Linksys WRT3200ACM to factory firmware

Installing and Using OpenWrt
10

Hello. Thanks for the help. I do not know English and use Google translator.
I bought a router with openwrt
Can I explain in simple language, step by step, what should I do?

11

@alexmow Feel free to discuss this in public in a separate topic, instead of via PM.

12

@tmomas That was implied... the point was this isn't the thread to do it in. By all means though, why don't you go back over the additions and see if their removal made sense.

  • If you believe they don't then by all means, but since the additions were covered in multiple other places within the ToH, it was abundantly clear @alexmow never bothered to read the ToH, let alone the ToC for that matter.

Also, since you invited me to this convo due to @jeff's comment, I'll again state the exact same thing I've said to you many times before: If you don't want people making use of DokuWiki plugins, then remove support for them... else stop complaining.

  • Should you wish to continue your complaints, passive agressively or otherwise, they'll be ignored, as I simply don't have the time or patience to keep going round and round with you over your dislike of the DokuWiki formatting YOU allow as the maintainer of the OpenWrt Wiki site.
13

@tmomas Since you clearly don't care to do your own due diligence, and you want this done publicly:

  • @alexmow "All devices of the WRT AC series have 2 independent options, to recover from a failed flash attempt, otherwise bricked state or messed up configuration (as long as the hardware is not damaged)."
  • @alexmow "The device bootloader is a small partition separated from the firmware partitions. If one (or both) firmware partition is broken, the device may not boot properly to the firmware, but you can still use the bootloader and its recovery function, to repair the firmware. This allows to recover from a bricked router using TFTP software. This option requires a USB-TTL or USB-UART cable. See the video tutorial section for a how-to."
  • @alexmow "Furthermore, the WRT AC series devices have 2 fully independent firmware partitions. If you break the firmware in the currently active partition, you can use the other partition to reboot back to a fully working system. Each partition has its own settings and does not share settings with the other partition. The following specifics apply:"
  • @alexmow "Both the OpenWrt and the vendor firmware flash function will automatically alternate between the two firmware partitions after each successful firmware flash attempt, so it will first flash the firmware to the currently inactive partition and then set a flag, to switch to that partition on the next boot. So it is not up to you, to choose the installation partition. It will always flash the currently inactive partition."
    • This was not in the wiki, and in a less wordy fashion, added to the Flashing Firmware Synopsis (1st bullet):
      • Flashing occurs via a round-robin:
        • If booted to primary partition, alternate partition will be flashed, and vice versa

  • @alexmow "You can manually switch the active firmware partition to be used on the next reboot with the following options: via OpenWrt LuCI GUI [truncated], via OpenWrt SSH [truncated], via the reset/power switch [truncated]"
    • With the exception of "via OpenWrt SSH", this is covered in Firmware Recovery
    • "via OpenWrt SSH" was truncated to just "SSH" and added as a tab under Firmware Recovery

  • @alexmow "==== Reverting from OpenWrt to Linksys OEM firmware ===="
    • This already has a ToC section under Flashing Firmware: OpenWrt >> OEM

  • @alexmow "If you still have the Linksys OEM firmware in your other currently inactive partition, you can just switch partition for the next boot (See firmware recovery section for details)."
  • @alexmow "If both partitions have already been flashed to OpenWrt, you can still revert to Linksys OEM firmware easily, simply by flashing the Linksys OEM firmware using the OpenWrt GUI flash functions."
  • @alexmow "OpenWrt builds before ~May 2018 have required to use the OpenWrt command line for this, because the OpenWrt GUI at that time was reported to be unable to flash Linksys firmware, due to the Linksys OEM firmware using a different checksum algorithm. According to the LEDE forum, newer builds now support flashing the OEM firmware from the OpenWrt GUI. The command line, if needed, has a '-F' parameter than force-ignores checking the checksum. If you want to revert with the command line:"
    • Had this been under the OpenWrt >> OEM I likely wouldn't have touched it, however since it was abundantly obvious @alexmow did not even attempt to read the ToH, let alone the ToC [Table of Contents], and specified no source material, I removed it.
      • When the WRT AC Series Community re-wrote the WRT AC Series ToH wiki, numerous members objected to stating anywhere in the wiki to utilize sysupgrade's force option, due to a router being bricked if used incorrectly.
        • Granted, there was a single section (Third Party Builds: arokh) where a warning wrap was added to inform users that if they utilized @arokh's firmware, they must flash the image using sysupgrade -f, however, source links were provided to his Build Info page, where it explained why this was required.
    • Now that source links exist due to @hnyman's post above, this info will be added back to the ToH under the correct section for it, Flashing Firmware: OpenWrt >> OEM.

