Recovering an unmanageable WRT54GL (OpenWRT lost password)
A friend recently brought us a Linksys WRT54GL which had been laying around for a while and whose password was not available anymore.
None of the "easy" password recovery methods seemed to work (like holding the reset button, power-cycling etc.) - possibly because the corresponding options had been previously disabled.
In the end, I used the TFTP method described here: http://oldwiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs(2f)Installing(2f)TFTP.html
However, it didn't work until all these conditions were met:
- the laptop with the firmware image and the tftp client had to be connected to the WRT through an external switch
- the switch had to be unplugged from the LAN
- I had to lauch a "ping -f 192.168.1.1" in a different terminal before powering on the WRT in order for the tftp transfer to start
- before and after the flashing I followed the 30/30/30 procedure (not sure if that one is mandatory but it is recommended)
To make sure the hardware was working I installed the latest firmware from the Linksys website (WRT54GL_v4.30.11_012_ETSI_EN_code.bin), but now I'll likely reflash it with OpenWRT - this time from the web interface :o)
None of the "easy" password recovery methods seemed to work (like holding the reset button, power-cycling etc.) - possibly because the corresponding options had been previously disabled.
In the end, I used the TFTP method described here: http://oldwiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs(2f)Installing(2f)TFTP.html
However, it didn't work until all these conditions were met:
- the laptop with the firmware image and the tftp client had to be connected to the WRT through an external switch
- the switch had to be unplugged from the LAN
- I had to lauch a "ping -f 192.168.1.1" in a different terminal before powering on the WRT in order for the tftp transfer to start
- before and after the flashing I followed the 30/30/30 procedure (not sure if that one is mandatory but it is recommended)
To make sure the hardware was working I installed the latest firmware from the Linksys website (WRT54GL_v4.30.11_012_ETSI_EN_code.bin), but now I'll likely reflash it with OpenWRT - this time from the web interface :o)
