[Solved] WNDR3800 no wireless interfaces

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

I recently took my WNDR3800 out of storage to play around with, after booting it noticed it was running 18.06 then I tried installing @hnyman 's community edition of 19.07 and today I just downgraded to 17.01. It seems no matter what I do there are no wireless devices showing up under interfaces. Am I missing something very obvious to turn on or run in LEDE?

I used this device a few years ago (presumably openwrt 17) for several years with no problems.
Is this a known problem with this model? Should I attempt to open up the case and check the connections?

Any diagnostic help appreciated

2

what does the output of ifconfig show?

3 
root@LEDE:~# ifconfig 
br-lan    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr B6:C9:A7:5E:BD:49  
          inet addr:192.168.1.1  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fdf3:4d1e:15d2::1/60 Scope:Global
          inet6 addr: fe80::b4c9:a7ff:fe5e:bd49/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:193 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:184 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:21280 (20.7 KiB)  TX bytes:18891 (18.4 KiB)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr B6:C9:A7:5E:BD:49  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:202 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:191 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:25811 (25.2 KiB)  TX bytes:20442 (19.9 KiB)
          Interrupt:4 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 1A:7F:77:E8:71:9F  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:5 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1 
          RX bytes:1152 (1.1 KiB)  TX bytes:1152 (1.1 KiB)
4

I also noticed these messages in dmesg

[    3.095803] rtl8366s rtl8366s: using GPIO pins 5 (SDA) and 7 (SCK)
[    3.102055] rtl8366s rtl8366s: RTL8366 ver. 1 chip found
[    3.148484] libphy: rtl8366s: probed
5

Hmm. Not good. Have you tried a full reset after the downgrade? Also which image did use you go back to 17.01?

6

I'll try a full reset now, I used the 17.01 sysupgrade image from openwrt

7

Try the normal image first.

8

What do you mean by the normal image? Do you mean this ?

9

Yes, that's the one.

10

okay I'll give it a shot now, can that be flashed directly ontop of 17.01 from LuCI interface?

11

It can, try this line first before reflashing...
umount /overlay && jffs2reset && reboot now

12

I'm constantly flashing firmware on lots of different arch, your unit was my baby for the longest :grin:

13

yea they're still good units, I had a long thread with @hnyman yesterday after I bricked my WNDR3700 which I restored with a Serial upload. I'm suffering some weird problems when torrent that I need to post on the forums next. I think it's probably related to connections table filling up.

14

it's complaining about file format in LuCI because it's a .img and not a .bin I presume.

15

@mindwolf okay I'm reflashing using factory.img now via CLI and sysupgrade -F

16

yeah so that definitely just bricked it........

17

Please show the full kernel bootlog.
Otherwise it is really hard to remotely guess what may be wrong.

One possible reason might be that you have overwritten the "art" partition which contains MACs and the wifi calibration data.

18

It is complaining because that "factory" image can only be used when flashing with Netgear OEM firmware or Netgear's u-boot TFTP recovery flash. For OpenWrt sysupgrade you need a "sysupgrade" image.

Wrong.
For OpenWrt sysupgrade you need a "sysupgrade" image.

Sure. Flashing a factory image (that inclucdes a short Netgear header) by force with sysupgrade causes it to be written to slightly wrong place.

19

yup this is why I was attempting to ask @mindwolf before I did it.
Serial flashed it back to 18.06.4 before going to bed. I'll post up the kernal bootlog, in fact I was looking at it last night and comparing it to the one listed here. I'm definitely missing the section of log at 9 seconds in where most of the wifi initialization seems to be taking place.

