Nvram Backups and New builds [Split...]

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jwh7
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Joined: 25 Oct 2013
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:22    Post subject: Nvram Backups and New builds [Split...] Reply with quote
...from here.
a_l wrote:
DIR-860L A1 [...]
I rebooted the router but still the power led blinked strange like before.
Then I loaded my old configuration file from long before 28072 and rebooted the device. NOW the boot seemed normal in regards to the leds and all leds went green after the boot completed.
Does anyone else find this disconcerting? As in, (some of) the reason for the sporadic success/failure with recent builds is due to nvram settings' changes (added/removed/changed).
_________________
# NAT/SFE/CTF: limited speed w/ DD # Repeater issues # DD-WRT info: FAQ, Builds, Types, Modes, Changes, Demo #
OPNsense x64 5050e ITX|DD: DIR-810L, 2*EA6900@1GHz, R6300v1, RT-N66U@663, WNDR4000@533, E1500@353,
WRT54G{Lv1.1,Sv6}@250
|FreshTomato: F7D8302@532|OpenWRT: F9K1119v1, RT-ACRH13, R6220, WNDR3700v4


Last edited by jwh7 on Thu Nov 12, 2015 22:20; edited 1 time in total
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Gameman Advanced Kid
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Joined: 18 Nov 2012
Posts: 1158

PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 18:42    Post subject: Re: D-Link DIR-860L A1: The way back to recovery! Reply with quote
jwh7 wrote:
a_l wrote:
DIR-860L A1 [...]
I rebooted the router but still the power led blinked strange like before.
Then I loaded my old configuration file from long before 28072 and rebooted the device. NOW the boot seemed normal in regards to the leds and all leds went green after the boot completed.
Does anyone else find this disconcerting? As in, (some of) the reason for the sporadic success/failure with recent builds is due to nvram settings' changes (added/removed/changed).


Im with you. and yes i do.

-READ THIS CLEARLY AND SLOWLY. THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR ALL ROUTERS THAT USE NVRAM BACKUPS-

in fact, does anyone with an E3000 router remember when brainslayer had released build 22118 years ago? if you were flashing anything that was below 21676 and then flash to 22118 without doing a hard reset, the router would work properly. Try doing a hard reset on that build and suddenly the routers wireless would cease to function and then say it was a WRT54g router until you loaded your nvram settings that was saved by the previous firmware.

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barryware wrote:
It takes a "community" to raise a router..


Internet Connection 1
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KrypteX
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Joined: 18 Jan 2014
Posts: 2411

PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 18:48    Post subject: Re: D-Link DIR-860L A1: The way back to recovery! Reply with quote
Gameman Advanced Kid wrote:
in fact, does anyone with an E3000 router remember when brainslayer had released build 22118 years ago? if you were flashing anything that was below 21676 and then flash to 22118 without doing a hard reset, the router would work properly. Try doing a hard reset on that build and suddenly the routers wireless would cease to function and then say it was a WRT54g router until you loaded your nvram settings that was saved by the previous firmware.

I don't think I was around back then... However, I'd like to hear the continuation of that story... what happened if you didn't have your NVRAM settings backed up beforehand ?

Edit: @Murrkf ... sorry for this somewhat off-topic post, please don't remove it Smile

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nolimitz
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Joined: 26 Nov 2010
Posts: 597

PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 20:14    Post subject: Re: D-Link DIR-860L A1: The way back to recovery! Reply with quote
Gameman Advanced Kid wrote:
jwh7 wrote:
a_l wrote:
DIR-860L A1 [...]
I rebooted the router but still the power led blinked strange like before.
Then I loaded my old configuration file from long before 28072 and rebooted the device. NOW the boot seemed normal in regards to the leds and all leds went green after the boot completed.
Does anyone else find this disconcerting? As in, (some of) the reason for the sporadic success/failure with recent builds is due to nvram settings' changes (added/removed/changed).


Im with you. and yes i do.

-READ THIS CLEARLY AND SLOWLY. THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR ALL ROUTERS THAT USE NVRAM BACKUPS-

in fact, does anyone with an E3000 router remember when brainslayer had released build 22118 years ago? if you were flashing anything that was below 21676 and then flash to 22118 without doing a hard reset, the router would work properly. Try doing a hard reset on that build and suddenly the routers wireless would cease to function and then say it was a WRT54g router until you loaded your nvram settings that was saved by the previous firmware.


yes i do remember. also with an E3000. my solution was to go back to k3x 21676, then upgrade to 22118 without a reset and it worked.

however, as far as i can remember, i could do the downgrade (22118 to 21676) over wireless only as the ethernet did not work. i could be wrong though.
Gameman Advanced Kid
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Joined: 18 Nov 2012
Posts: 1158

PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 20:47    Post subject: Re: D-Link DIR-860L A1: The way back to recovery! Reply with quote
KrypteX wrote:
Gameman Advanced Kid wrote:
in fact, does anyone with an E3000 router remember when brainslayer had released build 22118 years ago? if you were flashing anything that was below 21676 and then flash to 22118 without doing a hard reset, the router would work properly. Try doing a hard reset on that build and suddenly the routers wireless would cease to function and then say it was a WRT54g router until you loaded your nvram settings that was saved by the previous firmware.

