Hey everyone,
edit: had to also disable irqbalance and possibly sqm. cant be bothered anymore so just using rc.local is a surefire way of it not soft bricking.
This has been driving me nuts for a while now, so I figured I’d share my findings and maybe get some feedback from anyone else dealing with this.
I hate the Nano Pi R5S sometimes. It’s really annoying when it soft bricks itself, especially since the "reset" button doesn’t actually trigger the squashfs firstboot. This makes recovery a pain.
After a lot of trial and error (why the hell would this service soft brick it? it was the last thing i could think of), I found a bypass that works:
root@OpenWrt:~# cat /etc/rc.local
# Put your custom commands here that should be executed once
# the system init finished. By default this file does nothing.
service https-dns-proxy start
service https-dns-proxy disable
service irqbalance start
service irqbalance disable
service sqm start
service sqm disable
exit 0
root@OpenWrt:~#
What I Did*
- I built a custom firmware with the packages I wanted.
- Then, I optimized it further by including my configs.
- I started enabling services one by one and found that https-dns-proxy, when enabled, causes the device to soft brick.
*The power LED just flashes red and never boots.
*No HDMI or USB keyboard recovery option either.
*I tried adding HDMI support into the kernel, but honestly, it’s a hassle compared to just using the image builder.
Quick Recovery Method
To quickly recover from a soft brick, use the FriendlyWRT SD Flasher image.
- Flash it onto an SD card.
- Place your OpenWrt firmware file (e.g.,
openwrt-24.10.img.gz) in the same folder. - Edit the
.conffile in that folder and changefriendlywrt.imgto your specified image.
root@OpenWrt:~# service
/etc/init.d/avahi-daemon disabled stopped
/etc/init.d/banip disabled stopped
/etc/init.d/boot enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/cron enabled running
/etc/init.d/dbus enabled running
/etc/init.d/ddns enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq enabled running
/etc/init.d/done enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/dropbear enabled running
/etc/init.d/etherwake enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/fail2ban enabled running
/etc/init.d/firewall enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/fstab enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/gpio_switch enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/https-dns-proxy disabled stopped
/etc/init.d/irqbalance enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/led enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/log enabled running
/etc/init.d/miniupnpd enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/mwan3 enabled running
/etc/init.d/network enabled running
/etc/init.d/nut-cgi disabled stopped
/etc/init.d/nut-monitor disabled stopped
/etc/init.d/nut-server disabled stopped
/etc/init.d/odhcpd enabled running
/etc/init.d/openssl enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/packet_steering enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/rpcd enabled running
/etc/init.d/sqm enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/sshd disabled stopped
/etc/init.d/sysctl enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/sysfixtime enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/sysntpd enabled running
/etc/init.d/system enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/ttyd enabled running
/etc/init.d/ucitrack enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/uhttpd enabled running
/etc/init.d/umount enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/urandom_seed enabled stopped
/etc/init.d/urngd enabled running
image build (i removed mbebtls from the r5s profile)
make image PROFILE="friendlyarm_nanopi-r5s" \
PACKAGES="libustream-openssl base-files ca-bundle dropbear dnsmasq e2fsprogs firewall4 fstools kmod-gpio-button-hotplug kmod-nft-offload libc libgcc logd mkf2fs mtd netifd nftables libustream-openssl odhcp6c odhcpd-ipv6only opkg partx-utils ppp ppp-mod-pppoe procd-ujail uboot-envtools uci uclient-fetch urandom-seed urngd kmod-r8169 luci nano luci-app-mwan3 luci-app-irqbalance luci-app-https-dns-proxy luci-app-acl luci-app-banip luci-app-ddns luci-app-nut luci-app-sqm nano tcpdump luci-app-upnp luci-ssl-openssl luci-proto-wireguard lsblk block-mount avahi-daemon openssh-sftp-server openssh-sftp-client openssh-keygen openssh-server openssh-client luci-app-openvpn luci-app-wol luci-app-ttyd nmap-full fail2ban wget-ssl curl ddns-scripts-cloudflare python3-speedtest-cli htop bind-host bash" \
ROOTFS_PARTSIZE="512" \
DISABLED_SERVICES="sshd ddns fail2ban mwan3 sqm miniupnpd nut-cgi nut-monitor nut-server etherwake https-dns-proxy irqbalance avahi-daemon banip" \
FILES=/home/anthony/r5s/openwrt-imagebuilder-24.10.0-rockchip-armv8.Linux-x86_64/configs/
P.S if anyone could let me know an easy way to make openwrt automatically use openssh instead of dropbear that would be sweet