20 
[    0.000000] Linux version 4.9.184 (buildbot@2ccc8102e0c3) (gcc version 7.3.0 (OpenWrt GCC 7.3.0 r7808-ef686b7292) ) #0 Thu Jun 27 12:18:52 2019
[    0.000000] MyLoader: sysp=aaaa5554, boardp=aaaa5554, parts=aaaa5554
[    0.000000] bootconsole [early0] enabled
[    0.000000] CPU0 revision is: 00019374 (MIPS 24Kc)
[    0.000000] SoC: Atheros AR7161 rev 2
[    0.000000] Determined physical RAM map:
[    0.000000]  memory: 08000000 @ 00000000 (usable)
[    0.000000] Initrd not found or empty - disabling initrd
[    0.000000] Primary instruction cache 64kB, VIPT, 4-way, linesize 32 bytes.
[    0.000000] Primary data cache 32kB, 4-way, VIPT, cache aliases, linesize 32 bytes
[    0.000000] Zone ranges:
[    0.000000]   Normal   [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x0000000007ffffff]
[    0.000000] Movable zone start for each node
[    0.000000] Early memory node ranges
[    0.000000]   node   0: [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x0000000007ffffff]
[    0.000000] Initmem setup node 0 [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x0000000007ffffff]
[    0.000000] On node 0 totalpages: 32768
[    0.000000] free_area_init_node: node 0, pgdat 8044c434, node_mem_map 81000020
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 256 pages used for memmap
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 0 pages reserved
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 32768 pages, LIFO batch:7
[    0.000000] pcpu-alloc: s0 r0 d32768 u32768 alloc=1*32768
[    0.000000] pcpu-alloc: [0] 0 
[    0.000000] Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on.  Total pages: 32512
[    0.000000] Kernel command line:  board=WNDR3700 mtdparts=spi0.0:320k(u-boot)ro,128k(u-boot-env)ro,15872k(firmware),64k(art)ro console=ttyS0,115200 rootfstype=squashfs noinitrd
[    0.000000] PID hash table entries: 512 (order: -1, 2048 bytes)
[    0.000000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
[    0.000000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
[    0.000000] Writing ErrCtl register=00000000
[    0.000000] Readback ErrCtl register=00000000
[    0.000000] Memory: 124940K/131072K available (3393K kernel code, 178K rwdata, 448K rodata, 324K init, 211K bss, 6132K reserved, 0K cma-reserved)
[    0.000000] SLUB: HWalign=32, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
[    0.000000] NR_IRQS:51
[    0.000000] Clocks: CPU:680.000MHz, DDR:340.000MHz, AHB:170.000MHz, Ref:40.000MHz
[    0.000000] clocksource: MIPS: mask: 0xffffffff max_cycles: 0xffffffff, max_idle_ns: 5621354254 ns
[    0.000008] sched_clock: 32 bits at 340MHz, resolution 2ns, wraps every 6316128254ns
[    0.007808] Calibrating delay loop... 452.19 BogoMIPS (lpj=2260992)
[    0.070515] pid_max: default: 32768 minimum: 301
[    0.075221] Mount-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.081829] Mountpoint-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.091072] clocksource: jiffies: mask: 0xffffffff max_cycles: 0xffffffff, max_idle_ns: 19112604462750000 ns
[    0.100936] futex hash table entries: 256 (order: -1, 3072 bytes)
[    0.108066] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[    0.113724] MIPS: machine is NETGEAR WNDR3700/WNDR3800/WNDRMAC
[    0.119575] ar71xx: using random MAC address for eth0
[    0.352792] ar71xx: using random MAC address for eth1
[    2.573692] random: fast init done
[    2.796349] registering PCI controller with io_map_base unset
[    2.811146] PCI host bridge to bus 0000:00
[    2.815302] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [mem 0x10000000-0x16ffffff]
[    2.822163] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [io  0x0000]
[    2.827732] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x0]
[    2.834503] pci_bus 0000:00: No busn resource found for root bus, will use [bus 00-ff]
[    2.842454] pci 0000:00:11.0: [168c:ff1d] type 00 class 0x020000
[    2.842464] pci 0000:00:11.0: invalid calibration data
[    2.847606] pci 0000:00:11.0: reg 0x10: [mem 0x00000000-0x0000ffff]
[    2.847831] pci 0000:00:12.0: [168c:ff1d] type 00 class 0x020000
