I tried following the instructions in the wiki for installing Backfire on the DLink DIR-825 rev B1, to no avail.  After a lot of messing around with it, I was finally able to install it by modifying the image and using the factory firmware's update (not the recovery mode).

What I found is that there seem to be two problems with the supplied image (openwrt-ar71xx-dir-825-b1-squashfs-backup-loader.bin)

1.  The image suffix is wrong for the DIR-825 rev B1.  In the supplied image, it is "01AP94-AR7161-RT-080619-00".  However, in the DLink firmware, it is "00AP94-AR7161-RT-080619-00"

2.  The image suffix is apparently not at an offset that the DLink firmware upgrade process expects to find it.  In the DLink firmware, the suffix begins at a file offset of exactly 0x400000.  In the supplied OpenWRT image, it begins immediately after the last used byte of the image, at offset 0x250004.

I took the non-backup-loader image (without the suffix), padded it out with zeros to exactly four megabytes, then appended the suffix from the DLink firmware.  Now the firmware upgrade page accepts and programs it just fine.  I suspect that it will now work correctly in the recovery mode also, but I have not tried that.

It is possible that padding the image to a shorter length (e.g., 0x280000) might work, but I haven't tried it.

(Last edited by brouhaha on 25 Apr 2010, 07:34)

http://fetzig.org/2009/12/24/openwrt-on … k-dir-825/

Yes, I tried using those instructions, and they didn't work for me.  That's why I spend hours screwing around with the image until I was able to make it work.  If otther people are able to flash the released Backfire image into the DIR-825 from the stock firmware using the instructions on that page or on the wiki, I'm baffled as to why it works for them but didn't for me.

Fulfilled all the instructions. Out of stock firmvare not work. I've installed many times. No problems have never arisen.

Followed them to a tee also, and it works a treat.

Well, even if the regular instructions work perfectly for everyone but me, I've found what it take to install OpenWRT through the stock firmware's normal upgrade process, without requiring the use of recovery mode.

It appears that recovery mode interacts poorly with all of the web browsers I've tried (Firefox/Linux, Firefox/Mac, Safari/Mac).  I get the web page, but the upload button never seems to actually do anything.  May be something odd about my network, but I can access the stock firmware's web interface with no trouble, so it was worthwhile for me to spend the time figuring out how to make the normal firmware upgrade work.

I just picked up a DIR-825 B1 yesterday too and am running into the same problems as you brouhaha trying to follow the directions at that fetzig.org site
Tried FF/linux, Chromium/Linux, FF/Win7, IE8/Win7 and all just time out.

So with that firmware you were fixing, by chance did you save the .bin file that's all repadded and has the fixed offset that you could post?  Would at least save me the trouble figuring out how to pad it and fix that suffix with a hex editor myself.  I'm assuming it's from the backfire 10.03 branch right?

Actually I think this should do the trick, right? I'm pretty sure that will make sure it's the same size file and gets the exact same:

dd if=dir825_revB_firmware_202NA.bin of=new.bin
dd if=/dev/zero of=new.bin bs=4194304 count=1 conv=notrunc
dd if=openwrt-ar71xx-dir-825-b1-squashfs-backup-loader.bin of=new.bin bs=2424836 count=1 conv=notrunc

I'll try it later on and see.  If it works, what do we need to do to get the build process fixed for future people?

Well I can confirm that worked for me! All I needed was to get the initial firmware on.  Now i'm off to custom firmwares so I can use http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/rootf … nalstorage

Hi superm1!  Glad it worked for you.

I'll probably buy a few more DIR-825s in the near future.  Next time I'll experiment to find the minimum padding boundary that the stock firmware recognizes.

I just noticed that this issue was fixed by changeset 21171 (trunk) and 21226 (backfire) by juhosg on April 26 and 28, respectively.  That was fast!  Now the build creates images ending in "-factory.bin" which have the correct padding and suffix to work with the factory firmware's upgrade page.  Thanks juhosg!  W00t!

brouhaha, thanks for the useful information. I'm trying to install openwrt on the same router but the version is B2 instead of B1 and the stock firmware doesn't accept neither the provided image nor my own compiled image. Both of these images are really for for version B1 so I'm not sure if that is the problem? any hints is appreciated.

Arash

Brouhaha, hi! I've been fighting to make dir-825 to be any useful. My configuration has L2TP for uplink and most recent Dlink firmware sporadically reboots after some 10-15 minutes and DD-Wrt ends up the same way. I already have two boxes and would like to give OpenWrt (backfire, kamikadze) a try. I cannot follow your changerset 21226 (backfire) advise - no clue how to make image builds myself.

Could you please publish somewhere a .BIN file that worked for you? Thank you in advance!