It should be noted there is currently generic info in the ToH that applies to all devices, such as the steps for flashing firmware, and once someone has time to verify these steps exist in a non-ToH OpenWrt wiki or can be added to a more appropriate wiki, these pieces of generic info will be removed, with inter-wiki links left in their place. These generic pieces of info were placed in the ToH because either non-ToH wikis didn't exist on the old OpenWrt wiki site that covered them, or it was impossible to find them due to the discombobulated way the old Wiki was laid out, which made it quite difficult to navigate.
14

As I understood, before the firmware I reported to run PuTTy, connect to the router 192.168.1.1
What to do after the connection? Step by step? Do I need to break all network connections on wifi and lan?

15

Just change dir to /tmp, download the firmware from Linksys, (maybe verify it), then just run sysupgrade:

(you can calculate sha256sum manually (with “sha256sum”) after downloading, if you want to verify the download at the router. But you naturally need the original checksum from OEM or self-calculated at PC or somewhere.)

cd /tmp
wget link-to-stock-firmware
sha256sum /tmp/stock-firmware-filename
sysupgrade -F -n /tmp/stock-firmware-filename

e.g.

cd /tmp
wget  http://downloads.linksys.com/downloads/firmware/FW_WRT3200ACM_1.0.6.186168_prod.img
sysupgrade -F -n /tmp/FW_WRT3200ACM_1.0.6.186168_prod.img
16

The whole problem is that flash firmware is from PuTTy, and not from the web interface?

17

You can't set the "override image check" option in LuCI, so you need to use console with putty.
But otherwise there is nothing special (just the need to use -F option )

18

Many thanks, I did it !!! Thank you, kind people.

19

If you only flashed LEDE once, the stock firmware should still be on alternative partition. You can force-reboot to an alternative partition thru 3 failed boots, or thru Web UI if you install luci-app-advanced-reboot package.

20

Can I explain step by step what I need to do?
The factory firmware already works

21

Regarding swapping to the alternate partition?

  • What @stangri suggested will work, and the other two ways [there's four ways total to switch primary <-> alternate partitions] are listed in the WRT AC Series wiki under Firmware Recovery.

  • If you already know how to utilize putty, @alexmow's great info about switching via SSH will likely be the quickest way (see the SSH tab under Firmware Recovery), whereas the easiest, and most user friendly way is @stangri's suggestion to install the luci-app-advanced-reboot package.
    • You can see a step by step instruction for installing and utilizing the package in the LuCI tab under Firmware Recovery
22

You do not need to do anything any more, as the flashed factory firmware works. Stangri's advice was too late.

As you now have already flashed that OEM factory firmware, it is on the current partition. Right now you have the Openwrt firmware in the other partition (from which you flashed the current OEM one). JW0914's advice will help you to switch into the Openwrt partition, if you want.

Just remember that there are two partitions and you always flash from the current partition to the other one, and then booting switches automatically to that partition. So you always have the previous firmware still available in the other partition. That is the rare fallback feature found in the wrt1900ac series.

Wiki explains the ways (u-boot console, ssh console, power switch, advanced-reboot app) to switch partitions, but the wiki article is a bit cryptic as quite much information is hidden in fancy tabs.

23

I want to flash DD-WRT. Will I have two partitions? In the second part, the OpenVRT will remain naked?

24

I guess it takes roughly a bazillion more critisizing postings like these to wake up $someone and make him aware that perfect for one is not perfect for all.

The situation is like in a restaurant where you complain about the awful taste of the food, and the chef yells at you "How dare you to not like my food? I put all the spices in that I have in my kitchen, it MUST be good!!!11"

The good thing is: Contrary to a restaurant which is owned by one person, the OpenWrt wiki is from the community for the community, i.e. the community can influence the menu and the way the meals are cooked. If something is not to your taste, raise your hand and say out loud what is not optimal. Even better if you make a proposal on how to improve the meals: Take less salt, less curcuma, more ginger. You get my point.

I am open for your proposals.

25

wrt1900ac wiki is not the easiest one for newcomer. Some advice is formatted into tabs like I already said in my post above. I feel that would be simpler for the casual user to see all the available options right on the screen instead of having to navigate tab by tab e.g. through the partition switching options.

Similarly, the dual partition nature of wrt1900ac series and its implications/possibilities are not quite that clear to the newcomer. The dual-boot nature of dual firmware partitions is very rare and exists only in a few routers. Yes, most of the detailed information is scattered in the wiki (like in partition tables), but may not be quite easily understandable for casual users.

