OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: help to hex edit tp-link tl-wr841n v11

The content of this topic has been archived between 20 Apr 2018 and 4 May 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

Can anyone help me to hexedit a factory firmware tp-link tl-wr841n v10 for  v11.
I've already tested this dd-wrt image succesfully - here   - but i want openwrt smile

thanks

(Last edited by maurer on 3 Dec 2015, 21:17)

I've managed to do it myself with the help of this post
and uploaded the result here if anyone is willing to test it

(Last edited by maurer on 6 Dec 2015, 13:36)

maurer wrote:

I've managed to do it myself with the help of this post
and uploaded the result here if anyone is willing to test it

Found you by doing a search for TL-wr841n v11!

Works better than a hot off the press beta (r29308 std (032116)) of DDWRT that had no switch functionality.

This image fixed my bricked router.  Used your file from dropbox, with the tftp method of flashing the device. TFTP recovery via bootloader for v8,v9,v10,v11

Back to work and Thank you much from across the big Pond! Say Hi to somebody random for me.  smile

Hi maurer, you changed the bytes from 08 41 00 08 to 08 41 00 11, right?

Let me know so I can post a patch to the OpenWrt development mailing list, so we can get v11 supported in trunk (I'll backport it to 15.05 as well).

Would you be willing to test an image for me? Trunk or stable?

Images (both 15.05.1 and trunk): https://volatilesystems.org/dl/openwrt/tl-wr841n-v11/

If the site does not resolve, please try another DNS provider like OpenDNS or Google's DNS servers.

Anyone else is of course welcome to volunteer as well but you need to be able to fall back to TFTP if things go wrong.

Let me know if it works so I can send this upstream.

Thank you!

(Last edited by Borromini on 25 Mar 2016, 00:37)

Hi,

Unfortunately that v11 was not mine but a friend who asked me to install openwrt on his newly bought router.
You can post the patch but someone else must test and report back the results.

good luck

it's working i tested... modifying version 10 with hexeditor.
only power led does not work

If you guys could test the images I built, that would be great.

The 15.05.1 image has LuCI in it like the official builds, trunk is without.

We need this tested so we can integrate official support into OpenWrt.

Thank you!

I am willing to try the image. Can you confirm if this includes the gui or not? 

Correction. Nevermind I did not read correctly. I see it includes Luci.

I will give it a bash. Have not yet needed to unbrick a device but how hard can it be.. so lets hope for the best

(Last edited by vodor on 26 Mar 2016, 17:57)

I did the following:

1. Downloaded the image
2. Logged into the default software on the router and selected update firmware and uploaded the image I'd downloaded
3. Waited for it to flash

Once complete I appear to have a good OpenWRT install. I'm currently using it as my router to type this post.

Hi Borromini

Here is my feedback.  Please keep in mind I am new to openwrt so limited experience with it.

From stock firmware I used the web interface and tried to flash 15.05.1.  The router web interface did not want to accept this file. It kept telling me please select a valid file. I assume something in the name it did not like?

I then used maurer's supplied file and this flashed first time.
After it was working I then went back to your 15.05.1 and flashed it from within luci.  This time it went smooth not issues.
Currently I have setup everything except for WAN port. Not sure how to get this up.  The router has a lan1 to lan4 and a separate wan port. Not sure what the interface name is on openwrt.  Other than that most things look like its working perfectly.

vodor wrote:

Currently I have setup everything except for WAN port. Not sure how to get this up

Wan works by default, just connect your internet to Wan, enable wi-fi (by default is disable) and thats it.

Got it thanks. Just had to change my port protocol to PPPoE now it works fine.

vodor wrote:

Hi Borromini

Here is my feedback.  Please keep in mind I am new to openwrt so limited experience with it.

From stock firmware I used the web interface and tried to flash 15.05.1.  The router web interface did not want to accept this file. It kept telling me please select a valid file. I assume something in the name it did not like?

I then used maurer's supplied file and this flashed first time.
After it was working I then went back to your 15.05.1 and flashed it from within luci.  This time it went smooth not issues.
Currently I have setup everything except for WAN port. Not sure how to get this up.  The router has a lan1 to lan4 and a separate wan port. Not sure what the interface name is on openwrt.  Other than that most things look like its working perfectly.

Thanks Vodor. Maybe maurer's checksum hack to the v10 file works around a firmware lock that TP-Link installed, like they did on other recent models.

Could you test if there is indeed a firmware check? If I understood correctly the check only works on the web interface. This needs a bit of manual labour though smile.

To revert, you'll need to remove the bootloader from the original TP-Link image (described in the link).

Thanks!

(Last edited by Borromini on 26 Mar 2016, 23:19)

Borromini wrote:

If you guys could test the images I built, that would be great.

The 15.05.1 image has LuCI in it like the official builds, trunk is without.

We need this tested so we can integrate official support into OpenWrt.

Thank you!

Thank you for the test of my will power and all your hard work.  Here is my digest.  Done for now.
I tried several of the images you provided and they work.  This was preformed on a TPlink with maurer's image.

