Dude, where's my router?

On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:46:27 -0700, Jeff Liebermann sez:

Yup. I thought it was kind of humorous that a model specifically built for Linuxheads would come supplied with a Winduhs-only CD installation. I tried that because all reasonable approaches had failed :-)

I didn't even know you could configure via wireless! In any case, no, I have tried these ethernet connections: - from Linux box (running a firewall, opened up all traffic for

192.168.1.*) ethernet card to ethernet 1, with and without cable modem ethernet plugged into WAN hole - from WinXP box (firewalls disabled) to ethernet 1 - both router's ethernet port and various desktop boxes plugged into an 8-port ethernet switch - from laptop's ethernet NIC to router's ethernet 1

Yes, for about 5 seconds. Then the Cisco logo stays orange and the power light stays green.

Yes. The WLAN and ethernet 1 light stay green, with occasional flickering as it detects traffic.

The ethernet 1 light blinks every few seconds, so I know the router is receiving a ping. The desktop clients indicate no response at all; the WinXP client gives up after a few tries, and the Linux box just keeps trying indefinitely until I kill the test. At that point it says {however many} packets transmitted, 0 packets received.

Linux client responds "destination host unreachable"; WinXP repeats "Request timed out."

After I powered on, the "destination host unreachable" messages stopped but it did not get a successful acknowledgement - it just continues in silence as noted above.

Isn't that what holding the reset button in for 30 seconds is supposed to do?

I assume you mean "nasty bug". No, the AOSS button will flash white if I push it and then return to orange after some time, and it turns orange when the powerup sequence is complete.

Since it can't be pinged, what's Plan B?

Thanks for the quick response! I hope you have more tricks up your sleeve :-)

"Peter B. Steiger" hath wroth:

So much for the OBE (Out of Box Experience). Kinda sounds dead to me. Let's try raising the dead (beware of zombies).

Please forget about using the supplied CDROM. It's not needed.

Are you trying to configure the router via wireless? If so, switch to a wired ethernet connection. Common error is to plug it into the WAN port. Don't do that. Use a LAN port for configuration.

Are you seeing the usual flashing lights when the WRT54GL is powered on? Duz the power light start flashing and then stay on after about 8 seconds? Do you have a connection light to whichever LAN port you plugged the computer into.

What happens when you try to ping 192.168.1.1 from your desktop? If you get an error message, what is it? Try it this way:

1. Power OFF the router.
2. Ping with: ping -t 192.168.1.1
3. Turn on the power.
4. There's usually a 5 second delay, followed by successful pings. However, if the ping responses quit after the initial success, the firmware is trashed and needs to be reloaded.

Is the AOSS button (Cisco logo) lit and not stuck? There was a nasty but that would corrupt the firmware if you powered on the unit with the button held down. If this is the case, it should show up with a continuously flashing power light. If you can ping the IP address, the firmware can be reloaded. See the TFTP proceedure at:

"Peter B. Steiger" hath wroth:

Incidentally, is this a WRT54GL v1.0 or v1.1? Look on the serial number tag.

Worth reading:

Well, then it's alive. The firmware has to be working in order for the light to work. However, it should start with a *FLASHING* power light, and then settle to always on. Is that what happens?

It's dead. The protected area of the flash contains the TFTP server. There's no (easy) way to kill that using firmware uploads. You could wipe the user area clean, and still get the TFTP server to appear for a few seconds after initial power on. That's all that's needed to do a TFTP firmware upload, but apparently that's not going to happen.

Nope. It just resets the NVRAM setup information, otherwise known as the settings. It doesn't touch the firmware, which is what I think is the problem.

Are you *SURE* you're resetting the router correctly? I've seen far too many creative ways of doing it, many of which don't work. I had one creative individual insist that he's was "pushing the reset button". I eventually determined he was pushing the AOSS button on the front, instead of the reset button, on the back. I've also raised more than one WRT54G from the dead by simply going through the reset ordeal process.

