Wrt54g-tm blinks power LED when wifi is active

dgriffi · January 17, 2021, 8:23am

I dug out an old wrt54g-tm and decided to install OpenWRT instead of upgrading the DD-WRT that was on it. This went smoothly except for what appears to be abnormal LED behavior when wifi is turned on. When it's on, the Cisco button lights up orange (okay) and the power LED starts flashing at 5 Hz. If I turn it off, the Cisco button goes dark and the power LED is steady again. Wifi appears to be functioning normally though.

As far as I can tell, the power LED is supposed to flash like that only when there's some sort of problem, for instance something scribbled all over the filesystem. What's actually going on? I'd rather not have the power LED flash like this.

frollic · January 17, 2021, 9:38am

Check the led configuration.

The behavior can be changed there.

dgriffi · January 18, 2021, 1:44am

I selected bcm47xx:green:power, default state checked, trigger none. No change in behavior. I figure the trigger option is key, but no matter what I put in there, nothing will stop the blinking when wifi is active.

What should I actually be doing there?

frollic · January 18, 2021, 7:39am

I've noticed you sometimes have to "initialize" the LED, before you actually can change the behavior.

try adding

echo default-on > /sys/class/leds/xxxxxx/trigger
echo none > /sys/class/leds/xxxxxx/trigger
before the sleep 3 line, in the local start up script.

xxxxxx - the path is device specific, you have to look it up yourself.

you can obviously try the echo manually through ssh, before adding it to the start up script.

dgriffi · January 18, 2021, 7:59am

I found the path for the LED trigger file, but not the local start up script. I thought of /etc/rc.local, but that doesn't have a sleep 3 line. Some fiddling around with find yielded nothing.

frollic · January 18, 2021, 8:07am

the start up script can be found through the web interface.

Borromini · January 18, 2021, 8:09am

Check /etc/init.d/ I believe there's a LED script.

dgriffi · January 22, 2021, 10:27pm

None of these solutions work

lleachii · January 23, 2021, 1:31pm

@dgriffi, welcome to the community!

Those devices are no longer supported (the 32MB RAM is still a limitation despite you having one of the unique ones manufactured with 8MB of flash, as do I). Most are over 16 years old.
That LED behavior is known, I cannot recall how many years that has occurred. It's been since after support for the series ended
Due to closed source drivers being unavailable, the WiFi will provide poor performance; and could "jam" your other APs and those of your neighbors
You cannot setup what's called a "WiFi bridge" in DD-WRT with the WRT54G devices.