Zyxel Armor Z2 AC2600, stable release link to snapshot

[chieftowlie]

I tried flashing the stable release from factory firmware. The flash to OpenWrt was successful but i noticed that Luci was not up. I sshed into the router and it's labeled snapshot. I then re-downloaded and reflashed via cli and verified checksum.
The cli flash was also successful but still a snapshot. This is the download link to stable release.
DOWNLOAD_LINK="http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.2/targets/ipq806x/generic/openwrt-19.07.2-ipq806x-generic-zyxel_nbg6817-squashfs-factory.bin"; SHA256SUMS="https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.2/targets/ipq806x/generic/sha256sums"

Can someone please verify that the correct bin is attached?
also needed to use sysupgrade -F b/c of missing metadata

[slh]

@chieftowlie

also needed to use sysupgrade -F b/c of missing metadata

No!

factory images can only be used when flashing from the OEM environment, e.g. from the OEM/ ZyXEL webinterface or the OEM bootloader (tftp recovery).
Once you have flashed OpenWrt, you must only use the corresponding sysupgrade images.

http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.2/targets/ipq806x/generic/openwrt-19.07.2-ipq806x-generic-zyxel_nbg6817-squashfs-factory.bin is the correct factory 19.07.2-release file for flashing from the OEM webinterface and does contain everything needed for luci to come up.

At this point, I'd suggest to flash the correct sysupgrade image again (and not keeping configs), which would be https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.2/targets/ipq806x/generic/openwrt-19.07.2-ipq806x-generic-zyxel_nbg6817-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin, using:

if your router has internet access:

sysupgrade -n http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.2/targets/ipq806x/generic/openwrt-19.07.2-ipq806x-generic-zyxel_nbg6817-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

if you only have local access (you need to scp the firmware image to your router's /tmp/ beforehand):

sysupgrade -n /tmp/openwrt-19.07.2-ipq806x-generic-zyxel_nbg6817-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

Clearing browser caches is strongly recommended when switching between OEM- and OpenWrt webinterface, as it might remember, now obsolete, http redirects which won't work in 'the other' webinterface.

If you messed anything up in your previous attempts, there's always https://openwrt.org/toh/zyxel/nbg6817#debricking using the factory image (as the tftp recovery is done by the OEM bootloader and not from within an OpenWrt environment).

[chieftowlie]

slh, thanks for the tip. I followed your instructions and i am now on the stable release. It was just misunderstanding on my part.