So, the only openwrt firmware that would successfully flash is 23.5. If i try to flash 24 and upwards, if I use Luci to do a sysupgrade, it would get stuck flashing it. You know the textbox that would show when you hit the flash button, you would get the impression that it's doing its work on the background but it's been 30 minutes. So I just abort the process by pulling the plug and start from scratch by flashing 23.5 using Breed.
Breed bootloader. If I use Breed to flash 24.x, it would finish flashing, and it says to watch out for the modem because it will restart, and so gave the router ample time, about 10 minutes, to restart on its own.
Now what i do to check is to keep trying to enter Luci interface bec it let's me in, then that means the router is ready. That's how I do it when flashing 23.x, and it always hands me Luci interface. But it never happened here on 24.x.
Ten minutes should be enough time to flash, but either it successfully flashed but just can't get itself to restart. That's what I thought, so at that point, i just pull the power plug to powercycle it manually. But it still won't give me Luci.
SSH. Now i tried sysupgrade via ssh. I scp the firmware to router's tmp, and then did the upgrade from inside ssh. Same result. Still no access to luci. 192.168.1.1 is unreachable via ping or via browser.
Any ideas?
TLDR: On Luci, upgrading to version 24.x would get stuck to "do not power off your router" dialog box.