168.0.66.
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Thanks dutchmill, I will have a look and see how far it gets me.
I will indeed also wait for the addition of the ‘linux’ way in your tutorial.
I used tftp to install openwrt to my deco m5 v1 units on windows first, then on Debian recently due to the EOL of windows 10. tftp on Debian/Linux works fine but there is no realtime feedback like the windows tftp application has which shows the file being transfered over when it happens, maybe there is a way to show it but i just don't know how to.
BTW, any progress on getting this deco m5 branch merged into the main? @dutchmill
Thanks for updating the tutorial.
I tried to use it, but I cannot see when I need to let go of the reset button on the Deco M5v3(EU).
The tftp server does not indicate that a file is served and the Deco only shows a ‘white’ light constantly. When I let go of the reset button, after a while the light flickers red and then turns to green, but nothing has heen flashed as the Deco is instantly joining the other Deco M5’s TP-LINK network. Any help on this?
Could it be that the filename for a European Deco M5v3 is different from the one mentioned in your tutorial or that a different listener IP should be used?
Should I turn the other Deco’s off as well?
Might the fact that I use Kubuntu iso Ubuntu be a problem (Would not expect this.)
Did you confirm that the tftp server had been correctly installed and runing on your linux system? You can checked it using tftp client via command line (the client might already have been installed when you installed the server package). You can google for tftp server installation on linux guide, there should be instruction on how to check it.
I didn't see any indication that the firmware was transfered over either in my setup, but I didn't look into it to see if that is possible, probably yes by monitering the log file or something.
Using the client works, so the tftp server should be working.
Will look at the log (where is it located? what name? ) after a new try later today.
You can try the following command according to this guide: https://reintech.io/blog/installing-configuring-tftp-server-debian-12
sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog | grep tftpd
Sorry haven't tried this command myself, like I said, I didn't monitor the activity when I used tftp server on Debian, I didn't bother since my setup just worked as it should.
My Debian was recently reinstalled so I don't have the tftp server installed, and I don't need to do any openwrt installation at the moment.
Update: I installed the tftpd-hpa on my new Debian 13 just to try it out. I can confirm the tail command I mentioned above doesn't work since the latest Debian doesn't use the /var/log/syslog anymore, the following command does work:
sudo journalctl -u tftpd-hpa -f