I have used OpenWRT successfully on several different routers.  I am trying to load it on my wrt54g3g via the Linksys firmware upgrade.  I have tried both the 2.6 and 2.4 kernels from Kamikaze 7.09.  I got the same eloquent message each time: "upgrade are failed".  I tried the latest Linksys firmware (2.00.9) and it upgraded with no problem.  I noticed that there are two versions of this hardware on the Linksys site: the ST (which I have) and the AT.  Are there any issues related to this difference, or anything else that might help me load OpenWRT without resorting to opening the box and using the serial port?  If I have to open the box - I didn't see any instructions on the product page.  Do you just grab one of the faces and pry it off?  Thanks.

If you have boot_wait set, you should try to flash your box via tftp. If you are going to use wifi, use 2.4 kernel.

(Last edited by ggp81 on 4 Jan 2008, 09:24)

I was having the same problem with the wrt54g3g .bin file.  My problem was that the header of the .bin file has a 4 character "signature" that was wrong.  The .bin file has "W54F" and it should really be "W3GS".  I am using the WRT54G3G-ST and I think the "signature" is different for the different versions of the WRT54G3G (-ST, -AT, ...).

I would suggest using a tool to dump the first 50 bytes of the firmware image from Linksys.  You should see a pattern similiar to "W3Gx".  Then either edit the openwrt .bin file and replace the "W54F" with the signature in the Linksys firmware or if you are building your own image of openwrt go to the "target\linux\brcm-2.4\image\Makefile" file and search for the line with "W54F" and replace these characters and rebuild.

You will only need to do this the first time you flash the router from Linksys to OpenWrt because once you have OpenWrt installed you use the .trx file to upgrade and the .trx does not include the header.

If the problem is the one mentioned by jalbert, you should also first upgrade to WhiteRussian firmware using .bin file, and then to 7.09 using .trx image. I have done this trick many time with WRT54G and it works.