Hence you suggest to use the attitude_adjustment?
May I ask you what's the difference between snapshot and attitude_Adjustment?

Thank you,

I have made it a little easier to understand.

I apologise for my first one being a little, amateurish.
I don't make tutorials.. sorry

If you need any more help, please feel free to ask. I will try and answer.
Unfortunately, I have other commitments in life and may not be able to answer immediately.

(Last edited by undermonster on 14 Nov 2012, 13:49)

used the file in the instructions
after writing resulted in "[e] error writing over block" \\ something along those lines
rebooted and now all leds except power led just flash in concert while the power led is on without blinking

Hello all,

I have successfully flashed two routers with the AA 12.09 beta2 build. While most of the firmware seems A+, there are three problems that I have discovered.
1. When set to SE wireless domain, channels 12 and 13 are missing.
2. WDS is not transparent, and will not pass ethernet packets with IPV6 , so the boxes cannot  replace older "bridges"
3. If I install kmod-ipv6, still keeling the config where the WAN ports are not used / configured, but everything connected to the LAN ports
and wifi used for WDS bridging, the routers will eventually pick up the proper IPV6 prefix that is advertised by another third router, but
IPV6 connectivity will not happen. It looks like the WDS / IPV6 code modifies packets that should be forwarded transparentlt over the LAN L2 domain.

(Last edited by gulweb on 17 Nov 2012, 16:57)

Hi gulweb.. can you tell me what version of tp link wr841nd did you had ? V8.0, v8.1 etc . Thanks

This post should clear you everything

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 95#p183395

My hardware was 8.0. I first tried stock firmware, which seemed OK, but did not work with IPv6. Hence, I tried openwrt, and picked up the
prebuilt AA image that came out in nov, to save myself of the hazzle of adding all the web components. ( I have done that befor with another router
and it was a bit tedious)

Unfortunately I still cannot get IPv6 to work. (i did not expect miracles, but expected BRIDGING to work)

:-)

Gulweb

(Last edited by gulweb on 17 Nov 2012, 16:50)

I'll try install it on my router.. btw a new update for the stock firmware came out for who wants to check it out.. I'd like to see more of you posting in this thread your experience with this router..

Working fine in my v8.2, other than 2 problems:
Channel 12 and 13 seem to be missing regardless of the domain used.
Vlan config through LUCI is messed up, it doesn't show the WAN port there and it shows port 2 connected when i'm actually connected through port 1 etc.
I got vlan tagging working through UCI instead.

Installed openwrt on my v8.0 and... worked . I guess if i want to go back to the original i can brick it ? Someone can help me ? If i use this command mtd -r write /tmp/tplink.bin firmware to write the original, it will work ? Thanks.

anyone with a 8.1 working?

Great news. Wanted to go back to my stock firmware, so i used mtd -r write /tmp/tplink.bin firmware and worked like a charm ! ATTENTION ! Download the first firmware (not the one on the top, the one on the bottom, wr841nv8_en_3_13_18_up(120522).bin) from the firmware list of your version(in our case, v8). It must NOT contain the word boot in it, otherwise you'll brick your router.

(Last edited by y.yumu on 19 Nov 2012, 13:53)

A word of warning until this is verified properly, RESTORING orig firmware.

TL-WR841ND V 8.0000

Today I tried to restore the original TP-link firmware. I copied it to /tmp and tried to write it with mtd -r write /tmp/fw.bin firmware

This proceeded for about two minutes, but after that I got an error saying
cannot erase flash sector (or somesuch)

I didn't want to take the risk of bricking the box, so I downloaded Openwrt again, and flashed that, since I did not know if
flash was halfwritten. This worked OK, but I had to set the router up again from initial boot state

It could be flash WAS written properly, but I did not take the risk to find out....

Undermonster:   is this error about not being able to erase the one you have seen, i.e. NOT a problem??

(Last edited by gulweb on 19 Nov 2012, 20:12)

Be really careful about file size of original firmware, you need one without bootloader!

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 33#p182333

The error I am referring to is an error with rebooting, nothing else.

If there is an error writing to the flash, that is completely different.

Thanks Undermonster,

I suspected that, so, I'll have to find a firmware without loader....

gulweb

I decided to restore tp-link firmware on my two 841's . They say 8.1 on the box, but 8.0 in firmware. I restored the wr841nv8_en_3_13_18_up(120522).bin firmware, since that was said to be sucessful. The router came back up, and I applied the two later tplink upgrades, ending with wr841nv8_en_3_13_27_up_boot(121101).bin

Triggered by the sucess, I applied the same procedure to the other router. It flashed the image without complaining, stated that it was rebooting,
and Voila --- A BRICK. It does not repond to the 192.168.1.1 address, its 192.168.1.249 address(which it had on my lan) , it only lights up the power indicator, none of the other leds are on. I tried the debricking procedure by connecting BLUE port, and pinging 192.168.1.1 from 192.168.1.2.

