Man I had quite the time last night trying to flash my new Netgear R8000 router. The files listed in the downloads did not work from the Netgear GUI. Since I had to do a lot of research to get this to work I thought I would share my experience real quick. Hopefully this helps someone in the future.
Most of my info came from another thread, but it only got my half-way there. I used the OpenWRT image that was attached in the thread https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=315110&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=37. I will attach it to my post as well.
I was able to flash that OpenWRT image from the Netgear GUI. However there was no web-interface. The other thread started talking about a long process to install LUCI, but that ultimately failed for them, as well for me.
What I ended up doing was first getting my new router internet access. I did this by changing the lan interface settings so I could add a gateway and DNS settings to reach the internet without have to plug up the WAN interface directly to the modem. There are probably multiple ways to tackle that, but basically you need to be able to SSH into OpenWRT and allow it to have internet access.
Once I had internet access I downloaded the Kong image with wget. The first issue is that most of the links point to desipro.de which doesn't appear to be up anymore. I also found out wget doesn't support SSL, so I had to find another regular http source. I ended up using http://dd-wrt.tweakedrom.com/Kong_PTB/K3-AC-ARM_31870_2017-04-16/dd-wrt.K3_R8000.chk.
Once I had a DD-WRT image on the device I tried flashing it a few ways. I couldn't get the tftp boot recovery thing to work and the mtd write commands didn't work either. I found an OpenWRT document that listed a different command and that was able to successfully work.
The tl;dr summary:
1. Install OpenWRT via Netgear GUI (see attached file).
2. SSH into OpenWRT
Code:
ssh 192.168.1.1 (root, no pw)
3. Verify/establish internet connectivity (see next post)
4. Download DD-WRT image
Code:
cd /tmp
wget http://dd-wrt.tweakedrom.com/Kong_PTB/K3-AC-ARM_31870_2017-04-16/dd-wrt.K3_R8000.chk
I wanted to separate this to not create any confusion. If you need a way to get OpenWRT internet access, this is one option that worked for me.
Physical setup:
I had an existing router which my PC was wired into. This gave my laptop internet access and access to the local 192.168.1.0/24 network. I then connected one of the LAN ports of the new router to the existing router. This worked for me because my normal gateway was 192.168.1.254 and OpenWRT defaults to 192.168.1.1.
After that I could SSH into 192.168.1.1.
I decided to change the lan interface settings to give it a default gateway and DNS so it could reach out to the internet. This is done via the /etc/config/network file, and you have to use VIM to edit it (not fun).
vim /etc/config/network
enter 'i' to enter insert mode scroll down the the LAN interface settings and add be sure to adjust the gateway to match your network
option gateway '192.168.1.254'
option dns '8.8.8.8'
enter 'esc' to exist insert mode
enter ':wq' to save and exit
Man I had quite the time last night trying to flash my new Netgear R8000 router. The files listed in the downloads did not work from the Netgear GUI. Since I had to do a lot of research to get this to work I thought I would share my experience real quick. Hopefully this helps someone in the future.
Most of my info came from another thread, but it only got my half-way there. I used the OpenWRT image that was attached in the thread https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=315110&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=37. I will attach it to my post as well.
I was able to flash that OpenWRT image from the Netgear GUI. However there was no web-interface. The other thread started talking about a long process to install LUCI, but that ultimately failed for them, as well for me.
What I ended up doing was first getting my new router internet access. I did this by changing the lan interface settings so I could add a gateway and DNS settings to reach the internet without have to plug up the WAN interface directly to the modem. There are probably multiple ways to tackle that, but basically you need to be able to SSH into OpenWRT and allow it to have internet access.
Once I had internet access I downloaded the Kong image with wget. The first issue is that most of the links point to desipro.de which doesn't appear to be up anymore. I also found out wget doesn't support SSL, so I had to find another regular http source. I ended up using http://dd-wrt.tweakedrom.com/Kong_PTB/K3-AC-ARM_31870_2017-04-16/dd-wrt.K3_R8000.chk.
Once I had a DD-WRT image on the device I tried flashing it a few ways. I couldn't get the tftp boot recovery thing to work and the mtd write commands didn't work either. I found an OpenWRT document that listed a different command and that was able to successfully work.
The tl;dr summary:
1. Install OpenWRT via Netgear GUI (see attached file).
2. SSH into OpenWRT
Code:
ssh 192.168.1.1 (root, no pw)
3. Verify/establish internet connectivity (see next post)
4. Download DD-WRT image
Code:
cd /tmp
wget http://dd-wrt.tweakedrom.com/Kong_PTB/K3-AC-ARM_31870_2017-04-16/dd-wrt.K3_R8000.chk
5. Flash DD-WRT image
Code:
sysupgrade -v /tmp/dd-wrt.K3_R8000.chk
6. This should complete and reboot into DD-WRT.
Followed the instructions and connecting via http to the router control GUI after the flash works. However, the router now cannot pull an IP from the cable modem even though I’ve selected DHCP in the Setup>WAN tab. My guess is there’s an issue with K3-AC-ARM_31870_2017-04-16/dd-wrt.K3_R8000.chk that was flashed. Looks like all of the lan/wan hardline ports are disabled. Wifi still works with no internet.
After the flash I cannot ssh to the router via hardline and also ftp during bootup no longer works. At this point the router is bricked because I cannot access it to flash a working .chk and it can’t go out to the internet.
If its booting up to a DD-WRT image and you can access the GUI then it's not bricked.
Just to confirm, you flashed the OpenWRT image and then flashed the DD-WRT image, which you can now access? That's not bricked, but I'm not sure why your interfaces were disabled though.
If you want you can flash the firmware from the Admin>Firmware Upgrade tab.
SSH is disabled by default in DD-WRT, you can enable it from the Services tab if you wish.
Dope article, worked with the latest stock firmware on the router (V1.0.4.46_10.1.63)
Thought I could contribute: Instead of depending on unencrypted ddwrt firmware being available over http, you can copy whatever firmware you want to flash via SCP protocol from your machine: SCP stands for Secure Copy Protocol and is part of SSH specification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_copy
It's available on most(all?) *NIX distros as "scp" command.
You can run
