Corrupted Firmware

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harshil102
harshil102's picture
Corrupted Firmware

Hi, first post and i'd just like to say that even though i havent posted before this, ive read around the forums and seen some awesome people and help, so im glad i bought a WGR614L and joined this community!

This post is somewhat long so summary:

1. ran erase linux from fully working dd-wrt in ssh

2. tftp'd tomato 1.23 chk build that i got from this site

3. rebooted few seconds after upload completed (seems like this was the mistake i made)

4. router boots into what seems like dd-wrt, but cant login, internet doesnt work, ssid broadcasting same as before

5. got a serial adapter, forgot solder gun, so using hot glue

6. text in putty serial console is not legible

7. Please Help Me!!!!

 

So now to the problem, i bought the WGR614L router 2 days ago, on the first day, i tried using tomato 1.25, but it didnt work due to the wan IP problems, so i decided to go ahead and install dd-wrt instead, it went fine, i installed the initial flash build then upgraded to the newest mini and set everything up. Right when i finished, i found the 1.23 build of Tomato on this site, reading a little about it, i didnt see many problems, so i backed up my dd-wrt settings, and ran erase linux. once that was done, i rebooted the router and tftp was now accesible, so i uploaded the tomato 1.23 chk image. The upload went fine, but being an idiot i restarted the router before realizing i needed to wait a few minutes after the upload before doing so. When the router came back up, it seemed like it was running dd-wrt, alot of my settings seemed intact, even my wireless ssid, so i went to the config page to see wat was up, but when i try to login, it says incorrect no matter what i try. I tried reseting NVRAM with the reset/boot and 30/30/30 method, but no go.

After this, i thought my only way out was to try serial console, so i went out and bought this usb-serial adapter. When i got home, i plugged it in and started following this guid. I dont have a solder gun, and forgot to get one, so i used hot glue instead. When i run putty, i get text every time, but its not legible, its not even completely in letters. This is where i am currently stuck. Tomorrow or later i will get a solder gun, but other than that, are there any suggestions?

retro98
retro98's picture
harshil102 said: serial

harshil102 said: serial console, so i went out and bought this usb-serial adapter. When i got home, i plugged it in and started following this guid. I dont have a solder gun, and forgot to get one,

That's not the proper serial adapter to use. A proper one must support LVTTL voltage levels (0, 3.3v) at the Netgear's serial console connection, rather than the RS-232 standard voltage levels (-12v, +12v). Because the RS-232 standard voltage is much higher than 3.3v, you risk damaging the Netgear with typical usb-serial adapters.

harshil102
harshil102's picture
retro98 said:

retro98 said:

harshil102 said: serial console, so i went out and bought this usb-serial adapter. When i got home, i plugged it in and started following this guid. I dont have a solder gun, and forgot to get one,

That's not the proper serial adapter to use. A proper one must support LVTTL voltage levels (0, 3.3v) at the Netgear's serial console connection, rather than the RS-232 standard voltage levels (-12v, +12v). Because the RS-232 standard voltage is much higher than 3.3v, you risk damaging the Netgear with typical usb-serial adapters.

retro98 said:

harshil102 said: serial console, so i went out and bought this usb-serial adapter. When i got home, i plugged it in and started following this guid. I dont have a solder gun, and forgot to get one,

That's not the proper serial adapter to use. A proper one must support LVTTL voltage levels (0, 3.3v) at the Netgear's serial console connection, rather than the RS-232 standard voltage levels (-12v, +12v). Because the RS-232 standard voltage is much higher than 3.3v, you risk damaging the Netgear with typical usb-serial adapters.

 

I was hoping this would be able to work at 3.3v since the chip they use in the adapter is capable of supporting 3.3 and 5v automatically switching. But i got a soldering iron and everything yesterday and after setting it up, i still got the same illegible text, so i came to the same conclusion that this adapter isnt able to run at 3.3.

i was hoping i could use something store bought so that i didnt have to wait for shipping... oh well time to order from online. Hopefully i havent damaged my router, it seems fine so far, and i only connected/turned it on 4-5 times and i havent left it turned on while connected to the adapter for very long so it should be fine.