Like discussed far above, there was an earlier attempt by alexmov to write additions explaining things in a simple way, but that got quickly deleted due to redundancy. Key additions:

E.g. the use of "sysupgrade -F" options was described in that added text that got later deleted. (and this whole thread is roughly about that info not being easily found in the wiki)

Yes, wiki is a community effort, but we need to also allow others to add contributions, although they may seem redundant to specialists of a device.

26

Friends, I absolutely do not understand you, but I believe you :slight_smile:
Do I have problems with a router or do I need to do something else?
Can I continue to flash it on DD-WRT via Web UI?

27

You clearly can't read... the WRT AC Series COMMUNITY decided on the formatting and layout, including utilizing the tabbox plugin. Yet again, you can't seem to be bothered to do your due diligence... but here, I'll make it easy for you..

That doesn't hold water... Tabs are specific to certain things, i.e. whatever is on the tab heading is what the tab is about. Stating that's difficult to comprehend is like saying a book's Table of Contents is difficult to comprehend. There's a ToC for a reason... it's right there to the right at the very top of the page, and if you're stating that's not the easiest, we clearly have different definitions of "not the easiest"...

  • See, all of this was already hashed out BY THE WRT AC SERIES COMMUNITY, but who cares about that right?

Change the wiki from what the Community decided they wanted it be and I will change it back. Like I said earlier: "What is getting old is having people who have no interest in contributing to the ToH criticizing the way the Community chose to have it formatted.

By all means though, since the facts don't seem to be sinking in, regardless of however many times I have to continually state them, why don't you PM @davidc502 to fact check the facts I keep repeatedly stating? I could provide other user names for the OpenWrt forum, but since that's dead in the water... perhaps you'd like to see the archived RSS feed posts I maintain in Outlook of the conversations regarding what to include, what not to include, why it should be formatted in the this way and not that way, what should the order of things be in the ToH, what should be closer to the top, what should be closer to the bottom, should this be worded that way or this way, etc.

  • Like I said, a years worth of discussions occurred regarding the content and formatting of that wiki, so instead of tearing down what the WRT AC Series Community created for the WRT AC Series ToH, perhaps one should be asking how can we better the ToH's of other devices. I only wish the communities surrounding other devices chose to dedicate even half of what we did to create a truly comprehensive wiki.

@tmomas & @hnyman:
This is what the WRT AC Series looked like before the WRT AC Series Community chose to have it revamped

28

Tabs are not fancy... they're apart of the DokuWiki plugin suite OpenWrt has always supported (DokuWiki Tabbox Plugin).

  • To state tabs are fancy is the equivalent of stating code boxes are fancy (DokuWiki Code & File Replacement Plugin)

  • It's always been unfortunate that it appears I'm one of only a few who've actually taken the time to read through the DokuWiki plugins' pages prior to creating a wiki (evidenced by the formatting in majority of wikis), or while doing major edits to one.
    • Properly formatting a wiki takes time, so I understand why many don't... but to ostracize members who do is beyond asinine.
      • Beggars shouldn't be choosers, so when one finds a member who's willing to spend hundreds of hours (yes, hundreds) formatting wikis, perhaps it's not the most astute approach to continually attempt to ostracize them...

With that being said, tabboxes are not in line with the new wiki guidelines implemented a few months back.

  • When I've had time, I've been experimenting with different ways to format the additional content, as the purpose of tabboxes, or at least the purpose I utilize them for, is to streamline information in a clear left-to-right reading order that's natural to all but a few languages.

  • Tabboxes have always been a pro/con plugin, as while they allow a wiki to contain a massive amount of information while having a small footprint, inactive tabs cannot be printed in any form utilizing any browser extension that I've been able to find (I've tried 10+ thus far).

  • Currently, this is what the WRT AC Series wiki would look like without tabboxes.

Perhaps @hnyman, @jeff, & @tmomas are willing to take the hours out of their days to re-format tab boxes into a more proficient way that's in line with the new guidelines, then test each change on both PC and mobile devices to ensure formatting stays cohesive and does not become discombobulated.

  • As I stated before, I've tried repeatedly, starting in 2016, asking other members to contribute to the ToH, and minus other members who help to maintain the ToH with up-to-date links, version numbers, etc. not a single person on this forum, or the OpenWrt forum before it crashed, ever chose to take up the offer. So unless any of you three are going to donate hours out of your days to help, perhaps all three of you should consider shutting it.

This is the last time I will address the ToH concerns any of you three bring up, as I've provided more than enough rationale and explanations to three people who have no interest in lifting a finger to help.

29

LS,

Will running the statement:

sysupgrade -F -n /tmp/stock-firmware-filename

flash the stock firmware on the current partition or the alternative partition?