@Narrbot I made some automated builds for WPA8630(CA,EU,US)v2 here and added some links to them in the wiki.
After installing once, the devices are effectively the supported EU and INT OpenWRT firmwares, and regular packages and sysupgrades can be used from then on.
For anyone running the 2019 firmwares for those devices, the only solution is a custom firmware to downgrade it. I have a script to generate one, but its kinda risky and still needs some debugging.
Hi,
First of all big respect for all the time and effort you guys putting in to this! 
i am following this topic for about a year now because i would like to upgrade my WPA8630P v2 EU device to a newer OpenWRT version. My exact device description is "TL-WPA8630P KIT(EU) Ver. 2.1"
Currently i am running the following Netadair version: (OpenWrt 18.06-SNAPSHOT r7781-f63a1caf22 / LuCI openwrt-18.06 branch (git-19.156.63894-115c4e3) which works fine at the moment.
But as a noob i have totally no idea how and if i can upgrade my device to newer OpenWRT version. To be honest at this point i am totally lost what steps to follow to upgrade my device 
This link explains that the Partition layout md5sum has to be the same as the one in the table and this can be checked with the following command: (grep -ao "partition .*$" wpa8630pv2_eu-up-ver2-0-3-P1-20171018-rel36564.bin | md5sum)
If i run that command (just copy / paste it) i get this output. Is that good or not, because the checksum does not match one of those in the table i suppose ?!?
root@MyAP:~# grep -ao "partition .*$" wpa8630pv2_eu-up-ver2-0-3-P1-20171018-rel3
6564.bin | md5sum
grep: wpa8630pv2_eu-up-ver2-0-3-P1-20171018-rel36564.bin: No such file or directory
**d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e** -
Can someone tell me if it is possible to upgrade my device and point me in the right direction for the steps to follow to succesfully upgrade my device to a newer OpenRT version including the LuCI webinterface acces (simular to Netadair version)?
I'll take a look at tidying up those instructions, they are still a bit confusing. The md5sum part is mainly for people to find the partition layout from new versions of the stock firmware files.
For upgrading from the netadair firmware, you can use this sysupgrade file which is specific for TL-WPA8630P (EU) v2.1.
You can flash it with:
sysupgrade -F /tmp/openwrt-ath79-generic-tplink_tl-wpa8630p-v2.1-eu-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
To install LuCI, you will have to follow these instructions to make a sysupgrade image with it installed. The command for your device would be:
make image PROFILE="tplink_tl-wpa8630p-v2.1-eu" PACKAGES="procd iw luci"
Edit: @rsn1
My exact device description is "TL-WPA8630P KIT(EU) Ver. 2.1"
Just noticed, this looks like the box description? Does it say that on the device barcode for model? If its TL-WPA8630P(EU) Ver. 2.0 then you should sysupgrade using the tl-wpa8630p-v2.0-eu firmware instead.
hi is there anyone had tplink_tl-wpa8630p-v2.0-eu and tplink_tl-wpa8630p-v2.1-eu original uboot dump or serial dump, my powerline has been bootloop when try to flash from openwrt to original firmware
TL-WPA8630P(AU)_V2_171030.zip contains a uboot-image but I'd wait for the others to chime in with re to whether or not it can be transplanted onto the EU HW. Apparently, so does the GPL-bundle available for the V1.
I do have the device and can send you the uboot image if you want. I don't have the factory firmware anymore but I am sure it would be the same.
Here it is. There arr 2 files in the zip (mtd0 and mtd1). I believe I have the UK version.
If you need other partitions let me know.
This is what I copied as well from when I did the backup
mtd0: 00020000 00010000 "factory-uboot"
mtd1: 00020000 00010000 "u-boot"
mtd2: 005e0000 00010000 "firmware"
mtd3: 00166711 00010000 "kernel"
mtd4: 00470000 00010000 "rootfs"
mtd5: 00130000 00010000 "rootfs_data"
mtd6: 00010000 00010000 "partition-table"
mtd7: 00040000 00010000 "config"
mtd8: 000c0000 00010000 "nvm"
mtd9: 00040000 00010000 "pib"
mtd10: 00080000 00010000 "unused"
mtd11: 00010000 00010000 "art"
thanks ya..
Does anyone have a backup of 2.0.2/2.0.1/2017? I picked up a used WPA8630 (non-P, v2.0 EU), unfortunately the previous owner had upgraded it to 2.0.3/2019 and I've been unsuccessful in downgrading it by stitching the various firmwares and bootloaders (i've only been able to source backups from WPA8630P).
hi, i think your U-Boot working well, do you had any chance all those partition are in one file?
I should have it somwhere. I actually backed up each partition individually and then used "cat" to create a single file.
