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Updating firmware with Raspberry Pi or iPad?

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Morac

Senior Member
I’m currently without a PC at this point. Has anyone ever successfully updated the firmware using a Raspberry Pi (3b) or an iPad?

Also is there a way to use the recovery mode with either device? For reasons I can’t determine, my RT-AC88U refused to upgrade from 386.1 to 386.1_2 without either using the ASUS recovery tool or downgrading to 384.19 first. I suspect I’ll run into the same problem with 386.2. Since the recovery tool is a Windows only tool, that‘s not an option with a Pi or iPad.
 
You can use any mobile device. Just copy the unzipped firmware image to it first. I've uploaded routers a few times from my Android tablet as I didn't have a working Ethernet connection to them at the time.

Recovery mode requires your client device to have a TFTP client to upload the image.
 
Thanks. I successfully upgraded from 386.1_2 to 386.2 on my iPad. Not sure what the issue with the 386.1_2 upgrade was. Though my nvram did consolidate right before I upgrade to 386.2.

I always heard upgrading over Wifi was bad, but I’m guessing modern routers copy the entire file over first and run some CRC checks or something before upgrading.
 
I’ve used my iPad a lot lately for upgrading firmware during this release cycle. I usually download the Zip from OneDrive to the Files app. Then expand the zip in the Download folder. I created a Shortcut to generate the SHA-256 hash so I can compare with the hash on Merlin’s site. If all good, I upload via Safari.
 
I always heard upgrading over Wifi was bad
I do like 70% of my firmware flashes over wifi, as I often do development work from the couch using my laptop. Not a single failure out of the hundreds of firmware flashes I have done over the years.

The router does indeed validate the image's CRC before flashing it.
 

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