[    2.847839] pci 0000:00:12.0: invalid calibration data
[    2.852997] pci 0000:00:12.0: reg 0x10: [mem 0x00000000-0x0000ffff]
[    2.853200] pci_bus 0000:00: busn_res: [bus 00-ff] end is updated to 00
[    2.853225] pci 0000:00:11.0: BAR 0: assigned [mem 0x10000000-0x1000ffff]
[    2.860007] pci 0000:00:12.0: BAR 0: assigned [mem 0x10010000-0x1001ffff]
[    2.866818] pci 0000:00:11.0: using irq 40 for pin 1
[    2.871768] pci 0000:00:12.0: using irq 41 for pin 1
[    2.879508] clocksource: Switched to clocksource MIPS
[    2.885397] NET: Registered protocol family 2
[    2.890598] TCP established hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    2.897563] TCP bind hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    2.903960] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 1024 bind 1024)
[    2.910407] UDP hash table entries: 256 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    2.916243] UDP-Lite hash table entries: 256 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    2.922723] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[    2.927108] PCI: CLS 0 bytes, default 32
[    2.929360] Crashlog allocated RAM at address 0x3f00000
[    2.935571] workingset: timestamp_bits=30 max_order=15 bucket_order=0
[    2.947798] squashfs: version 4.0 (2009/01/31) Phillip Lougher
[    2.953654] jffs2: version 2.2 (NAND) (SUMMARY) (LZMA) (RTIME) (CMODE_PRIORITY) (c) 2001-2006 Red Hat, Inc.
[    2.970827] io scheduler noop registered
[    2.974745] io scheduler deadline registered (default)
[    2.980268] Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 16 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
[    2.988770] console [ttyS0] disabled
[    3.012413] serial8250.0: ttyS0 at MMIO 0x18020000 (irq = 11, base_baud = 10625000) is a 16550A
[    3.021124] console [ttyS0] enabled
[    3.028078] bootconsole [early0] disabled
[    3.040947] m25p80 spi0.0: found mx25l12805d, expected m25p80
[    3.047149] m25p80 spi0.0: mx25l12805d (16384 Kbytes)
[    3.052266] 4 cmdlinepart partitions found on MTD device spi0.0
[    3.058168] Creating 4 MTD partitions on "spi0.0":
[    3.062966] 0x000000000000-0x000000050000 : "u-boot"
[    3.069628] 0x000000050000-0x000000070000 : "u-boot-env"
[    3.076629] 0x000000070000-0x000000ff0000 : "firmware"
[    3.094691] 2 netgear-fw partitions found on MTD device firmware
[    3.100737] 0x000000070000-0x0000001c4440 : "kernel"
[    3.106927] 0x0000001c4440-0x000000ff0000 : "rootfs"
[    3.113349] mtd: device 4 (rootfs) set to be root filesystem
[    3.119039] 1 squashfs-split partitions found on MTD device rootfs
[    3.125257] 0x000000410000-0x000000ff0000 : "rootfs_data"
[    3.132462] 0x000000ff0000-0x000001000000 : "art"
[    3.139151] Realtek RTL8366S ethernet switch driver version 0.2.2
[    3.145332] rtl8366s rtl8366s: using GPIO pins 5 (SDA) and 7 (SCK)
[    3.151618] rtl8366s rtl8366s: RTL8366 ver. 1 chip found
[    3.211265] libphy: rtl8366s: probed
[    3.215400] libphy: Fixed MDIO Bus: probed
[    3.561183] eth0: Atheros AG71xx at 0xb9000000, irq 4, mode:RGMII
[    3.901470] ag71xx ag71xx.1: connected to PHY at rtl8366s:04 [uid=001cc960, driver=Generic PHY]
[    3.910787] eth1: Atheros AG71xx at 0xba000000, irq 5, mode:RGMII
[    3.918470] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[    3.926255] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[    3.930795] bridge: filtering via arp/ip/ip6tables is no longer available by default. Update your scripts to load br_netfilter if you need this.
[    3.943815] 8021q: 802.1Q VLAN Support v1.8
[    3.949485] hctosys: unable to open rtc device (rtc0)
[    3.959497] VFS: Mounted root (squashfs filesystem) readonly on device 31:4.
[    3.967569] Freeing unused kernel memory: 324K
[    3.972031] This architecture does not have kernel memory protection.
[    4.626832] init: Console is alive
[    4.630489] init: - watchdog -
[    5.525064] kmodloader: loading kernel modules from /etc/modules-boot.d/*
