Hello, I hope someone can help me regarding openwrt on a Linksys WRT32X router. I received this and absolutely can't get it off the part. No matter what I always try OpenWRT. Could someone possibly help me?
My guess is that the previous owner somehow pushed openwrt to partition 1.
I tested it via Tftp / Putty and various instructions but unfortunately without success.
Hello, so I bought a Linksys Wrt32X. The previous owner kinda put openwrt on it. It also starts when you turn on the router, but I would like to have the entire router on factory firmware (original) first.
Now I've tried to bottle the router again, but for inexplicable reasons it doesn't work at all.
First I pinged the router to 192.168.1.1 which also worked.
I also tried to get to another partition, which didn't work (I have the feeling that Openvpn was installed on partition 1 and there is nothing on partition 2.
No matter what I try, whether I try to install via Putty or TFTP as recommended by Linksys, nothing works and it always starts openwrt.
Even after these instructions only with Wrt32X no success.
I had read that I needed a serial USB cable and had to open the router, but I can't confirm whether that's the only way.
The Linksys advice that you linked above, only works if OpenWrt has been flashed to one partition and the other partition still has the Linksys OEM firmware. The advice only tells you how to switch booting to the other partition. If you have OpenWrt on both partitions (like usually...), the procedure just toggles the booting to happen from the second partition.
I assume that with "factory" you refer to the Linksys OEM firmware.
(Note that in OpenWrt language, the "factory" is mage usually means the initial install image of OpenWrt that can be flashed from a router currently running Linksys OEM firmware, and the "sysupgrade" image is the one used when upgrading a router currently running OpenWrt router.)
There is nothing magical about "having the router on OEM factory firmware" first. Both Linksys OEM firmware and the OpenWrt firmwares write exactly the same flash areas, so if you intend to stay with OpenWrt, there is no benefit from going back to Linksys. But if you aim to drop OpenWrt totally and just have the Linksys OEM firmware there, then it is another story.
Some advice for going back to Linksys from SSH console:
You can also do the same from LuCI GUI:
download the proper Linksys OEM firmware from their site to your PC.
when you try to sysupgrade in LuCI with that image, the mage check fails. Override that with selecting "force" and also unselect the "keep settings".
Thanks for the tip from "kufkis"
I also did it exactly as you wrote.
After that I was shown under System - Advanced Reboot, with 2 partitions.
Partion 1 - Current - openwrt 21.02.2 and Partion 2 - alternative - linksys and a button with reboot to alternative firmware.
If I press the button, the router restarts and after a few seconds it has fully booted up again, but the "Internet" indicator lights up yellow and I have neither access to the Internet nor to the router (should be blue). A reset does not bring success either, it always comes back to this point.
So I have to switch off then on and do it 3 times so that I have access and internet again. But then I'm back on openwrt
@hnyman I also tried your two links with this firmware from Linksys homepage:
unfortunately also without success
I also did the same thing with Luci, which was also unsuccessful
Can it possibly be that the 2nd partition is damaged or empty? or the predecessor did something wrong when installing?
Hey, this may sound trivial, but when you reboot to the alternative firmware, you may also need to reboot the other equipment. They may have different local keys that identify them on the LAN. your local devices could be treating your alternative boot settings as an intruder since the router was just using different settings.
Unfortunately, restarting all other devices does not bring the desired success. The internet control lamp doesn't really have anything to do with the other devices either. It only shows that it is connected to the internet.
Unfortunately, access to the Linksys is also not possible.
Do you have any other idea???
Can it be that the alternative firmware is defective?
Not really, at least the firmware itself, as that no role in flashing a new one.
The flashing routine (both by OpenWrt and by Linksys) always overwrites the other partition and keeps the current one as fallback. So the contents of the other partition do not matter much.
You should install that luci-app-advanced-reboot that kufkis mentioned and
see what it shows as the partition contents. I guess that both partitions may contain OpenWrt at this point. Alternatively, the other one may now contain Linksys but doesnät boot.
test if you can toggle booting to happens from the other partition.
#!/bin/sh
#hacked from /lib/upgrade/linksys.sh
cur_boot_part=`/usr/sbin/fw_printenv -n boot_part`
target_firmware=""
if [ "$cur_boot_part" = "1" ]
then
target_firmware="kernel2"
fw_setenv boot_part 2
fw_setenv bootcmd "run altnandboot"
elif [ "$cur_boot_part" = "2" ]
then
target_firmware="kernel1"
fw_setenv boot_part 1
fw_setenv bootcmd "run nandboot"
fi
# re-enable recovery so we get back if the new firmware is broken
fw_setenv auto_recovery yes
echo "$target_firmware"
reboot
Edit: therre appears to be a character in your env thaat does not belong and is probably stopping you device from switching partitions correctly.
I spotted the same anomaly that @anomeome noticed.
Looks like somebody (the previous owner?) has manually tried to edit the boot_part variable and now there is both erroneous boot-part and boot_#part with an invalid char in variable.
Just a guess, but that might be the reason for being unable to toggle booting.
Your extra boot-part and boot_▒part may cause confusion in the u-boot if they are parsed. E.g. even if you toggle boot_cmd to 2 in the sysupgrade process, the "wrong" variable boot-cmd stays 1 and if that is parsed first with "case-insensitive" _ or - , the boot might stay on 1
There is z copy icon in the corner of the window when you open the script pulldown, ssh into to your device, copy into file and run
cd /tmp
vi bootTaOther
chmod +x bootTaOther
./bootTaOther
or just fix up your env as per what you see in the script as indicated above by @hnyman post. There is also a uboot command to reset your env, IIRC resetenv, not sure if that is available at the CLI in OpenWrt though.