Linksys e2500 v3 Bricked

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi All,

Wanted to document my experience with installing LEDE on a Linksys E2500 v3 fresh out of the box.

After initial powerup and login, the latest firmware listed in the E2500 v3 ToH was flashed to the device, making sure to use the v3 variant. Once the progress bar reached 100% I received the "Please wait up to 60 seconds" message.

Since then the router appears to be in a boot loop and is effectively bricked. Is LEDE an unreliable, test only project right now? I was under the impression that it was fairly reliable.

2

FWIW, I;ve installed LEDE on a lot of Broadcom(and other) devices without issue.

I want to say your issue was that you flashed LEDE without stripping the header. Although the header is needed for stock firmware...

No real clue. On these routers, you may be able to use TFTP to recover.

3

Hi there,
I had a similar experience with the E2500 v3. I flashed the Lede version 17.01.1, but I could not get any connection. After setting up a serial connection (you can find a pinout here , even though mine is a bit different) I managed to see, that LEDE is actually booting fine.
My problem seems to be (and maybe yours too), that I cannot get any connection via Ethernet whatsoever. But before going any deeper I decided to use tomato for the E2500 instead, since LEDE does not support the wifi chip according to this.

4

yeah.
i trusted openwrt and flashed it to my friends e2500v3 that has advancedtomato in it.

first i suspected tomato bin file is 11....mb but openwrt bin file is just 3....mb ????
than unfurtanutely i flashed openwrt to modem anyway. but 192.168.1.1 is not working now just ethernet light is on...

we hope we can recover it :frowning: tomato is better than openwrt???

5

I had the exact same issue with my Linksys E2500v3 after flashing OpenWRT built from git in May 2019.

Here are the symptoms I saw:

  • When the router rebooted, I had no connectivity to it at all.
  • Power light would blink twice and then shut off and stay off.
  • LAN ports would light up when a cable was plugged in, but otherwise didn't seem to work at all.
  • The router would not hand out IP address via DHCP on LAN ports, it would not reply to ARP queries, it would not reply to 192.168.1.1, etc.
  • 30-30-30 reset did nothing.
  • Normal internet traffic (e.g. DHCP client, NTP client, etc.) was going fine over the WAN port.

I was able to get the Broadcom CFE ttl=100 response when I connected via a switch (not directly with a USB-Ethernet adapter) to the LAN ports. Attempting to TFTP the stock Linksys firmware failed at exactly the 8 MiB mark.

I then had to use a CP2102 USB-TTL adapter from ebay to go directly to the console. There I was able to disable the firewall, connect to the OpenWRT web interface via the WAN side, and reflash the stock firmware there.

I never did figure out how to get OpenWRT to work...

6

How Fix Linksys E2500 V3 Bricked?? Please Help Me

7

can you please explain how did you use serial? I'm able to get CFE but not the console... I tried CLTR+C or Escape. nothing so far.

8

Can you write a short documentation how did you do this? I'm trying to do the same

9

Final Solution