Nothing. I brought it to my workshop, I can see that it transmits something on the uart TX pin, but I dont have an adapter cable, will set that up tomorrow.

So, either the HW is erratic, or the openwrt / mtd / restore process, since routers are identical as far as I can see, and my procedure as well.

On power up, it lights up all leds for 1/2 sec, turns everything off except the power led, there is an extremely weak/short blink of the rightmost led, only visible in pitch dark, then no more visible action.

(Last edited by gulweb on 22 Nov 2012, 00:55)

we well see from the serial console what gone wrong! seems strange...

did you do a "firstboot" or "perform reset" before flashing?

I built a serial interface for the bricked box. I could only see a lot of garbage on the screen and then the linux booting (tplink linux).

The boot process complained about squasfs errors, no ethernet, no httpd process. It was possible to load a couple of net modules, ifconfig eth1 up
(the wan port) and get ip connectivity. I could even tftp things onto the router, but I could find no tool to write the flash.

After checking the "garbage" with an oscilloscope, I realised that the Uboot needed 7bitSPACE parity, to display and accept minicom. After trying many many times, I managed to get into the boot and was greeted with a wasp> prompt. I tried to restore the formware, but probably messed up the procedure, since after booting the newly installed firmware I got a message "decompressed image to big", and that was the final end of it!!

SO, it could perhaps have been saved, but now it is gone on to greener pastures.

omg very strange thing you said about uboot o.O

it has always been 8n1 115200 baud!

i cannot understand how you could damage it, what did you do in the wasp prompt???

anyway you are lucky to have another working flash.. With some skill you could try this trick to recover the bad flash!

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 69#p179169

Well, I do not really know, maybe there is something wrong with the board. Remember, I got into this state when trying to restore tplink
firmware. I used a -3 version, which does NOT contain boot. I copied it with scp to router #1, wrote it with mtd, the router rebooted and all
was OK. I then upgraded router #1 two times to get to a NOV release. This was sucessful, so I tried to repeat the procedure with route #2.
This resulted in a brick. I think I did the correct thing from wasp>, downloading was OK, size seemed OK, erase was OK, cp.b was OK,
bootm gave an expand error, and HALT.

Thanks for the link, but would it not be equivalen if I just cut out the first part of the tp-link files ( they do NOT say boot in filename, but a strings show
the first part is *probably* Uboot ). I guess I WILL cut that part out of the two latest fw and just compare to see if there are changes to Uboot too.

About terminal, I initially had it at 8N1, but got garbles on term. I captured some in minicom and had a look with od -x -a, I could see that the MSB was set, i.e. all chars were larger than 0x80. I tried various combos until I got correct chars....could it be an initialization problem in Uboot,
where the uart is not set properly?? Linux printout was readable.....

NO, if they are 0x3c0000 in size, the have NOT uboot. and must not be trimmed!

you can clearly see the uboot "first rows" are different from the firmware "first rows" with HEXCMP, comparing a file with boot in name (0x3e0200 file size) and one without.

anyway what you mean by "-3 version"??

also, i can't understand now what happen in serial when you power up!

Sorry, -3 = 3 versions back, which is the only file I can find on the tplink site that is without boot.

That was the one I used, thinking that since openwrt wants the image-only file, and the tp-link fw comes
in two versions (which the tplink code must accept) it would be safer to flash something where the bootloader
was NOT updated / modified (if it is in newer fw), and then update with the tplink, and let it do whatever it wanted
with the combined image.

The latest two versions are WITH boot, and if I strip the boot, I can see the header again, for the image in the first 20+ bytes.

0001 0000 T P - LINK .........

So the newer two versions seem to be just the image + boot concatenated. One question is WHY they supply the boot again,
has the bootloader changed, (bugfix, size of image, prevent loading of alien fw) ??

I guess there must be some documentation of the header somewhere...

About power up: When I did the (crude) serial interface I used a transistor for output. It was drivven by 10 k ohm from the TX pin.
This prevented the router from booting, i.e. I could not see any activity on the oscilloscope. I had to increase that value to 39k before
I got anything on the terminal. I first verified activity with the scope, then built the output IF to see what was happening, and got nothing.

So, I had to experiment with the values to get ANY output, and it does not have to do with drive capability, since with 10 k there is only
(3.3 -0.6 V)/10 k = 270 uA flowing. With this value there is NO activity on TX, with 39 k, abt 70 uA activity starts immediately. It seems the router
"senses" pin level before starting output, maybe checking it is not "shorted", or could be dual purpose pin.

And, minicom gave lots of little diamods with a ? in them, until Linux kernel boot messages. I first figured baud rate was wrong...

(Last edited by gulweb on 23 Nov 2012, 12:13)