Firmware 1.6.1 (stable) unstable on Linksys WRT54GL

[AndyHiggins]

I installed the latest current (29th April 2014) stable firmware (1.6.1) on a Linksys WRT54GL router (gargoyle_1.6.1-brcm47xx-squashfs.trx) however the router was unstable (taking a long time to boot and rebooting on its own at unexpected times).

I have another router of the exact same model that is running stable with Gargoyle firmware except the firmware version is 1.4.7. I tried many different techniques to reflash the unstable router running the 1.6.1 version of the firmware but without success (I tried using the web interface, tftp, ssh etc).

After many hours of trying different things I was eventually successful by doing the following:

• In the Gargoyle admin web interface I enabled ssh access (under the System menu).
• Logged on to the router using ssh.
• Changed to the /tmp directory.
• Downloaded the micro version* of DD-WRT firmware from the web server on my local machine (the router did not have access to the Internet). This could also be done using the scp command: scp dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin root@192.168.1.1:/tmp/dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin
• Loaded the new firmware using the mtd command

Code: Select all

ssh root@192.168.1.1
root@192.168.1.1's password: ********
root@Gargoyle:~# cd /tmp
root@Gargoyle:/tmp# wget http://192.168.1.237/dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin
Connecting to 192.168.2.237 (192.168.2.237:80)
dd-wrt.v24_micro_gen 100% |***********************************************************************|  1724k  0:00:00 ETA
root@Gargoyle:/tmp# 
root@Gargoyle:/tmp# mtd -r write dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin linux
Unlocking linux ...

Writing from dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin to linux ...     
Rebooting ...

* What was key here is that I used the micro firmware version of DD-WRT. For some reason I could not save a file of more than 2MB on the router without the router rebooting on its own (even though the /tmp directory showed over 6Mb available). All the firmware versions I could find were greater than 2Mb except for the micro version of DD-WRT which fortunately is less than 2Mb.

After following the above instructions and the router rebooted it came back up with DD-WRT Micro installed and I could then use the normal web interface to load Gargoyle 1.4.7

[n0pin]

Gargoyle switched to OpenWRT Attitude Adjustment branch on version 1.5.7 which requires atleast 32MB of RAM. As far as I know WRT54GL routers only have 16MB of RAM.

You could try to use 1.5.6 version of Gargoyle, which is the last version that uses Barrier Breaker branch and it only needs 16MB of RAM.

[AndyHiggins]

Thanks for the additional information. Your understanding is correct. This was not clear to me from the documentation / download page so it would be good if that could be updated (I must have spent at least 8 hours trying to resolve this issue and also had to make an additional 3 hour round trip to a client in order to fix this).

[herrhrupek]

@AndyHiggins

I have almost the same problem with 1.6.2.

What kind of http server are you using?
I have problem with downloading the firmware (using Home Web Server).
I can acces to the files putting 192.168.137.1 into web browser.
Please take a look into the attatchment.
Maybe something is wrong on the gargoyle side?
I don't know linux commands ...

[AndyHiggins]

I was using a Mac so it was the standard webserver that comes with MAC OS.

I am not sure what could be wrong. The IP address you are using does look odd however i.e. 192.168.137.1. Make sure that you are using the IP address of your local computer / webserver to do the wget.

The only other thing I can think of that there is some kind of a firewall issue when trying to access your local webserver from the outside i.e. make sure that port 80 is open.

[herrhrupek]

Meanwhile i solved the problem.
I found XP and tried tftp with success.
(Didn't working under Win 7)
Anyway thank you for your reply