The first image I attempted was with Keep settings.

openwrt-15.05.1-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr841-v11-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin


It did not keep setting and left my router with 0kb on the software tab.  IDK.. maybe I should have reboot, but I went to upgrade firmware and rolled back to maurer's image.  Then I rolled into your factor, then trunk.. then.. good grief charlie brown.. back and forth.. PITA The caveat is obviously no 'Packages' and the available ram was down to 64k anywho.

No Power on anybody's image thus far, but np

Thinking I would gain something from the trunk version, I forgot how much I rely on LuCi and sawed off the limb I was standing on.  After several hours I got back to maurer image. via CLI sysupgrade (see below red)

This is a c/p of putty on busybox and free mem.
openwrt-trunk-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr841-v11-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

BusyBox v1.24.1 () built-in shell (ash)

  _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 -----------------------------------------------------
 DESIGNATED DRIVER (Bleeding Edge, r49086)
 -----------------------------------------------------
  * 2 oz. Orange Juice         Combine all juices in a
  * 2 oz. Pineapple Juice      tall glass filled with
  * 2 oz. Grapefruit Juice     ice, stir well.
  * 2 oz. Cranberry Juice
 -----------------------------------------------------
root@FacePalm:~# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         28224      18704       9520         64       1604       5332
-/+ buffers/cache:      11768      16456
Swap:            0          0          0

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Getting back to maurer's image from trunk without LuCi

Copied maurer file via winSCP to /tmp and then ran the following command via Putty

sysupgrade -v openwrt-15.05-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr841n-v11-squashfs-factory.bin

Now I'm back to his flavor

BusyBox v1.23.2 (2015-11-17 16:24:55 CET) built-in shell (ash)

  _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 -----------------------------------------------------
 CHAOS CALMER (Chaos Calmer, r47466)
 -----------------------------------------------------
  * 1 1/2 oz Gin            Shake with a glassful
  * 1/4 oz Triple Sec       of broken ice and pour
  * 3/4 oz Lime Juice       unstrained into a goblet.
  * 1 1/2 oz Orange Juice
  * 1 tsp. Grenadine Syrup
 -----------------------------------------------------
root@FacePalm:~# free
             total         used         free       shared      buffers
Mem:         28908        20472         8436           64         1896
-/+ buffers:              18576        10332
Swap:            0            0            0

Stripped out the boot with dd.

dd if=wr841nv11_wr841ndv11_en_3_16_9_up_boot\(150616\).bin of=tplink.bin skip=257 bs=512
7680+0 records in
7680+0 records out
3932160 bytes (3.9 MB) copied, 0.01961 s, 201 MB/s


Performed the upgrade with sysupgrade method.

root@OpenWrt:/tmp# sysupgrade /tmp/tplink.bin
Saving config files...
killall: watchdog: no process killed
Sending TERM to remaining processes ... uhttpd ntpd ubusd askfirst odhcp6c pppd odhcp6c ntpclient dnsmasq logd rpcd netifd odhcpd crond
Sending KILL to remaining processes ... askfirst
Switching to ramdisk...
Performing system upgrade...
Unlocking firmware ...

Writing from <stdin> to firmware ...     
Upgrade completed
Rebooting system...


So the flash went fine.  Then it rebooted.  After a few seconds I just get a red flashing light on the wan light.  Will have to try tftp boot the fscker now.  Having said that its 2AM in the morning here. So I probably shouldnt be messing with it half asleep.  Old router is back online. I will mess with it again after some sleep.  Thanks for the guidance and help.

Thanks vodor. I added some extra packages to the v11 build, that probably made the JFFS partition too small to be able to use.

That has been fixed now (apologies).

If you use TFTP to flash the TP-Link firmware, you should use the full unmodified TP-Link image (you only need to strip the bootloader if you're flashing from within OpenWrt).

Vodor, in the meantime I have received confirmation that it works (apparently shortening the filename makes the TP-Link web interface accept the image). See this topic also.

You can use my builds, you'll need to point opkg to the default repos though, the links in /etc/opkg/ are some stray from my personal builds.

I am absolutely new at this.

I purchased a TP-WR841N ver 11 for an app that will only work on a v9 firmware

I'd like to know what I have to do to downgrade the firmware if such is possible

I spend 5 hours last night reading about the FCC and their regulations etc but I would really want to get the correct procedures to get this done

you can't downgrade a v11 to v9 firmware - the hardware is different
what app only works on v9 ?

i'm also new to openwrt

i was able to flash to openwrt using the "factory"  image under "v11" from the wiki page:
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr841nd

it rebooted, but no GUI... i logged in via SSH and it says i'm on designated driver (bleeding edge)
did is misread what the v11 was for?  i'm trying to get a stable version w/ gui...
not sure where to go from here... tried installing luci but ran into memory errors

all i get on gui now is "bad gateway the process did not produce any response"

thanks

(Last edited by aae42 on 13 May 2016, 16:09)

You have installed a 'trunk' rather than a 'stable' (AKA 'release') build.  LuCI is not included.

cmsigler advises to begin here.

i was able to get this working, i downloaded the .bin under v10, sysupgrade...

i uploaded this via scp to the /tmp directory and ran sysupdate -v -F filename.bin

everything came up wonderfully after that...

I also was able to get this working by uploading the trunk version through the GUI - then logging in using SCP, copying the V10 bin to the /tmp folder and performing a sysupgrade with the -F parameter. Have had no issues other than the power LED doesn't come on.