Try it my way:

1. Power ON the router. Nothing plugged into any ethernet port.
2. Wait until the router is ready (flashing power light stops).
3. Stomp on the reset button with a paper clip in back. Hold it down for 60 seconds by the clock. That's probably 3 times longer than necessary, but every once in a while, I run into an old firmware version that requires such a long reset. Old bugs tend to re-appear. If you accidentally let go, start over at step one.
4. After agonizing 60 seconds, remove the paper clip and do NOTHING. The router needs to copy something from here to there and it takes a little while longer. My guess is another minute will do. Get some coffee or something.
5. Power OFF the router. Wait about 10 seconds. Then power it back ON. Try pinging or http and see what happens.

Maybe it's not dead. The light and button are totally under control of the firmware. If you can do that, most of the firmware is functional. Toss a coin?

1. Check your assumptions. It worked once, it should work again.
2. Do everything (reset, ping, etc) after a small delay to clear out any assumptions.
3. Eliminate anything that's common in all your tests. For example, are you always plugging into the same router LAN port? Are you using the same ethernet cable? Is there something else (switch, hub, router, patch panel) in between your test computah and the WRT54G?
4. Shake the box. Anything rattle?
5. Try one of the numerous "DeBrick" utilities. I suggest you save this for last resort and desperation as my luck has been dismal with most of these.

1. If you can't return it for credit, and feel like spending a few days of Learn By Destroying(tm), then open it up, install a JTAG header, plug in a JTAG adapter, and attack the problem from there.

I suspect this may be more trouble than it's worth.

1. Buy a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, WHR-G54S, or one of the new 125Mbit/sec replacement models. More RAM, more flash, and generally fewer suprises.

Everything I do is tricky.

Jeff Liebermann hath wroth:

Of course, I double check my allegations AFTER I post wrong information. The WHR-HPG54, WHR-G54S and most of the Buffalo Broadcom based products have 4MBytes of flash and 16MBytes of RAM, the same as the Linksys WRT54GL.

The first line at the above url may help:

"For thoroughness, reset to factory defaults by holding the reset button while plugging in the router. Hold for at least 30 seconds. Unplug the router."

On a wrt54g v1.0 I know this is different than just pressing the reset button. I dunno what the effect will be on your wrt54gl.

I have a wrt54g v1.0 that had Firmware Version: v1.02.1, Mar. 4, 2003 when I got it. I flashed it to dd-wrt v23sp2 & it was working.

In learning my way around dd-wrt I got lost & wanted to wipe out my changes & start over.

I used this "power-on" reset.

After the reset the wrt54g v1.0 had Linksys "V1.00.6" firmware!

Reflashing it to dd-wrt v23sp2 & it was all Ok.

kc

Kim Clay hath wroth:

Well, it's wrong. The way I read that quote is that one does the reset thing for 30 seconds, and them immediately unplugs the router. That has trashed at least two firmware loads when I did it that way. You have to wait until the flashing lights stop (and then some) so that the fireware is done copying something from here to there or wherever after a reset or after a firmware upload. My guess is about a minute wait at least.

Hmmm... Maybe it's something unique to the V1.0 mutation. I have a WRT54G v1.1 with DD-WRT v23 sp2. I've done the grand reset several times and it's never reverted to the Linksys firmware. Weird... Perhaps it's haunted?

It does read that way. I always let the router finish booting before powering down.

Tonight I couldn't duplicate this. Perhaps the original dd-wrt flash was bad in some way? Dunno/don't care cuz it seems fine now - see below.

Since the router in sitting here I tried various types of resets.

A normal reset needs the reset button depressed for 10 sec. The "diag" led lights, then flashes & 30 sec. later the router is operational.

Holding the reset button depressed while powering on & continuing to hold the reset button depressed results in: an initial reset at power-up & a second reset at about 35 sec (& a third reset at about 72 seconds).

I let the router boot after both the 35 sec. & the 72 sec. interval & it never reverted to the old Linksys OS.

Maybe it got scared & decided to act right for a while?

On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:33:04 -0700, Jeff Liebermann sez:

Whoops! And there I was patting myself on the back for providing every possible environmental detail that could possibly matter. It's a 1.1.

I read about openwrt but I was afraid to overwrite the firmware with a third-party replacement. Now that I read about the "failsafe" mode, I wish I had that available.

