wirespot
12-07-2008, 18:19
This tutorial is a quick walkthrough for people who are used to upgrade their router's firmware and use Oleg's, but since some time passes between upgrades, they forget exactly what it involves. I use WL-500gP, I don't guarantee anything for other models.
READ THIS THING THROUGH AT LEAST ONCE. DO NOT RUSH INTO DOING THINGS WITHOUT READING EVERYTHING FIRST.
Warning 1: If it's not broken, don't "fix" it. Think twice if you REALLY need to upgrade. There's a risk involved with any firmware upgrade. If the new firmware doesn't have anything you absolutely must have, why risk it?
Warning 2: This is not for the newbies. I'm assuming that you've flashed your router before and that you understand things like networking, Linux, how the Asus router works. It's not to say that a lucky n00b cannot use this tutorial and still come through sucessfully... but DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?
Warning 3: Don't do this in a rush. If you mess it up it may take a while to fix. Do you have an important email to send later today? Got something crucial you need the net working for? How would you like to be unable to because your router went tits up? Maybe you should reconsider doing this!
These being said, here we go. I upgraded recently to 1.9.2.7-10 and found myself once again scrambling for the steps to take to make the router work again. So I (finally) decided to write the damn thing down.
Step 1: Backup your stuff.
* First, backup your flashfs and settings. You do this by going to your router admin interface, System Setup, Settings Manager and Flashfs Manager. Click the links as the nice page says and you get a CFG file and a tar.gz file. Put them aside and guard them with your life.
* Second, go to your LAN connection properties and write down the settings.
* Third, write down the address and port where you usually access your router admin interface. Just copy it from the browser address bar.
* Fourth, write down the username and password you use to access the admin interface. Many people change those from the default admin/admin, you probably did too. Does your browser remember them for you but you don't anymore? You're screwed. Kidding, but seriously, remember them. One of the steps below involves accessing the admin interface while it's been reset to the default admin/admin. If your browser picks those up and forgets the old ones (very likely) then you will NOT like it. Because user+pass and settings go together, so you'll have to reset the settings and give up on the ones you saved and reconfigure everything from scratch which is a major bother.
Oh, and I hope I don't need to stress that saving your flashfs is relevant only if you've changed something to the original flashfs and have saved it since last reboot, and it presumably contains a custom setup that you hold dear. If you didn't understand what I just said you should not be following this tutorial. Stop now.
Step 2: Go into the router admin interface and upgrade the firmware. That means System Setup/Firmware upgrade. I assume you have your TRX file on hand by now. Don't know what that is and where to get one? Get out of here now.
Just "Browse" for the file and hit "Upload". It will take a lot of time to finish (about 5 minutes), so DO NOT PANIC. Let the router do its thing and reboot. You'll notice it's done when it attempts to refresh the admin interface. The firmware has over 3 megs usually and the flash on the Asus is slow, so yeah it takes a while, it's perfectly normal.
Perform the next steps only if you are unable to access the admin interface after the upgrade is over. If your admin interface comes up OK then jump directly to Step 5.
Depending on how heavily customized your setup is, it may very well not come back up easily. I know mine doesn't. The reason is that right after an upgrade the router contains a blank flashfs and a mixture of your old settings and some new defaults (brought by the new firmware). Anyway, DO NOT PANIC. Follow these steps and you'll be ok. Probably.
Step 3: Reset the router. On the WL-500gP you do this by holding the black indented reset button at the back pressed for more than 5 seconds. There's also a red protruding button. That's not it.
Step 4: Find the router. Yeah, that's right. Since you've reset the thing, it reverted to the default address (http://192.168.1.1) and the default user/password: admin/admin.
If you were using DHCP on your lan you only need to restart your network connection and go to the default address and you'll find the router.
But if you were not, ie. were using static settings for you LAN connection, you'll have to change them. Here's the magic stuff:
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
...and of course, there had better not be anybody else on your LAN currently using 192.168.1.2. Then again, the chances for that at this point are pretty slim.
Step 5: Upload your saved settings and flashfs. Whether you should do it in this order or the other way around, is debatable. It works best for me in this order. The router will reboot after each one, and only after both are in you will get the router you know and love back. So in between there will be an unstable state anyway. Your mileage may vary.
If you had a LAN address different from the default saved in the old settings, after you upload them you'll probably have to perform step 7 (find your router again) before you can upload the flashfs. Even so, I still prefer uploading the settings first, because the flashfs contains the post-boot files and I think that having those fire up without the good settings in is potentially worse than the other way around.
