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RT-AC66U 380.70 Recovery mode has no IP

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Ronaldvd

New Around Here
Hello,

I'm trying to recover my AC66U from 380.70 to Merlin fork 374.43_39E1
When I put the router into recovery mode and the power light is blinking, the router does not seem to have the expected IP address 192.168.1.1

How can I do this (without a serial cable please)

Ronald
 
Have you followed the instructions and manually set an IP address on your computer's network interface?
 
Hello,

I'm trying to recover my AC66U from 380.70 to Merlin fork 374.43_39E1
When I put the router into recovery mode and the power light is blinking, the router does not seem to have the expected IP address 192.168.1.1

How can I do this (without a serial cable please)

Ronald
Make sure to press the reset button with a pin or toothpick and not get mixed up by the wps button. The process of both make the light blink at different rates, however only the reset button technique starts the tftp server.
 
Hi Colin,

Thanx for your reply.
Yes I did. I also unplugged all cables except mine.
 
Last edited:
Make sure to press the reset button with a pin or toothpick and not get mixed up by the wps button. The process of both make the light blink at different rates, however only the reset button technique starts the tftp server.
Hi Skeal,

I did make sure to press the reset and not the WPS ;-)

Ronald
 
Just a thought.... Try clearing the NVRAM first, and then try recovery mode.
Good call Colin, should have but did not try that.
So cleared NVRAM.
Then reset to factory settings and restarted.

After restart tried recovery mode again. But unfortunately with the same result.
Can't ping the router on 192.168.1.1 (I'm 192.168.1.10/255.255.255.0)
 
I'm running out of ideas.

Removed all USB devices?
Tried a different Ethernet cable?
 
I'm running out of ideas.

Removed all USB devices?
Tried a different Ethernet cable?
Yes, nothing else connected and cable is tested.
I guess there is something wrong with the recovery mode.
Did see some posts about people needed to use a serial cable to manually give the networkcard an IP.
But I'm not sure this could be my problem as the router is working like a charm.
 
Maybe copy the firmware file to the router and try this from SSH:

mtd-write filename.trx linux

I have no idea if this will work or how dangerous it is, but other people say they use this method. Expect to have to power cycle the router and then reset the NVRAM afterwards.
 
Maybe copy the firmware file to the router and try this from SSH:

mtd-write filename.trx linux

I have no idea if this will work or how dangerous it is, but other people say they use this method. Expect to have to power cycle the router and then reset the NVRAM afterwards.
Hmm that's an interesting option.
Going to search posts about this one as bricking this router is not an option ;-)
 
Thanx for the report.
Tomorrow I'm going to give it a try.
Will keep you all updated with the results.

Know that it is not as reliable as using the GUI or the recovery options. I accepted the risk because, at that point, I had nothing to lose.

If you also have to accept full responsibility, there are no guarantees. :)
 
Know that it is not as reliable as using the GUI or the recovery options. I accepted the risk because, at that point, I had nothing to lose.

If you also have to accept full responsibility, there are no guarantees. :)
;-)
 
Just for the sake of documenting, here are the risks of doing a manual upgrade:

1) If you write to the wrong partition, you can potentially permanently brick your router
2) After writing to the partition, the system will be in an unstable state requiring a manual power cycle. Trying to do a normal reboot can have unforseen consequences as the filesystem is in an invalid state at that point. Most likely router will just crash or refuse to run commands. But who knows if it couldn't also cause data corruption as running processes are suddenly corrupted/unable to access on-flash components/etc...
3) There will be no file validation done before flashing, so if it's the wrong file or it's corrupted, you won't notice until after it fails to boot.

The webui takes care of stopping various services, validating the images, and moving some critical component to a temporary ram disk before flashing.
 
The webui takes care of stopping various services, validating the images, and moving some critical component to a temporary ram disk before flashing.
IIRC it also stops nvram updates and clears the cache
 

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