Brand new AR-300M purchased today. When I choose “Reboot” from the LUCI menu the router freezes instead of rebooting. After a power cycle DHCP does not work — clients are not assigned an IP and the router does not respond to pings anymore. After a manual reset and reboot the issue persists — the router will never recover from a reboot cycle. Never had these issues with any other router. What is the problem here?
Sorry to hear that. How did you manual reset it?
Is there any LED still light up?
The router has two firmwares and if the main firmware cannot boot for 3 times, it will fail back to the back up firmware.
How did you manual reset it?I was pressing the repair/restore button. The instruction booklet does not say the reset button only works during boot! So maybe the button had no effect and the power cycling is what actually caused the router to boot.
The router has two firmwares and if the main firmware cannot boot for 3 times, it will fail back to the back up firmware.I guess that could be useful, but its also guaranteed to confuse the customer, as the instruction booklet does not mention two firmwares and does not explain the automated switching behavior. Because of poor documentation, I wasted many hours trying to determine why this router boots intermittently.
Here is a summary of the current issues:
1. Each time I choose ‘REBOOT’ from the web menu, 3 power cycles are required to obtain an IP address. All compatible firmwares were tested and the issue persists. So it seems like I can only boot from NOR and the NAND image has been corrupted. Maybe it happened when I attempted to test the Tor firmware.
2. Each time I flash a new firmware, the web interface does not update to confirm that flashing is completed, even when it is successful.
3. The router LED shows no indication that a firmware flash is in progress.
4.
"Note: From firmware v2.2, when you press down the reset button, the middle LED start to flash once per second."
…The middle LED does not flash.
5.
Debricking using Uboot - "Set your computer’s IP address to 192.168.1.2" (DONE)“User Firefox or Chrome to visit http://192.168.1.1” - Overview - GL.iNet Router Docs 3
…I can ping this address but the web server is not responding
6. How can I select which chip to flash? When I flash a new firmware it seems I can only flash NOR.
7.
How to Enter the Uboot Web UI - http://www.gl-inet.com/how-to-enter-the-uboot-web-ui...links to video for other routers, but not AR300M
8. Why are you shipping buggy old firmwares like OpenWRT 15? Can I use LEDE 17?
example
Make Wi-Fi Fast Project - Working software is available in LEDE firmware
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
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- 3 is related to firmware upgrading. This is always difficult for common users and we don’t have this in the manual. But this is available online. Overview - GL.iNet Docs.
For dual firmware of AR300M, we’d like to hide from common users. But we have docs here: Overview - GL.iNet Docs
Two firmware doesn’t bring benefit for users, only confusion. We have decided not use use two firmware in our new models.
The using the reset button to reset a firmware only works when the firmware boot up, not during boot. If you use the reset button just after you power on the device, you will be able to use uboot. I think you have done this correctly.
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- and 7. entering uboot process is the same for all routers. So the video should be helpful. For AR300M, just keep the reset button pressed while powering on and the LEDs will flash several times then enter the uboot failsafe automatically. Make sure only one cable is connected to the router during this process. You will be able to access a web page at http://192.168.1.1. If you cannot, then seems we don’t have too much to do.
In the web page, you will have too choice. Upload the nand firmware to the first file selection. Please use v2.261 from GL.iNet download center . The Tor firmware need to be upgraded. recently we change the chip of Nand flash and the old clean and Tor firmware doesn’t work on it. Will compile the two firmware asap. We just put a notice in the readme.txt file in AR300M firmware folder.
- Thanks for the link to the “make wifi fast” project. We think OpenWrt CC is stable. Of course it is always buggy. The same is LEDE firmware. We have started to use LEDE in our new models. Shifting a firmware toolchain needs to be very careful. But we are trying to improve the firmware always.
> "The Tor firmware need to be upgraded. recently we change the chip of Nand flash and the old clean and Tor firmware doesn’t work on it."Is this why the firmware was corrupted and NAND quit booting after I installed Tor?
> "entering uboot process is the same for all routers"I determined that uboot web server could not be accessed because it is not compatible with the browser (e.g. some versions of Opera & Internet Explorer.) The online documentation does not mention this compatibility issue: https://www.gl-inet.com/docs/diy/uboot/
After trying in Firefox I have successfully repaired the corrupt NAND firmware. (But I think in future versions the LED should flash during firmware updates.)
Question: Why does this Tor feature require a separate firmware image when Tor is available as an installable package in OpenWRT?
> For dual firmware of AR300M, we’d like to hide from common users. Two firmware doesn’t bring benefit for users, only confusion.Dual firmware is not confusing if it is properly explained. I did not know the NAND firmware image was corrupted because the router was failing over to NOR (with no LED indicator and no explanation of this behavior in the instruction booklet.) If the router had Tor installed in NOR and OpenWRT in NAND, then I would not have corrupted the NAND image trying to install the defective Tor firmware.
> Thanks for the link to the “make wifi fast” project.Also note these useful tests for buffer bloat: https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Tests_for_Bufferbloat/
Tor firmware already upgrade to 1.41
I don’t know browser matter for the uboot web UI as it is simple. Anyway, thanks let me know.
I don’t mind to have Tor in the default firmware and I do will include that. But I thought the people who use Tor always want a CLEAN firmware that they can check very code. In our default firmware there are always some binary.
We have decided not to use Nand in our later product as it is very difficult to purchase them.