Installing on Linksys WRT160NL?

[hook]

I'm thinking of switching our home Linksys WRT160NL from DD-WRT to Gargoyle, and would like to know how it's done right.

Since on this website I haven't seen any howto for this router, I've searched a bit around the OpenWRT website and irc://irc.freenode.net/#openwrt and became a bit scared by mentions of having to hack together a serial cable to TFTP the firmware on it etc.

Is it really that compicated?

I noticed there's some other people on this forums using the same router — how did you install it?

Basically status quo is DD-WRT (revision 14896) where the Atheros wireless is pretty much foo and my desired result would be a fully Free Software firmware with working wireless (I use it as a WiFi router/gateway) and decent QoS ...and Gargoyle seems to fit this description quite well.

[DoesItMatter]

Either one of those files would work to upgrade.

I don't have a WRT160NL, but the process should be the same.

You should be able to go from DD-WRT <-> OpenWRT <-> Gargoyle
via the web GUI - flashing back and forth with this file:

gargoyle_1.3.16-ar71xx-wrt160nl-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

The only time you use the following file:

gargoyle_1.3.16-ar71xx-wrt160nl-squashfs-factory.bin

is if you are upgrading from the stock factory firmware.

It is ALWAYS possible that a flash can go bad and serial recovery
is the only way to recover the router - it can happen.

So prepare a serial cable ahead of time - the DD-WRT forums
have a ton of posts related to how to make one and where to buy.

[hook]

Thanks

I went and opened up and prepared a DE-9 cable just in case, but I didn't need it in the end. To some extend that's a pity, I had a nifty plan how to create a USB → upside-down RJ45 serial cable

Anyway in my case I first went from DD-WRT to OpenWRT and then to Gargoyle (gargoyle_1.3.16-ar71xx-wrt160nl-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin) and there were no issues apart from my stupidity.

Note to anyone flashing Gargoyle over OpenWRT: make sure to set the "keep settings" off (unchecked) in OpenWRT's firmware upgrade dialog.

Otherwise you will (like me) have problems with logging in (OpenWRT has no password by default and Gargoyle doesn't allow no password) and having all sorts of non-Gargoylish settings lying around. I had to telnet to the router, change the password with 'passwd' and then in Gargoyle flash it again with the same Gargoyle image.

Other then that, it went pretty smoothly. Also setting it up then (including some basic QoS) was very easy.

I would only suggest that at least the initial setup howto would be included in the webGUI. When people are setting it up the first time, their access to WAN is probably not working yet, so they cannot access the online documents.

So far I'm very happy with it ... next stop: hacking the dickens out of it! (em, simple twaking and maybe getting Znc, external disk etc. running)

Thanks for the awesome (and trully Free) firmware

[Wisse]

I've been searching the internets for a while now and I can't find straight forward answer about moving to Gargoyle from dd-wrt.

In this thread you're both talking about moving from dd-wrt to openwrt first and than installing Gargoyle. Flashing openwrt is slightly too confusing for me right now and I figured I'll give my question a go on this forum before I dig into Wikis.

I'm wondering if it's possible to simply install Gargoyle "sysupgrade" version directly from dd-wrt's "firmware upgrade" menu? That would save me tons of time.

Thanks for your answer.

[gogubeb]

I'm wondering if it's possible to simply install Gargoyle "sysupgrade" version directly from dd-wrt's "firmware upgrade" menu? That would save me tons of time.

Thanks for your answer.

Of course you can.
Upgrade from dd-wrt->Gargoyle using "gargoyle_1.3.16-ar71xx-wrt160nl-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin"

[Wisse]

Well, I've managed to brick my router in the process
I can't even ping it which is supposedly quite bad. I'm now trying my luck with failsafe and looking into buying 3.3V USB to Serial converter to try some serial magic.

What I did was try to upload firmware via Firefox which lost connection right away. Than I moved to IE and was able to access dd-wrt as usual. Flashing from there worked like it should. In the end it even said that it was successful, but after that it didn't recover from "blinking light" update (waited mere 15min).

I did rename firmware file tho, could that cause problems? I don't think so, but still. I'm not sure where exactly I went wrong -.-

[Wisse]

I was able to recover my router using serial and tftp to flash, but I'm back with dd-wrt.
Flashing Gargoyle or openwrt returned "Kernel panic" error (known apparently) during boot.
If I understand things correctly U-Boot is to blame (1.1.6 Apr 14 2010). I don't think I can use current build of Gargoyle because of that. I'll have to wait for openwrt rc6 or try my luck with snapshot. I don't know how to build binary from source either.
Am I getting this right?

[DoesItMatter]

Right.

Currently 1.3.16 is based on Backfire RC5

If you need something from the newest openwrt (trunk usually)
then you will have to wait for a bit for a Gargoyle release.

Gargoyle will not work on Trunk - I've tried and
Eric has said in some other post that it will not work.

At least you can try OpenWRT trunk instead of DD-WRT for now.'

http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/

You can grab the current WRT160NL binaries from there.

If you have DD-WRT on it - you should be able to flash the
squashfs-sysupgrade version from the DD-WRT web GUI.

But as always - have serial ready to recover

[Wisse]

Yeah, yesterday I tried everything, including openwrt trunk, which I was able to install (having serial as a backup was wonderful, no more fear of bad flash). It doesn't have any kind of web GUI bundled with it, so I was stuck with silly SSH and Linux syntax. I soon lost my mind, because I never used Linux and I'm not familiar with "packet" style of expanding functionality. I couldn't even get PPPoE to work -.-
Anyway I can confirm that trunk does flash with newer WRT160Nl, while earlier releases don't (unless you recompile them apparently). I can't say if actual routing works tho, since I was only able to set password

Now I'm back to dd-wrt, patiently waiting for the next Gargoyle release to flash with.

[DoesItMatter]

Wisse,

I just downloaded the latest trunk and am compiling the AR71xx branch.

I'll post an image for the WRT160NL if you want to try it out.

I am including Luci and other stuff, QoS, etc.

Since you got serial connect, no real risk - but I've compiled
trunk builds before and they worked fine on my WZR-HP-G300NH.