Unbrick Asus Router
Ezilda Newnam
Well, so it seems that i did the initial flash with a damaged version of lede and the router seems to be bricked. I tried all the different types of recovery options, but i still get no ping (i'm not a newbie, i did some recoveries before, so i really think it could be bricked):
1.) Pressing reset or WPS button before plugging the router => slow flashing led (recovery mode), but no ping
2.) pressing reset or wps buttons once after plugging the router in did not work => fast flashing led (failsafe mode), but no ping
3.) Recovery Utility and different types of other "recovery modes" described in the forums did not work
Sure, i've got the hardware, solder and usb to ttl cable. I connected it, and i have serial access. The question is, how can i now debrick the thing via serial? I got a serial connection and the image on my laptop.
What commands do i need to do for the debrick on this specific device?
How do i find out whats wrong (is there documentation about it), perhaps i could help the lede project making the image to work again on rt-n56u or provide some important logs?
Do i just need to overwrite / erase something or can i assign an ip in recovery mode to do the tftp flash? What would be the easiest and most secure way (to prevent damaging something )?
I think i would need to upload a new image to the device without having an ip, so the next step would be transfer a valid image to the device, then flash it or reverting the device to factory defauls (Asus orginal image)?
Would you please attach the serial console bootlog of the crashing LEDE to -project.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=735. Without knowing why the kernel crashes, it is near to impossible to fix the reason for the crash.
The ASUS restoration utility makes these routers almost unbrickable, get your router in recovery mode. --> power off, hold reset button and power on until the power led blinks slowly. Then launch the restoration utility. Would be best to put a static IP on your connected PC. You may have to try it a few times.
This^. You need a static IP address in the 192.168.1.x range and make sure that you ONLY have the wired interface to the router connected to the computer that you are running when you open the ASUS utility. It will try all connected interfaces (wired and wireless) and it can latch onto the wrong interface.
If you are getting an error from the ASUS utility, please post the error message. I have one of these that I have bricked and unbricked several times and the utility works like a charm.
I had a similar issue with the ASUS rt-56ac, sometimes took a couple tries, but was able to successfully unbrick the device when a lede flash went badly. The asus utility seems to work pretty well, although I did encounter an issue where I had to select the image I wanted to flash very quickly as there seemed to be a countdown before the router became unreachable again.
Many thanks for the support (i can't thank all of you because of the new user limit :-). I will check the Recovery Utility again, but as I said: In my opinion i tried almost everything to get the recovery working but I failed.
When you hit "Upload" in the ASUS Utility, the connection to the router that is in rescue mode must be the only enabled/connected network interface. Otherwise, it will error out and complain that it cannot connect or that it is not in rescue mode.
i have also a rt-n56u in boot loop.
i cannot exactly remember what was the root cause. in think i have flashed some trunk version and with "sysupgrade" i also did a factory reset.
somewhere there was the information that this will brick the device?
i tried everything, but the IP cable from Router to my PC is always detected as "unconnected".
That means the IP ports of the router are not working and because of that also the TFTP recovery cannot work.
I also tried to play with the serial console and uboot, but i cannot stop this autoreboot
(my ttl adapter is from pollin)
Is there any chance to bring the device back in a normal state?
Can i flash the uboot via serial connection?
the uboot i have found here:
GitHub andy-padavan/rt-n56urt-n56u - ASUS RT-N56U/N65U/N14U/N11P/AC51U/AC54U/AC1200HP custom firmware
Please choose the operation:
1: Load system code to SDRAM via TFTP.
2: Load system code then write to Flash via TFTP.
3: Boot system code via Flash (default).
4: Entr boot command line interface.
7: Load Boot Loader code then write to Flash via Serial.
9: Load Boot Loader code then write to Flash via TFTP.
I found this link. Apparently it seems someone is maintaining current n56u padavan builds. I know you can build them yourself but I want to know if this is legit. Like if there is any cryptojacking involved or if any data is being sent to some servers. If not I am curious if it is working as fresh build. I will probably be getting my hands on an n56u soon and will flash it with this. Then I will use it as a wired router and connect some UAPs or TPLink EAPs to it to get some good backhaul router and good AC APs. I tried the ERX- 5-port but I'd rather use something like this.
Tried also ASUS utility (192.168.1.x/24 or other variants I found) and also I am not able to connect to my router in recovery mode (power led blinks). Ping neigther works. Also tried it under windows or linux. No success. Seems that the lan interfaces do not work anymore.
Unfortunately not. The lan ports are completely down and i have tried everything possible i know and understand.
Also it gets very hot while it is in this reboot loop.
The strange thing is that i have the same one running stable with 17.01.4, but there i did a normal sysuprade -c starting i think from some openwrt version.
@jwoods:
for me this is not working as the outer hangs in an reboot loop, you see this in serial console.
Also the device is getting very, very hot after some Minutes. Also the output in the serial interafe shows then special unknown caracters and is very slow. It think this is because the processor is too hot to work
After spending a night on unbricking my R7000 and how I struggled to work with all the manuals out there but none of them actually worked. I thought I should share what actually worked for me using a MacBook instead of a W10/8/7 operating system. Below you will find a step by step aproach using OS X and what has worked for me.
Somewhere my router bricked during a firmware upgrade. The crash happend whille installing and the router was showing a blinking white light when the router was reset and rebooted. The router was still operating and showing white and orange light on the LAN ports so I knew I should be able to acces the router. I was not able to acces the router via Safari using 192.168.1.1 of www.routerlogin.net.
Remove any other network cables (including the WAN cable) from the router except the cable that is directly connected to your laptop. I used port 1 to conenct to my laptop, it should not matter but I just like to use the first port.
When you connected your USB network adapter and cable you will see that your MacBook will self-assign an ip-address which probably will start 192.169.*.* or 169.*.*.* and an exclamation mark that there is no internet connection. It will look roughly like this.
The result will be that the USB Network dongle will directly connect with the router and if succesful it should will also state that it's connected. The reason why do manually assign an ip-adres to make sure that your Mac doesn't get the same ip-adres as the host/router. If everything went ok you will get the following screen:
We will first check if we are able to ping the router in the network to and to see the status of the router. We quickly check if our router is still blinking. If it is open up your terminal os OSX, use cmd + space and type terminal and press enter) this will open the following screen:
To use the transfer we need to set the mode to binary otherwise it will not accept the file. This is where I struggled for more then a two hours to find this. Changing the mode to binary every step after that worked. To change the mode type:
This will take some time, when I was uploading it took me around the 110 seconds to complete. You will get a notification when it's done. From this point you will see your router rebooting and a lot of lights flashing and starting your router. It may take up to roughly 7 minutes to fully reboot and install etc.
By some reason all my settings where still intact and everything was up and running on the router. Then connect the WAN cable and the other cables and login in to your router using Safari to see if everything is ok, just to be sure everything is working again and clear some caches etc reboot the router.
I hope this guide will help you in the future when using a Mac because the steps are actually different then using a Windows operated machine. The put -l 192.168.1.1 R7000-V1.0.9.34_10.2.36.chk by example will not work when you use a Mac.
Also, recommend using -vvv to double check when it works. Took me two tries to nail the timing because the router has to finish restarting for the packet transfer to begin before the command times out.
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