Step 6: Reboot the router once more after BOTH settings and flashfs have been restored. Pull the power and put it back in or use the reboot in the admin interface. It's good to do this, just to make sure your router has gone through the process of updating both settings and flashfs properly.
Step 7: Find your router again. Yeah, that's right. You uploaded the settings so IF you use a custom network setup this means your connection is not good, again.
If you find yourself able to access the router admin interface after you uploaded the saved settings and flashfs, congratulations. But you may still need to remember your custom username+password. Hope you read step 1 properly.
However, if you can't access it, you still have a bit of digging to do. If you use DHCP all it takes is restarting your network connection (on your PC). If not (you use static settings), I hope you did what I recommended at step 1 and wrote down those network settings! For whatever it's worth, here are mine. They'll probably be of no use whatsoever to you:
address 192.168.123.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.255.255
gateway 192.168.123.254
Then, go to your router admin interface address and use your username+password. If you didn't write them down or don't remember them, good luck trying to get in (or even find it); your only choice is to reset the router, lose all settings, get in with admin/admin (after you find your router again) and reconfigure everything from scratch.
Step 8: Check that everything works. You're pretty much done, I hope your router behaves nicely after this upgrade. Check and make sure (SSH, torrents, VPN's, whatever you do).
It's a good idea to keep those things you backed up at step 1 somewhere safe in the future too. Should your router ever need to be replaced, or get stolen, or you step on it or whatever, the new Asus router (you're getting an Asus router again, right?) can probably use those backups.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
Should you bork this up at any point, DO NOT PANIC:
* Retrace your steps and see where you went wrong.
* You can most likely reset your router at any point and at least get a usable Internet connection out of it.
* Not happening? Take the WAN cable out of the router, put it in your PC, make that Internet connection happen, come back to the forum and yell for help like a little girl.
* Feeling confident, but are stuck? If you can access the admin interface, under System Setup your have "System Commands". It runs Linux console commands directly on the router. You can use stuff like ps, netstat and so on. "dropbear" will start the ssh daemon. "wl radio on" will MAYBE turn on wireless. You can also try mounting your USB storage device by hand (mount /dev/discs/disc0/part1 /opt), altough this doesn't mean you'll get access to the programs on it, since your environment (PATH and such) are not properly set up...
READ THIS THING THROUGH AT LEAST ONCE. DO NOT RUSH INTO DOING THINGS WITHOUT READING EVERYTHING FIRST.
Warning 1: If it's not broken, don't "fix" it. Think twice if you REALLY need to upgrade. There's a risk involved with any firmware upgrade. If the new firmware doesn't have anything you absolutely must have, why risk it?
Warning 2: This is not for the newbies. I'm assuming that you've flashed your router before and that you understand things like networking, Linux, how the Asus router works. It's not to say that a lucky n00b cannot use this tutorial and still come through sucessfully... but DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?
Warning 3: Don't do this in a rush. If you mess it up it may take a while to fix. Do you have an important email to send later today? Got something crucial you need the net working for? How would you like to be unable to because your router went tits up? Maybe you should reconsider doing this!
These being said, here we go. I upgraded recently to 1.9.2.7-10 and found myself once again scrambling for the steps to take to make the router work again. So I (finally) decided to write the damn thing down.
Step 1: Backup your stuff.
* First, backup your flashfs and settings. You do this by going to your router admin interface, System Setup, Settings Manager and Flashfs Manager. Click the links as the nice page says and you get a CFG file and a tar.gz file. Put them aside and guard them with your life.
* Second, go to your LAN connection properties and write down the settings.
* Third, write down the address and port where you usually access your router admin interface. Just copy it from the browser address bar.
* Fourth, write down the username and password you use to access the admin interface. Many people change those from the default admin/admin, you probably did too. Does your browser remember them for you but you don't anymore? You're screwed. Kidding, but seriously, remember them. One of the steps below involves accessing the admin interface while it's been reset to the default admin/admin. If your browser picks those up and forgets the old ones (very likely) then you will NOT like it. Because user+pass and settings go together, so you'll have to reset the settings and give up on the ones you saved and reconfigure everything from scratch which is a major bother.
Oh, and I hope I don't need to stress that saving your flashfs is relevant only if you've changed something to the original flashfs and have saved it since last reboot, and it presumably contains a custom setup that you hold dear. If you didn't understand what I just said you should not be following this tutorial. Stop now.
