[ale] Unhalfbricking WRT54GL

[Jack Schneider]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:17:09 -0400
"Charles Shapiro" <hooterpincher at gmail.com> wrote:

> (Apologies to Sandy Denny)
> 
> Well, I'm pretty stupid. But I have smart friends. I've been
> experimenting with radio networking on the Linksys WRT54GL. This is
> the Linksys router which allows you to use openwrt
> ( http://openwrt.org/ ) to do various advanced radio networking
> tasks. In particular, I want to have a radio hotspot with an intro
> page which'll display the first time you try to use a browser to
> connect to a site through it, as many coffee shops have.  I managed
> to get coova ( http://coova.org/ ) loaded on the WRT54GL the first
> time without difficulty, but I had some troubles and decided to go
> back the the original Linksys firmware to aid in diagnosing them.
> That's when I foolishly destroyed the resident kernel, probably by
> unplugging the device before it had finished writing the new kernel
> to its NVRAM.
> 
> The device still responded to a ping(1) request, but I couldn't
> ssh(1) to it or get any web pages off of it. Hence, it was pretty
> much out of control, yet not fully bricked.  These routers are
> designed to let you use tftp to load a clean kernel in this
> situation. I installed the Ubunutu Edgy Eft tftp client on my laptop,
> started the WRT54GL in tftp server mode by holding down the reset key
> while cycling the power, and tried to load a new kernel on it. My
> client said the transfer worked, but the new kernel persistently
> failed to boot -- the power light kept flashing, the "dmz" light
> never came on, and I couldn't bring any web pages up on it.
> 
> Sunday afternoon I went over to Jim's place to hang out and drink
> homebrew, and I brought the recalcitrant router and my laptop with
> me. We futzed around with it for a while, permanently destroying the
> warranty by disassembling it, doing various arcane hardware things
> (like, shorting various pins on the board to other pins) to see if we
> could figure out my problemo. Much entertainment, and yet no joy.
> 
> Finally, it was Jim Kinney who noticed that my tftp client had a
> "binary" mode, but it was not the default. We switched the client to
> binary, did the "hold down reset key and power on" thing, and then
> transferred a VALID kernel onto it. The machine proceeded to write
> the kernel to NVRAM, boot, display a steady power light and a steady
> "DMZ" light, and display the linksys configuration page to my
> browser.  Then I turned it off and put it aside.
> 
> Moral of the story: Make sure you're transferring binary files in
> binary mode (d'OH!).
> 
> -- CHS


MOST Importantly,  How was the brew???

Have a great day!
Jack


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