Anyways, thanks for the help!

achilles
achilles's picture
Hi Harshill,

Hi Harshill,
I would suggest you to use " FTDI TTL-232R-3V3 USB to TTL serial cable".
I have personally used this cable and it works fine with WGR614L.
As far as your router is cncrnd I think it's some NVRAM corruption ....
As u are able to access d GUI it means that ur board is alive .
Once u get ur serial setup working ... use nvram commands to set http username and password :
nvram set http_username=username
nvram set http_passwd=password
nvram commit

This should allow you to access ur GUI and from there on u can change other settings ...
Keep us posted ...

harshil102
harshil102's picture
Thanks for the help! I've

Thanks for the help! I've already ordered the unterminated version of the cable you suggested. I ordered on saturday and it shipped today so I should have it before the end of the week. I'll post the results of your suggestion and the new wire as soon as I get it.

achilles said:

Hi Harshill,
I would suggest you to use " FTDI TTL-232R-3V3 USB to TTL serial cable".
I have personally used this cable and it works fine with WGR614L.
As far as your router is cncrnd I think it's some NVRAM corruption ....
As u are able to access d GUI it means that ur board is alive .
Once u get ur serial setup working ... use nvram commands to set http username and password :
nvram set http_username=username
nvram set http_passwd=password
nvram commit

This should allow you to access ur GUI and from there on u can change other settings ...
Keep us posted ...

harshil102
harshil102's picture
Thanks for your help Achilles

Thanks for your help Achilles! I got the wire in the mail today, i soldered a molex conector/port to the router/wire and everything went well. Using your commands, i was able to login right away. Unfortuenetly Tomato 1.23 isn't much better than 1.25 so i still ended up using dd-wrt.

Another question though, on this site, i only see mention of CFE versions 1.3 and 1.5, but in my serial console, the router is shown as wgr614v8 1.8 and there is no other place where 1.3 or 1.5 or cfe is written leading me to believe i have a 1.8 cfe? Has this happened before? Also when i try to press ctrl-c, i cannot get into the console, i was only able to recover due to the tomato console which makes me wonder even more if my cfe is a different version.

achilles
achilles's picture
OK ... I have few WGR614Ls at

OK ... I have few WGR614Ls at my disposal but all of them have CFE 1.3 or 1.5 ..
I dnt think there are any other CFEs as far as WGR614Ls are concerned ...
I think ur connection is lose ..plz check it ..
Also if possible send me the bootlog that u get at the console ....

harshil102
harshil102's picture
Here is my serial bootlog

Here is my serial bootlog from console:

 Decompressing..........done

WGR614v8 - 1.8 (Mon Apr 13 10:53:43 CST 2009)
et0: Broadcom BCM47xx 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Controller 4.130.30.0
Device eth0:  hwaddr 00-24-B2-C0-00-9A, ipaddr 192.168.1.1, mask 255.255.255.0
        gateway not set, nameserver not set
Loader:raw Filesys:tftp Dev:eth0 File:192.168.1.2:vmlinuz Options:(null)
Loading: Failed.
Could not load 192.168.1.2:vmlinuz: Timeout occured
Loading ..
CPU ProcId is: 0x00029029, options: 0x0000004d
Linux version 2.4.37 (root@dd-wrt) (gcc version 3.4.6 (OpenWrt-2.0)) #6119 Tue Jul 21 02:12:19 CEST 2009
Setting the PFC to its default value
Determined physical RAM map:
 memory: 01000000 @ 00000000 (usable)
On node 0 totalpages: 4096
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 0 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: root=/dev/mtdblock2 rootfstype=squashfs,jffs2 noinitrd console=ttyS0,115200
CPU: BCM5354 rev 3 at 240 MHz
Using 120.000 MHz high precision timer.
Calibrating delay loop... 239.20 BogoMIPS
Dentry cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Checking for 'wait' instruction...  unavailable.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
PCI: no core
PCI: Fixing up bus 0
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch ([email protected])
devfs: boot_options: 0x1
squashfs: version 3.0 (2006/03/15) Phillip Lougher
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttyS00 at 0xb8000300 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0xb8000400 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:01.0 to 64
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:05.0 to 64
sb_doattach: incoming bus is PCI but it's a lie, switching to SB devid:0x4318
Universal TUN/TAP device driver 1.5 (C)1999-2002 Maxim Krasnyansky
pflash: found no supported devices
bootloader size: 131072
sflash: Filesystem type: squashfs, size=0x203ab8
partition size = 2149376
Creating 5 MTD partitions on "sflash":
0x00000000-0x00020000 : "cfe"
0x00020000-0x003b0000 : "linux"
0x00103400-0x00310000 : "rootfs"
mtd: partition "rootfs" doesn't start on an erase block boundary -- force read-only
0x003f0000-0x00400000 : "nvram"
0x00310000-0x003a0000 : "ddwrt"
Initializing Cryptographic API
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 1024 bind 2048)
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (512 buckets, 4096 max) - 336 bytes per conntrack
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
ipt_random match loaded
netfilter PSD loaded - (c) astaro AG
ipt_osf: Startng OS fingerprint matching module.
ipt_IPV4OPTSSTRIP loaded
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
802.1Q VLAN Support v1.8 Ben Greear <[email protected]>
All bugs added by David S. Miller <[email protected]>
VFS: Mounted root (squashfs filesystem) readonly.
Mounted devfs on /dev
starting Architecture code for broadcom
Booting device: Netgear WGR614v8/L/WW
loading switch-core
loading switch-robo
boardflags are 0x0750
sh: can't create /proc/switch/eth1/reset: nonexistent directory
sh: can't create /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_congestion_control: nonexistent directory
Unlocking ddwrt ...
eth1: Operation not supported
wl0.1: No such device
wl0.2: No such device
wl0.3: No such device
eth1: Invalid argument
eth1: Invalid argument
br0: Bad file descriptor
br0: Bad file descriptor
eth1: Operation not supported
wl0.1: No such device
wl0.2: No such device
wl0.3: No such device
eth1: Invalid argument
eth1: Invalid argument
vlan1: Setting MAC address to  00 1f d0 dc 2e 9b.
Key is a RSA key
Wrote key to '/tmp/root/.ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key'
Key is a DSS key
Wrote key to '/tmp/root/.ssh/ssh_host_dss_key'
size: 24386 bytes (8382 left)
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 3: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 4: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 5: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 7: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 8: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 9: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 10: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 11: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 12: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 13: can't create : nonexistent directory
/tmp/.rc_startup: line 14: can't create : nonexistent directory
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
vlan1: No such process
ip_conntrack_pptp version 1.9 loaded
ip_nat_pptp version 1.5 loaded
iptables-restore: line 89 failed
iptables-restore: line 89 failed
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
RTNETLINK answers: No such file or directory
RTNETLINK answersSIOCGIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/svqos: line 24: syntax error: 75*ppe required/100
: No such device
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
ip_nat_pptp version 1.5 unloaded
ip_conntrack_pptp version 1.9 unloaded
ip_conntrack_pptp version 1.9 loaded
ip_nat_pptp version 1.5 loaded
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
ip_nat_pptp version 1.5 unloaded
ip_conntrack_pptp version 1.9 unloaded
ip_conntrack_pptp version 1.9 loaded
ip_nat_pptp version 1.5 loaded
RTNETLINK answers: Invalid argument

 

I'm sorry, but i have yet another problem. Whenever i restart the router, it disconnects my ubuntu server completely, and makes it unreachable untill i restart the server. This is a pretty big problem for me, and it never happened with my old wgr614v9 and default firmware, but with this wgr614l and dd-wrt setup, it happens every time i restart the router.

retro98
retro98's picture
There's a problem with the

There's a problem with the software/firmware beginning with:

sh: can't create /proc/switch/eth1/reset: nonexistent directory
sh: can't create /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_congestion_control: nonexistent directory
Unlocking ddwrt ...
eth1: Operation not supported

The errors indicate device drivers failed to load (incompatible drivers?).

I'd suggest erasing the dd-wrt installation, and restore the original netgear firmware. Then check for proper operation. Then, the dd-wrt in particular that worked for me is dd-wrt.v24-12548_NEWD_mini_wgr614v8-L.chk. It's possible other dd-wrt build types could present issues.

The CFE 1.8 looks plausible, considering the date printed is really recent.