I got my Flint 2 yesterday, set it up, it worked perfectly out of the box.
But now I've managed to brick it.
I'd love help figuring out what else I can do to debrick it, because the Debrick via Uboot page hasn't worked for me.
Background
I was excited that this was the first router I've owned that I could ssh into, and that backfired on me very quickly.
I installed one package, it worked. I installed another package, saw that it pulled in a bunch of perl dependencies, and decided, "maybe I don't want this package after all" and uninstalled it. But I noticed that uninstalling it only uninstalled the package itself, not the perl dependencies. I tried to find if opkg had something like Ubuntu's apt-get autoremove which removes unneeded packages. While trying to find the right invocation of the opkg remove --autoremove flag, I accidentally removed every package on my system.
Realizing what was happening, I panicked and held down the reset button, but none of the indicator lights changed no matter how long I held the button down, so I unplugged it and plugged it in again, pressing the reset button frantically but nothing ever happened.
Attempting to follow debrick instructions
Eventually, I looked up the official documentation, found the Debrick via Uboot instructions, and followed them:
- Nothing plugged in anywhere
- Power on my computer
- Plug in ethernet to computer
- Plug in ethernet to router
- Hold down reset button
- Insert power cord
- Wait for light flashing pattern to change
Every time I've followed this set of instructions, I've always been able to see the same "blue LED flashes 6 times then turns white and stays on" flashing pattern that the docs say should happen for this router model.
But then, when I get to the point where I have to manually assign my computer's IP address to 192.168.1.2 and then navigate to 192.168.1.1 in my browser, the page simply times out loading. I've tried on macOS Sequoia and Windows 10, I've tried in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge. It's always the same: the browser loading icon spins for a while, then says something like "connection timed out" or "could not reach 192.168.1.1"
Basically: I'm unable to get the Uboot admin interface to load, and I'm worried that somehow I uninstalled or corrupted the Uboot interface.
I still have hope because every time I power it up, the blue → white blinking pattern still happens, so there's gotta be something good still happening on startup?
I would love any help with what I should try next.