Want to update wiki - no access - D-Link DIR-878 R1 (Russian version, A1 instructions don't work)

Hi

From some reason I got the Russion version (HW Rev R1) of DIR-878.

The recovery web interface method does not work for this version. The pre-installed u-boot fails in checksum for any non-russian firmware, including the A1 FW, even via tftp

I've resolved it by flashing the A1 boot loader from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tR08Gqhp38SlaDjYcRLM-JL3U7xrW6un/view and then flashing OpenWRT + manually installing luci (was not there by default from some reason)

My full notes are at https://workflowy.com/s/openwrt-on-d-link-di/it9O5p5adj1Vwvwb

I wanted to add comments in the Wiki about this R1 variant but could not login. I'm sure I added stuff to the OpenWRT wiki in the past...

Can anyone add this for me or tell me how to register/login?

the R1 versions are different boot loader & partition layout
the easiest thing for you to do would have been to use the DIR-882-R1
the only difference is it has USB ports & the USB drivers

realy the only thing waiting for DIR-878-R1 is the someone with one
to submit the patches it's easy to make them but for us that have the A1
we can't really do it with out a real R1

Lucky1 - I can help with testing on my R1 if you like
Though my device is currently with the A1 bootloader and OpenWRT.

BTW - the A1 bootloader I downloaded seemed to install the A1 OpenWRT correctly in the original R1 partition structure. Shouldn't it work fine?

yes you are correct it's now an A1 you are missing a small 64K partition with the factory info about what country your device was sold in for the real dlink A1 firmware tho
& the boot loaded has lots of problems with uploading & you have 64K less room for openwrt
did I mention how bad the A1's firmware is compared to the R1 :slight_smile:
it's always a risky thing to change the boot loader
easiest way to brick your device so I would not recommend it for the inexperienced user
a user of a DIR-878-R1 is needed to test submit the commit for it's support
it will be exactly the same as the DIR-882-R1 without the usb driver & the name change
i could put this together for someone tho

Ping @tmomas so he can look into your wiki registration @longwrtuser

Please let me know your desired username and emailadress via PM and I will create a wiki account for you.

Maybe I'm dense... but I can't seem to figure out how to send a PM... can I get a wiki account (with the same username/email as here in the forums) to help update the NanoPi R2S page?

Account has been created, you should receive a confirmation email shortly.

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Hi. I have this router too, and since it's easy to get SSH, maybe you could try to copy fw_upgrade from the A1 firmware and run it instead of the Russian, locked fw_upgrade? I've disassembled it and it seems to be c code. Perhaps you can even find where it checks the hash. The only problem is fw_upgrade is owned by root, and I don't know how to get root on this router.

However I noted that in /bin, the symlinks to busybox are mistakenly lrwxrwxrwx, which means that we can change where they point to, and perhaps gain root this way (if a root process calls any of these commands, we can make it give us a network root shell). This includes ping and traceroute, which you can call from the web configuration interface - which runs as root. This seems like a very promising direction to me.

p.s.: This is in the latest firmware.
p.s.: I'm very much faint of heart, so I won't test anything dangerous on my router.

Just a Note the firmware has a different header & memory layout between the A1 & R1
you need to change the boot loader then just flash the differing firmware after
but be warned the A1 has a partition with factory country data that the r1 firmware will over write
and the R1 know it's not a real R1 in the last firmware maybe MAC not sure

but as the A1 firmware is so bad no really it's really bad
I'm not sure why you would use the it over the much much better R1 firmware

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