I don't think I was around back then... However, I'd like to hear the continuation of that story... what happened if you didn't have your NVRAM settings backed up beforehand ?

Edit: @Murrkf ... sorry for this somewhat off-topic post, please don't remove it Smile


what do you mean exactly? if you are talking about not backing up before flashing to 22118, it would still work. but if you did a hard reset while still on 22118 then wireless would cease to function and model would be read as wrt54g instead of e3000.

if you restored any nvram backup from 21676 or before, the router would work properly again.

_________________
For people who are new to the dd-wrt forums >> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#rtfm

barryware wrote:
It takes a "community" to raise a router..


Internet Connection 1
Some Techicolor modem > Linksys WRT3200ACM

Internet connection 2
Ubiquiti Powerbeam Gen 2 > Netgear R9000

Official (but not really) dd-wrt General Discussion element/matrix chat

https://matrix.to/#/#dd-wrt-private-non-offical:matrix.org
jwh7
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 25 Oct 2013
Posts: 2670
Location: Indy

PostPosted: Thu Nov 12, 2015 22:29    Post subject: Since I caused this split, I'll update it :) Reply with quote
From the New Build thread where this thread was split...
a_l wrote:
Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 16:25 Post subject: Some investigation
------
Hi

I just made another 'Restore Factory Defaults' on my DIR-860L A1.
The yellow/green power led blinking returned.
I have recorded a small video that can be seen here: https://youtu.be/0vsj3PZVG08

Sometimes the power led is just yellow other times it blinks in an irregular pattern. But there is access to the Internet on both WiFi and cable.
It does not seem that it has anything to do about the current traffic parsing through the router. I ran a live tv stream without that the router blinked during that period.

When I (again) returned to my old configuration file (from long before 28072) then the power led lighted only green again during normal operation (after boot has ended.)

I have saved the content of 'nvram show' when I ran with factory defaults as well as when I had loaded my old configuration file. The problem though is that there are a lot of differences so it will take a while to go through all the nvram strings.

_________________
# NAT/SFE/CTF: limited speed w/ DD # Repeater issues # DD-WRT info: FAQ, Builds, Types, Modes, Changes, Demo #
OPNsense x64 5050e ITX|DD: DIR-810L, 2*EA6900@1GHz, R6300v1, RT-N66U@663, WNDR4000@533, E1500@353,
WRT54G{Lv1.1,Sv6}@250
|FreshTomato: F7D8302@532|OpenWRT: F9K1119v1, RT-ACRH13, R6220, WNDR3700v4
KrypteX
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 18 Jan 2014
Posts: 2411

PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:45    Post subject: Reply with quote
NVRAM backup has been reorganized/sorted by BrainSlayer: http://svn.dd-wrt.com/changeset/28138
Hopefully next build will have less NVRAM-related issues.

_________________
THERE ARE NO STRANGERS HERE; ONLY FRIENDS YOU HAVEN'T YET MET.
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mrjcd
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Joined: 31 Jan 2015
Posts: 6290
Location: Texas

PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:49    Post subject: Reply with quote
KrypteX wrote:
NVRAM backup has been reorganized/sorted by BrainSlayer: http://svn.dd-wrt.com/changeset/28138
Hopefully next build will have less NVRAM-related issues.

I'm ready for it --- in the mean time I've been pondering over the Linksys E2500 and --
since I've been up a long time and my memory aint what it should be... maybe you can ---
Tell me where the other 65536 (64KB) is in the k3.x and why isn't it being accounted for???
Why isn't it erased with nvram or wiped out when linux is erased???

ERASE K3.x 28072 ¬

BusyBox v1.24.1 (2015-11-02 09:29:56 CET) built-in shell (ash)

root@DD-WRT:~# erase nvram
erase[65536]
root@DD-WRT:~# erase linux
erase[7995392]
root@DD-WRT:~# exit
Connection closed by foreign host.

--------------

ERASE K2.6 25974 ¬

BusyBox v1.23.0 (2015-01-20 04:12:41 CET) built-in shell (ash)

root@DD-WRT:~# erase nvram
erase[65536]
root@DD-WRT:~# erase linux
erase[8060928]
root@DD-WRT:~#

Other K3.x and K2.6 builds I've played with seem to behave the same way ...
KrypteX
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 18 Jan 2014
Posts: 2411

PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:58    Post subject: Reply with quote
You compare the Linux partition size between kernels 2.6 and 3.x ... They are obviously not set up to have the same size, hence the difference that you've noticed.
_________________
THERE ARE NO STRANGERS HERE; ONLY FRIENDS YOU HAVEN'T YET MET.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
DD-WRT CHANGELOG | DEVICES | DD-WRT BUILDS | KONG BUILDS | UNOFFICIAL BUILDS | DD-WRT in VIRTUALBOX
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