I will look for it and send it to you via pm. You should probably include your own "config" partition as it contains unique calibration data "if I am not mistaken"
Greetings. After I flashed a TL-WPA8630P v2 successfully with the latest snapshot, I tried to flash it with a luci image I build with imagebuilder, using
make image PROFILE="tplink_tl-wpa8630p-v2.0-eu" PACKAGES="procd iw luci"
I placed the sysupgrade image in /tmp and run the sysupgrade command
sysupgrade -v /tmp/*.bin
After executing the command without errors, the device entered a bootloop where the two first leds (power and powerline) come up for about 5 seconds and then the power led comes off leaving only the powerline on and after a further 2 seconds the device reboots. I checked with the other end of the powerline connection ans saw that the powerline is indeed synchronizing (i.e. the led being on is not misleading).
Is it possible to revive the unit without opening its case and soldering a serial cable to it? I have never tried it before. Can you suggest anything less invasive to try?
Hi @kourtzis, that should have worked correctly, sorry to hear you had that experience. It seems like your device is no longer booting. The Powerline chip runs independantly of the router so that will continue working even if the router can't boot.
Do you see any packets in tcpdump/wireshark coming from the device when connected over Ethernet?
Unfortunately the only known ways to revive the unit involve opening it up and accessing the serial port to initiate tftp boot, or directly writing the flash with a flash programmer. The "factory-uboot" partition does have a simple HTTP webserver for firmware recovery, but I have no idea how it is triggered and haven't seen anyone else get it working (if anyone can figure that out it would be very useful. These instructions don't seem to work).
Can you provide:
Dear @jwmullally,
The device is still within warranty so I will try to have it replaced/fixed by the supplier. It would be nice though if someone who has opened it could complete the respective sections in the wiki page with photos and a brief guide.
Re the info requested:
That's the most widely tested unit at this point and should have worked fine.
It looks like a change introduced on 2020-10-30 broke opkg dependency resolution, which also broke ImageBuilder. Very unfortunate timing . I submitted a patch to roll it back and put a warning message on the ImageBuilder section of the wiki until its fixed.
I'll see about putting some photos up. I have to open my own unit again for more testing. Its pretty difficult (and dangerous) to do however.
Did you try holding down the reset switch as it boots? That starts the OpenWRT rescue mode (ssh server running on 192.168.1.1), and maybe there is enough of the system present to make it run.
Unfortunately, that happens every now and then. At least the device is not welded together as is the TP-Link RE200 - some users had to crack it open (not this time, but when builds had failed earlier).
Ohhh, such bad timing! Anyway, as I said, fortunately It is still under warranty. I tried to boot to rescue mode, to no avail. Holding down the reset button while powering on does no change: the unit still enters into the same bootloop. Thank you for all your consideration and advice though.
N.
Στις Δευ, 2 Νοε 2020 στις 8:05 μ.μ., ο/η Joe Mullally via OpenWrt Forum <mail@forum.openwrt.org> έγραψε:
Thank you very much for your answer and sorry for my delayed response.
You are right i have V2.0 instead of v2.1, on the device itself it say's the TL-WPA8630P(EU) Ver. 2.0.
Still have a few questions left:
curl -O https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/ath79/generic/openwrt-imagebuilder-ath79-generic.Linux-x86_64.tar.xz
tar -xf openwrt-imagebuilder-ath79-generic.Linux-x86_64.tar.xz
cd openwrt-imagebuilder-ath79-generic.Linux-x86_64
make image PROFILE="tplink_tl-wpa8630p-v2.0-eu" PACKAGES="procd iw luci"
And if i have to do it with commandline, do i have to copy the imagefile first to the device in the /tmp directory and then run the command above from the SSH commandline?
Sorry again for my noob questions, i have very limited Linux / Unix knowledge and i want to be very carefull and not brick my device.
As longs as this device is only supported by a snapshot build, there is no guarantee that your build won't brick the device - see just the post above yours. And even later on, if you mess up the image configuration, you can brick your device. Your safest option is to use the stock firmware.
That said:
You need either a Linux operating system or a virtual machine with a Linux operating system. The instructions are all in the Wiki: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/additional-software/imagebuilder
You are going to have some learning curve here, but it's definitely doable if you are generally interested in computers and Linux. Please look up the individual commands and try to understand what you are doing here.
Yes, until the next 20.x OpenWRT release it seems its still a little risky to use the daily snapshots, but no idea when that is coming out. I'll put a note on the device wiki.
@rsn1 If you want a tested build that includes LuCI, you can use one of the images from here, specifically this. I turned off the daily build on that repo so it should stay stable. I just tested the latest build on my device there and it works fine.