I could communicate much more effectively if I remembered to throw in the occasional subject and verb. What I should have said was, "Yes, *the power light flashes* for about 5 seconds."

I can't blame you for being skeptical. I'm in the support business myself, and over 20 years I have lost count of the number of times I have had to say "No, don't type the word SPACE (or ASTERISK or ENTER)..." In this case I did indeed use the button on the rear labeled "reset", but I was holding it in with the tip of my finger which may have jiggled loose during the 30 seconds. Per your advice, I used a thumbtack and held it firmly in place while the second hand made a full circle around my on- screen clock.

I'll skip the rest of our exchange and get to the punchline (as in, I feel so stupid about missing this, I could punch myself). None of the more thorough reset methods made a difference at all. I was online with Linksys's helpdesk chat guy and he was taking me through the same reset steps, and he mentioned the default gateway.

All of a sudden it hit me, my LAN has static IP addresses of

192.168.169.* . Even though I punched a hole in the firewall and added a route specifically to 192.168.1.1, I was still on a different subnet.

Long story short (too late!) I re-coded the static IP address on one of my PCs to 192.168.1.2, restarted the ethernet driver... and I'm back in.

That's probably how I got in the first time around, too, and I had just forgotten that necessary step after changing the router's static IP to my

192.168.169 subnet.

Anyhoo, thanks again for giving me lots of stuff to try if this ever happens again. I think it's time to look into those replacement firmware options. Since you pointed me to openwrt is that your preference? wrt54g-linux sounds good because it installs in the RAM section so I don't have to worry that I'm permanently trashing the only good copy of the factory defaults.

On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:11:06 +0000, Kim Clay sez:

As a software support person, I have more than once suggested to a customer that a problem which appears and disappears at random calls for a consultation with Mulder and Scully. You can always tell whether the customer is over 30 - the younger ones don't recognize the names.

"Peter B. Steiger" hath wroth:

Note that many manufacturers use the same product model number but with different hardware version numbers to distinguish radically different internal construction, usually from different vendors. The reason is so that the new and the old boxes look the same to the customer and to the dealer. This way, there is no old/new inventory changeover hassle, where the dealer returns old inventory claiming it's obsolete and unsellable.

Quite old (1983 thru about 1994) but still applicable:

Ouch. That's why I posted the URL of how to do the TFTP upload. It included instructions for resetting the client IP address to the same IP block as the router. I assumed[1] that you had the test client plugged directly into the Linksys LAN port and was getting a DHCP assigned IP address. I should have asked for the output of IPCONFIG which would have shown the wrong gateway IP.

Note that the bulk of my diagnostics revolved around watching the flashing lights. I sometimes take photos or video clips of how the boxes should look when operating normally.

No. I prefer DD-WRT v23 SP2 (or SP3) or v24beta. DD-WRT is far more HTML driven than OpenWRT, which requires some file editing and command line incantations. Under the admin pages, they're very similar if not identical. For my own use, I would probably go with OpenWRT, but I use what I inflict on my customers, which is DD-WRT.

I haven't tried that for a while. It was deemed unsuitable because everything would disappear if the power failed. Ideally, I would like one with "pluggable" firmware (USB dongle or SD card) or perhaps a TFTP OS boot (which I use on my thin clients). However, there's so little FLASH and RAM to work with in the typical WRT54G, that I'm happy with what can be done with DD-WRT. Incidentally, I have yet to have any customer demand that I reinstall the original Linksys or Buffalo firmware.

[1] Assumption. The mother of all screwups.

Kim Clay hath wroth:

Submit it to: "The Journal of Irreproducible Results "

Note: You have to be somewhat of a research scientist in order to appreciate the magazine.

You didn't try the method I used to trash the firmware. Punch the AOSS button on the front during initial bootup. It messed up the flash on a WRT54G v3.0 twice when I tried it. I don't recall the exact version but I thing it was one of the beta versions between v23 SP1 and SP2.

Dunno. My standard cure is to submit burnt offerings to the computah gods. That's usually an old 386 motherboard on the hibachi. Things usually start to work well after that. If not, human sacrifice is always a temptation, but then the customer wouldn't be able to pay me for the repair.