hi, is it possible to overwrite/replace the vendor recovery web gui (only cinese language to guess from) with an openwrt web recovery page? I have zbt wg1602 v04 32m. thanks
when I push reset button the cinese vendor web gui is always there, even the router is flashed with openwrt 24.10.0-rc4. I don't know how to replace that vendor web gui. thanks
ps since my post has been removed for off-topic from original topic, I repost here.
Openwrt doesn’t have a recovery page. So, no. You’d need to rewrite the bootloader and recovery system yourself.
any tip to rewrite or update the bootloader? when I connect to serial, I can see pandorabox page during booting process, but I don't know if there is u-boot or something else as bootloader
Pandora box is a bootloader too...
If you got serial access, you should be able to see why the flash fails...
sorry for misunderstanding, when i flash openwrt 24.10.0-rc4 (an other versions), I success in booting a working router, but I'd like just to replace pandorabox with u-boot since I'm more familiar with the latter and I like to get rid from cinese web gui recovery.
Then you should ask elsewhere, Openwrt use U-Boot, but seldom provide binaries for it, nor support.
Switching to U-Boot from Pandora should be a question for Pandora, assuming there are U-Boot images for your device out there.
ok, thanks for the usefull tip. I will investigate in that direction. I searched for pandorabox infos on the web with no luck. No idea where to find resources for that nor the official website regarding pandorabox
Replacing the bootloader on embedded devices is not as easy as updating grub on x86, u-boot is somewhere half way between 'BIOS' and being a bootloader. This means you'd need to modify u-boot for each and every hardware model and develop a bespoke u-boot image, which is hard (and even harder without access to thr source of the OEM bootloader).
With few exceptions, OpenWrt doesn't do this (very high risk - and hard).
I see, thanks for pointing this out. The new One Openwrt device easier to take control?
the One have an open source U-boot, it can be upgraded/replaced, assuming future versions of it get published.
what's the actual reason for swapping out Pandora, except for it talking Chinese ?
since I really like opensource idea, therefore I started to use openwrt firmwares, but I didn't now much about opensource hardware and I bought zbt 1602 and zbt 8102, because they were openwrt supported. the bad move was that 1602 has pandorabox, and 8102 is emmc version, and is not supported. my bad. after few weeks OperWrt One came on the market.
Just to be clear, the bootloader and recovery mechanisms have almost nothing to do with the regular running firmware (i.e. OpenWrt) once the device is booted. When OpenWrt is fully booted, you've got a full open source stack running on the bare metal. The bootloader simply tells the hardware how to get started booting. And the recovery is just a method to write to the flash storage if/when necessary (I.e. if your firmware isn't booting properly or in some cases if you want to flash the device with different firmware than is currently running).
interesting. so it's better I give up with my wish to replace pandorabox. At least I'll try to translate the chinese text into the source file, if it is possible. Every time I push the reset button, the web recover gui is a nightmare to guess from.
pretty sure you can find translations for it online, as in what stuff means, not a language set.