OpenWrt support for Netgear WAX610 / WAX610Y / WAX610PA

For Developers
21

Thanks @serverror

Can you please show me how to flash back the Netgear OEM firmware on this device? Either "choose_part 0:" or "choose_part 1" no longer boots the OEM firmware.

22

Sure. I need to properly document return to stock instructions anyhow.

  1. Get a firmware from Netgear's site.
  2. Extract the tar within and then extract the img within the tar (7zip can handle tar on Windows)
  3. Rename the img to C0A80064.img (optional, you can pass tftpboot a filename later instead)
  4. Plug the router into the PC and give your network adapter an address of 192.168.0.10
  5. Use tftpd or similar to serve the image file's directory.
  6. From UART interrupt U-Boot and issue the following commands:
tftpboot
imgaddr=$fileaddr
source $imgaddr:script
  1. You should see the following once it finishes
crc32+ Flashing ubi:                           [ done ]
  1. Issue a 'reset'
  2. If it's not booting into stock firmware, use the boot_count trigger to force a partition swap and see if it boots. If not, repeat the above post-swap.

It wouldn't be terribly difficult (I have it implemented but not in a format that would be accepted to the main project) to make custom builds that incorporate a similar u-boot flasher script so that one could tftp flash openwrt without booting a ram image first. Maybe something I'll consider if there's a real need for it.

23

Thanks so much @serverror. Your instructions work great!

1 Like
24

@serverror,

Do you have any issues connecting a WAX610Y (running OpenWrt) to a switch port via a PoE injector (WAX610y(2.5G port) <=> PoE injector <=> Switch port.
In my case, the WAX610Y’s 2.5G port doesn’t come up when connected like this. It only establishes a link when I connect it directly to a computer or Raspberry Pi Ethernet port.
I’ve tried different PoE injectors and Ethernet cables, but no luck so far. This is really weird.

25

Unfortunately I won't have access to my PoE injectors for a little while so I can't check it. Do you have multiple brands/models of switches to try?

A PR to fix the TFTP installation is up, thank you for reporting and testing - https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/19215

Edit - I'm actually seeing some strange DHCP behaviors in the snapshot in general, this might not be specific to the wax610.

26

I cherry-picked your fix and it worked great with the TFTP method.

What’s the strange DHCP behavior you noticed? I tried converting the LAN interface from a DHCP client to a Static address with a DHCP server, but any client connected to the LAN port wouldn’t receive a DHCP lease. I haven’t seen this issue on other APs.

27

I'm running a DHCP server on the wifi interfaces and that's working ok. On the RJ45, DHCP client on the IPv6 side seems fine but on the IPv4 side it can get an address from some devices like my dev box running tftpd, but not when it's hooked into my network (in this case through a switch, but likely regardless). This was working not too long ago so I'll check snapshot again in a few days.