[    5.580073] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[    5.585649] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[    5.591060] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[    5.600438] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver
[    5.608240] ehci-platform: EHCI generic platform driver
[    5.613583] ehci-platform ehci-platform: EHCI Host Controller
[    5.619354] ehci-platform ehci-platform: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[    5.627384] ehci-platform ehci-platform: irq 3, io mem 0x1b000000
[    5.659541] ehci-platform ehci-platform: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
[    5.666581] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    5.670664] hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
[    5.676895] ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver
[    5.684158] ohci-platform: OHCI generic platform driver
[    5.689473] ohci-platform ohci-platform: Generic Platform OHCI controller
[    5.696315] ohci-platform ohci-platform: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
[    5.704319] ohci-platform ohci-platform: irq 14, io mem 0x1c000000
[    5.784323] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    5.788349] hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
[    5.793158] kmodloader: done loading kernel modules from /etc/modules-boot.d/*
[    5.810816] init: - preinit -
[    6.584898] ar71xx: pll_reg 0xb8050010: 0x11110000
[    6.584916] eth0: link up (1000Mbps/Full duplex)
[    6.607894] random: procd: uninitialized urandom read (4 bytes read)
[    9.838161] jffs2: notice: (435) jffs2_build_xattr_subsystem: complete building xattr subsystem, 0 of xdatum (0 unchecked, 0 orphan) and 0 of xref (0 dead, 0 orphan) found.
[    9.855004] mount_root: switching to jffs2 overlay
[    9.887137] urandom-seed: Seeding with /etc/urandom.seed
[   10.073587] eth0: link down
[   10.086364] procd: - early -
[   10.089334] procd: - watchdog -
[   10.700118] procd: - watchdog -
[   10.703482] procd: - ubus -
[   10.800358] random: ubusd: uninitialized urandom read (4 bytes read)
[   10.808474] random: ubusd: uninitialized urandom read (4 bytes read)
[   10.815258] random: ubusd: uninitialized urandom read (4 bytes read)
[   10.822487] procd: - init -
[   11.152100] kmodloader: loading kernel modules from /etc/modules.d/*
[   11.162392] ip6_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
[   11.180220] Loading modules backported from Linux version wt-2017-11-01-0-gfe248fc2c180
[   11.188216] Backport generated by backports.git v4.14-rc2-1-31-g86cf0e5d
[   11.197387] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
[   11.209769] nf_conntrack version 0.5.0 (2048 buckets, 8192 max)
[   11.263540] xt_time: kernel timezone is -0000
[   11.308608] PPP generic driver version 2.4.2
[   11.315066] NET: Registered protocol family 24
[   11.346746] kmodloader: done loading kernel modules from /etc/modules.d/*
[   12.896053] urandom_read: 5 callbacks suppressed
[   12.896061] random: jshn: uninitialized urandom read (4 bytes read)
[   21.033440] ar71xx: pll_reg 0xb8050010: 0x11110000
[   21.033474] eth0: link up (1000Mbps/Full duplex)
[   21.038172] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
[   21.077936] br-lan: port 1(eth0.1) entered blocking state
[   21.083385] br-lan: port 1(eth0.1) entered disabled state
[   21.089120] device eth0.1 entered promiscuous mode
[   21.093954] device eth0 entered promiscuous mode
[   21.182885] br-lan: port 1(eth0.1) entered blocking state
[   21.188288] br-lan: port 1(eth0.1) entered forwarding state
[   21.194069] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): br-lan: link is not ready
[   21.246617] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready
[   22.109614] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
[   22.116350] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): br-lan: link becomes ready
[   25.390842] ar71xx: pll_reg 0xb8050014: 0x11110000
[   25.390856] eth1: link up (1000Mbps/Full duplex)
[   25.395487] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth1: link becomes ready
[   97.150395] eth1: link down
[  126.829552] random: crng init done