[wetechdose]

Hello all, thanks in advance for your help! So I got a cheap router (Linksys E900) and I'm aware 8MB/32MB devices are not recommended but still, wanted to learn about custom router firmwares.

After installing DD-WRT I used it for a couple days and really liked its features but noticed some packages (curl specifically) were missing on the mega build my device supported.

I kept digging for information and found about the firmware-mod-kit tool. I proceeded to extract the firmware and I added the curl package and it's dependencies, then tried to build the firmware again.

Obviously it told me the modified file was bigger than the one I provided, so I tried removing some packages with the script also provided in that toolkit.

Long story short, I deleted some stuff I shouldn't and was able to build the firmware again, so me being excited went right away to flash it doing 30/30/30 hard resets before and after.

Fast forward and the device restarted successfully, and I went on my phone to connect to the dd-wrt Wi-Fi network since LAN takes a little longer to connect for some reason.

Sadly even though I get assigned an IP address and can ping the gateway, the web GUI won't load at all and Chrome will say ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED.

I've been trying to TFTP flash Linksys firmware and the stock DD-WRT build I modified, but even though the recommended TFTP tools/programs say the flash was successful, my router's light will keep blinking and won't restart itself (I've already tried letting it sit there for half an hour and nothing happens).

I try to power cycle, do another 30/30/30 reset but it still loads the modified build. I'm afraid I might just have bricked my device (even though I do get ttl=100 pings right at the device boot and ttl=64 after it's finished booting).

The TFTP flashes have been attempted on a wired connection of course, and I've tried several times since it seems the timing it's really tricky but have not been successful just yet.

Any assistance on this would be greatly appreciated, I wrote a lot since I thought context was really necessary here.

[kernel-panic69]

You can try to see if the E900 has management mode.

https://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=137928

https://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=140001

Outside of that, your only other option if TFTP fails is likely serial recovery.

https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Serial_Recovery

[wetechdose]

Thank you so much for the quick response, kernel-panic69.

I read the suggested threads and I tried changing the firmware file name to what came out out of the build toolkit, seeing that maybe for TFTP flash it had to be the same as what's currently on the router but it didn't work

I've tried several times already and I'm starting to think the bootloader won't take any upgrade even though it responds to ping with ttl=100 right just as it's turning on.

I'll try to look into the serial recovery, much appreciate your help.

[wetechdose]

I tried getting into management mode before but the device never got into it. Tried 30/5/5 timing plus others, but finally got it working with holding 15 seconds unplugged, then plugging it back while still holding it and releasing it 15 seconds later.

The light should be blinking repeatedly, if it doesn't try again. You can try with the LAN cable connected to the device, as you have to be very fast to browse to 192.168.1.1 since the flash window is very short, otherwise the page becomes unresponsive.

Thank you again kernel-panic69 for the insight, definitely got me into trying management mode further!