Bricked my WRT54G?

[woodynz]

Hi there,

I am probably the biggest idiot in the world.

I just purchased a new WRT54G V 2.0 after my old WRT54G V 1.0 running Gargoyle crashed one day (after I changed a setting) and decided to brick itself.

Anyway, I so got my new one and successfully flashed it with the latest stable version of Gargoyle.

I was playing around with the Restrictions, trying to block the range of ports that Torrents commonly use.

Nothing seemed to be working, so I stupidly put on a universal rule to Block All Hosts - All Access and rebooted the router.

Wow. So then I realised what I'd done after I could still connect to the wireless network but not even ping 192.168.1.1

I'm feeling pretty foolish. Of course, I cannot flash it using TFTP because it's blocking me!

And I've read the reset button doesn't work.

So I guess there is absolutely nothing I can do?

Thanks for any ideas.

[woodynz]

I've managed to get it pinging by jumping pins 15 & 16 together at power on.

But I cannot transfer via TFTP (gui) or TFTP command line using:

tftp -i -v 192.168.1.1 PUT wrt54g.bin

I get:

Sending packet: len=54, opcode=2
Error occurred during the file transfer (Error code = 108)

What should I do now?

[mix]

You don't need to do all of this, instead you need to get the router to boot into failsafe mode so you can reset it to defaults (and clear your firewall rules):

http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/generic.failsafe

The reset button on the back should be a hardware button if there isn't one of the front of the router (I know WRT54G's had some iterations which did add the button, maybe your early model doesn't have it, the WRT54GL has one under the cisco logo that lit up).

[woodynz]

I have already tried this, as well as this method here:

Install Wireshark on your computer.
Configure your computer with static IP 192.168.1.2
Connect your computer to a LAN port on the router.
Start Wireshark and monitor the LAN connection.
Powerup your router, when wireshark shows the first packet from 192.168.1.1 immediately press and hold the reset button on the back of the router for three seconds.
Router power LED should be flashing quickly. (Failsafe mode)
From a command prompt on your computer “telnet 192.168.1.1”
From the command prompt of the router “firstboot”
Reboot your router which should now come up in its default Gargoyle configuration.


This is not a bad flash but a good flash! I've just locked myself out of the router by blocking all traffic from all hosts.

The failsafe method doesn't work. I have read on another thread that Gargoyle has no programming for the button on the router.

I try clicking it rapidly for 60 seconds (as soon as it turns on, while the light is flashing rapidly) but then the light simply turns solid. Gargoyle is running perfectly on it - I can still connect to the wireless network it is broadcasting, but I cannot do anything on it.

All incoming connections are refused.

Telnetting gives me - Could not open connection to the host, on port 23: Connect failed.

TFTPing gives me: Timeout occurred.

I am trying to flash with a factory mini bin (less than 3 MB) by Linksys from a network card set to 192.168.1.2 at 10 Mb half-duplex, using both telnet (Windows XP) and TFTP2.exe (Windows 7).

Zero luck. I have been trying for two days.

Probably time to throw it away and buy another one as I don't have the tools and skills to solder a JTAG to the PCB.

This failsafe mode really doesn't exist for my WRT54G v 2.0 Gargoyle setup!

[woodynz]

By the way, I can ping the router no problem.

[woodynz]

Oh my god!

I just tried it with the other WRT54G I have, which I bricked about 8 months ago.

Oh my god!

Got it working!!!! I eat my words there. I'm so sorry.

Failsafe mode worked for this baby!

mount_root
rm -r /overlay/*
reboot -f

Thank you very much for re-iterating that method, Mix. You are a legend. I'm so very happy!

Now to keep trying with the other one which I've myself out of.

Thank you thank you!

[mix]

I'd expect as long as you had a good flash initially, this method should work. It was designed for a situation like this when you accidentally firewall yourself out. However, I must admit, I have never used the reset button on the back of the router to trigger this mode. I suppose it's possible this button is not considered "hardware configurable."

The problem with tftp, is the window the tftpd server is active is hard to catch, especially if you never set the nvram parameters to make the window longer then a few seconds (it may even of somehow gotten disabled and tftp won't work). These instructions do work, I've used them once or twice:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/gener ... ows.2000xp

Make sure you use the gargoyle_1.4.7-wrt54g-squashfs.bin file for tftp.

[woodynz]

Thank you again, Mix. This is really helpful.

I wish I had asked for help earlier as I can't ping the router any longer.

It still seems to be working fine - Power light goes solid after starting up and starts broadcasting the network, as per usual. I can still connect to the network, but definitely cannot ping it.

Jumping the pins doesn't seem to work any longer either.

Anyhow, it has been a great learning experience and at least I have my other one going.

Time to source a JTAG cable

Cheers!