Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 19:47 Post subject: DIR-615 H1 Solid amber power light after flashing firmware
Today I saw that my trusty DIR-615 H1 which I've been using as a WiFi repeater was stuck in some sort of boot loop:
1. green power light
2. wireless network light
3. 1st and 3rd client ports
4. No lights
5. repeat from step 1
I loaded the emergency firmware upgrade page (http://192.168.0.1 via static IP) and uploaded some DD-WRT firmware versions. They all reached 100% and nothing happened after that. I waited 10 minutes and restarted the router. Now the power light is amber and nothing else happens.
I flashed some stock H1 firmware but there was no change (still just an amber power light).
I flashed the factory-to-ddwrt.bin versions of firmwares but that just gets the router into the above boot loop.
I tried a different power supply unit (9V - 1.0A) which was sort of similar to the original (5V - 1.2A) but nothing changed.
Is there anything else I can try before we finally part ways?
What a great forum! Just when I thought this thing was dead, you guys link me to someone who was having the exact same issue giving me more ideas to try.
Anyway, I tried two things and here is what happened:
1. curl command failed with "Failed writing body" which I think is because there was not enough space on the device to write the file. The used the smallest file I could find from the initial builds and then I used official firmware version which was also small but with the same results. I think the size was 3.1 mb.
Code:
C:\Users\A654229\Downloads>curl -v --form files=@dir615h-ddwrt-webflash.bin 192.168.0.1/cgi/index
* Trying 192.168.0.1...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) port 80 (#0)
> POST /cgi/index HTTP/1.1
> Host: 192.168.0.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.55.1
> Accept: */*
> Content-Length: 3723511
> Expect: 100-continue
> Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------------------------c98f9fc24b0bdd2f
>
* Done waiting for 100-continue
* HTTP 1.0, assume close after body
< HTTP/1.0 200 OK
< Content-type: text/html
<
Warning: Binary output can mess up your terminal. Use "--output -" to tell
Warning: curl to output it to your terminal anyway, or consider "--output
Warning: <FILE>" to save to a file.
* Failed writing body (0 != 742)
* Closing connection 0
2. I downloaded Firefox Portable version 13 and opened the firmware loading page. When I clicked "Upload" I got the unable to connect page. It looks like the connection to the router got dropped after loading the page. (I had that issue with my newer dir-878). I tried the same with the latest Chrome browser but I got the same result. I should mention that the other day I was able to see the file getting uploaded until it reached 100%. It looks like this is a new issue which I don't know how to fix.
Maybe I if we can find a solution to the second issue, with the unable to connect page after Upload, I can get to uploading the firmware via the old browser.
I never used the curl command but I think you should use the *factory-webflash.bin file first on initial recovery at 192.168.0.1.
The issue here appears to be that there is not enough space on the router to place the file. factor-webflash.bin is the same size as the stock firmware I applied so I doubt there will be a difference in the result. Bottom line the file is not getting to the router. I could try it as a last resort though, I don’t have anything to lose.
Even though the sizes of recent builds are similar to older ones, I have made my 615 into boot loop with a 2020 beta build. I recovered mine using r29059 factory to dd wrt build with the recovery procedure and successfully upgraded to r41813 using webgui afterwards. Maybe you can try those two versions.