Netgear WNDR4300 ended up in weird brick after flashing openwrt 23.05.02 sysupgrade image (previously Freifunk Gluon 23.01)

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I was running Freifunk firmware (based on Gluon 23.01) on my Netgear WNDR4300 without any issue.

Now, I decided to flash OpenWRT onto the device, used the sysupgrade image and ended up with a weird hybrid of the two... see what I get after ssh'ing into the machine:

BusyBox v1.36.1 (2023-11-14 13:38:11 UTC) built-in shell (ash)

  _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 -----------------------------------------------------
 OpenWrt 23.05.2, r23630-842932a63d
 -----------------------------------------------------
-ash: lua: not found
-----------------------------------------------------------
 ffws-NWBKAMobileberwachung ffws-NW_BKA_Mobile Überwachung      Contact: 
-----------------------------------------------------------
cat: can't open '/lib/gluon/release': No such file or directory
cat: can't open '/lib/gluon/gluon-version': No such file or directory
 Firmware:    / gluon-
 Linux version 5.15.137 (builder@buildhost) 2.40.0
 Autoupdater: 'stable' Enabled='1'
-ash: batctl: not found
 Clients: 0   WiFi: Channel: 6 (2.437 GHz) Channel: 44 (5.220 GHz) Channel: 44 (5.220 GHz)
 21:57:55 up 9 min,  load average: 0.08, 0.13, 0.11
-----------------------------------------------------------
 IP:   inet addr:10.7.8.118  Bcast:10.7.8.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
 SSH:  10.7.8.19 39624 10.7.8.118 22
-ash: batctl: not found
 UplinkIF:   Mesh:  MoL:0  MoW:0  Mesh-VPN: 0  Gateways:
-ash: batctl: not found

root@ffws-NWBKAMobileberwachung:~#

Any idea what could have gone wrong? Could this be related to the target switch from ar71xx to ath79 recently?
What would be your tip for easy recovery?

2

Tried doing a reset ?

3

Yes, I did try a reset - no success.

Next thing I tried is:

sudo ./nmrpflash -i enp0s25 -f openwrt-23.05.0-ath79-nand-netgear_wndr4300-squashfs-factory.img                                                                                                    1  
Waiting for Ethernet connection (Ctrl-C to skip).
Advertising NMRP server on enp0s25 ... \
Received configuration request from 10:0d:7f:50:5e:9b.
Sending configuration: 10.164.183.253/24.
Received upload request: filename 'firmware'.
Uploading openwrt-23.05.0-ath79-nand-netgear_wndr4300-squashfs-factory.img ... OK (9044097 b)
Waiting for remote to respond.
Remote finished. Closing connection.
Reboot your device now.

Rebooting now, will report back...

EDIT: So flashing openwrt-23.05.0-ath79-nand-netgear_wndr4300-squashfs-factory.img fixed it and I have access now, still wondering what went wrong.

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4

So, this is 23.05.0 now, not .2 as in the failed attempt. Anyone knows if .2 is reported to work on that router?

Or was it my mistake using the sysupgrade image insted of the factory image? I thought I could flash openwrt using the sysupgrade image when Gluon (which is sort of Openwrt) was already installed.

5

I use 23.05.2 on a WNDR3700v4 which is almost identical to the WNDR4300.

6

sysupgrade from 23.05.0 to 23.05.02 went fine...

1 Like