Step 2: Go into the router admin interface and upgrade the firmware. That means System Setup/Firmware upgrade. I assume you have your TRX file on hand by now. Don't know what that is and where to get one? Get out of here now.
Just "Browse" for the file and hit "Upload". It will take a lot of time to finish (about 5 minutes), so DO NOT PANIC. Let the router do its thing and reboot. You'll notice it's done when it attempts to refresh the admin interface. The firmware has over 3 megs usually and the flash on the Asus is slow, so yeah it takes a while, it's perfectly normal.
Perform the next steps only if you are unable to access the admin interface after the upgrade is over. If your admin interface comes up OK then jump directly to Step 5.
Depending on how heavily customized your setup is, it may very well not come back up easily. I know mine doesn't. The reason is that right after an upgrade the router contains a blank flashfs and a mixture of your old settings and some new defaults (brought by the new firmware). Anyway, DO NOT PANIC. Follow these steps and you'll be ok. Probably.
Step 3: Reset the router. On the WL-500gP you do this by holding the black indented reset button at the back pressed for more than 5 seconds. There's also a red protruding button. That's not it.
Step 4: Find the router. Yeah, that's right. Since you've reset the thing, it reverted to the default address (http://192.168.1.1) and the default user/password: admin/admin.
If you were using DHCP on your lan you only need to restart your network connection and go to the default address and you'll find the router.
But if you were not, ie. were using static settings for you LAN connection, you'll have to change them. Here's the magic stuff:
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
...and of course, there had better not be anybody else on your LAN currently using 192.168.1.2. Then again, the chances for that at this point are pretty slim.
Step 5: Upload your saved settings and flashfs. Whether you should do it in this order or the other way around, is debatable. It works best for me in this order. The router will reboot after each one, and only after both are in you will get the router you know and love back. So in between there will be an unstable state anyway. Your mileage may vary.
If you had a LAN address different from the default saved in the old settings, after you upload them you'll probably have to perform step 7 (find your router again) before you can upload the flashfs. Even so, I still prefer uploading the settings first, because the flashfs contains the post-boot files and I think that having those fire up without the good settings in is potentially worse than the other way around.
Step 6: Reboot the router once more after BOTH settings and flashfs have been restored. Pull the power and put it back in or use the reboot in the admin interface. It's good to do this, just to make sure your router has gone through the process of updating both settings and flashfs properly.
Step 7: Find your router again. Yeah, that's right. You uploaded the settings so IF you use a custom network setup this means your connection is not good, again.
If you find yourself able to access the router admin interface after you uploaded the saved settings and flashfs, congratulations. But you may still need to remember your custom username+password. Hope you read step 1 properly.
However, if you can't access it, you still have a bit of digging to do. If you use DHCP all it takes is restarting your network connection (on your PC). If not (you use static settings), I hope you did what I recommended at step 1 and wrote down those network settings! For whatever it's worth, here are mine. They'll probably be of no use whatsoever to you:
address 192.168.123.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.255.255
gateway 192.168.123.254
Then, go to your router admin interface address and use your username+password. If you didn't write them down or don't remember them, good luck trying to get in (or even find it); your only choice is to reset the router, lose all settings, get in with admin/admin (after you find your router again) and reconfigure everything from scratch.
Step 8: Check that everything works. You're pretty much done, I hope your router behaves nicely after this upgrade. Check and make sure (SSH, torrents, VPN's, whatever you do).
It's a good idea to keep those things you backed up at step 1 somewhere safe in the future too. Should your router ever need to be replaced, or get stolen, or you step on it or whatever, the new Asus router (you're getting an Asus router again, right?) can probably use those backups.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
Should you bork this up at any point, DO NOT PANIC:
* Retrace your steps and see where you went wrong.
* You can most likely reset your router at any point and at least get a usable Internet connection out of it.
* Not happening? Take the WAN cable out of the router, put it in your PC, make that Internet connection happen, come back to the forum and yell for help like a little girl.
* Feeling confident, but are stuck? If you can access the admin interface, under System Setup your have "System Commands". It runs Linux console commands directly on the router. You can use stuff like ps, netstat and so on. "dropbear" will start the ssh daemon. "wl radio on" will MAYBE turn on wireless. You can also try mounting your USB storage device by hand (mount /dev/discs/disc0/part1 /opt), altough this doesn't mean you'll get access to the programs on it, since your environment (PATH and such) are not properly set up...