Trying to recover from OKD after flashing installer on E8450

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I was running 23.05 on my E8450 for 1-2 years without problems. Then I wanted to upgrade to a new OpenWRT version and saw that I need to run a new installer. This is what I did:

  • Flashed the openwrt-24.10.0-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-initramfs-recovery-installer.itb via Luci.
  • Then the router rebooted and immediately went to OKD (the leds were off). I tried waiting before turning it on again, using the freezer, nothing worked.
  • Then I attached a serial and immediately tried to use the mtk_uartboot method to unbrick the device. (I should probably be using screen first in order to look for the output? But too late now.)
  • I was unsure which .fip and preloader.bin to pick, so i picked the latest snapshot versions. I was able to use the “Load BL2 preloader via TFTP then write to flash” option and it seemed to write the data successfully.

Now, when rebooting, I get this output. It seems to me like the installer or rather the partitions are now in a broken state.

factory partitio[    4.949920] INSTALLER: cannot find Wi-Fi EEPROM data
n not found on r[    4.956208] sysrq: Trigger a crash
[    4.960946] Kernel panic - not syncing: sysrq triggered crash
[    4.968042] SMP: stopping secondary CPUs
[    4.971958] Kernel Offset: disabled
[    4.975436] CPU features: 0x0,00000004,00000000,0000400b
[    4.980740] Memory Limit: none
[    4.986802] pstore: backend (ramoops) writing error (-28)
[    4.992197] Rebooting in 1 seconds..

F0: 102B 0000
F6: 0000 0000
V0: 0000 0000 [0001]
00: 0000 0000
BP: 0400 0041 [0000]
G0: 1190 0000
T0: 0000 02ED [000F]
Jump to BL


NOTICE:  BL2: v2.13.0(release):OpenWrt v2025.07.11~78a0dfd9-1 (mt7622-snand-ubi-1ddr)
NOTICE:  BL2: Built : 00:05:51, Apr  7 2026
NOTICE:  WDT: Cold boot
NOTICE:  CPU: MT7622
NOTICE:  WDT: disabled
NOTICE:  SPI-NAND: adjusting SPI-NAND pin drive strength to 12mA
NOTICE:  SPI-NAND: FM35Q1GA (128MB)
NOTICE:  UBI: scanning [0x80000 - 0x8000000] ...
NOTICE:  corrected 1 bitflips while reading page 22592
NOTICE:  corrected 1 bitflips while reading page 29185
NOTICE:  UBI: scanning is finished
NOTICE:  UBI: PEB size: 131072 bytes (128 KiB), LEB size: 126976 bytes
NOTICE:  UBI: VID header offset: 2048 (aligned 2048), data offset: 4096
ERROR:   UBI error: No volume named fip could be found
ERROR:   io_dev_init failed for FIP image id 0 (-2)
ERROR:   Image id 3 open failed with -2
ERROR:   BL2: Failed to load image id 3 (-2)

What is the correct way to recover from this? I should add that I also do have backups of the mtd partitions from before I tried to flash the installer image.

2

On a related note, I was not aware of the OKD before this happened. The following sentence from the wiki page should probably be put at the top as a big red warning, for people trying to upgrade from older OpenWRT versions:

Daniel Golle (dangole), the current maintainer of this device, recommends remaining on OpenWrt stable builds and avoiding any modifications to the bootloader beyond the initial install as outlined in this wiki 1).
3

I suspect you had an previously unseen but critically-positioned error on the flash chip, and the installer failed to complete its tasks because of it. It looks like you have a brand new BL2 installed, and UBI is formatted but the next stage bootloader never got written.

Thankfully, you have all of the MTD backups, so you're in better shape than most people. In the wiki for the device, there's a section regarding resolution of OKD. Below that, there is also a link under a heading similar to "the bootloader is corrupted in a weird way". That link leads you to a post in the primary forum topic for the device. In that post are the complete instructions for recovering your router from a completely corrupted flash. Since you have the backup of the factory partition, you have all of the data you need to recover 100%.

You'll be following the steps for 24.10 or newer. You don't need to re-write the BL2, since you already have one compatible with that version already installed. You will however need to follow the steps to install the FIP (BL3.1 + U-Boot), the factory data, the recovery (initramfs) image, and then eventually the final sysupgrade file.

4

Thanks! And I guess the correct backup with the factory image is mtd2 in my case?

5

That’s it! I could successfully write all the partitions, boot into recovery, flash the 25.12.2 sysupgrade and restore the old settings.

@grauerfuchs Thanks for the quick help! And let me know if I can donate you a coffee or similar, you seem to be doing an awesome job here in the forum.