GL-AR300M Unable to flash NAND

Technical Support for Routers
42

Hi @alzhao ,

I have tried now again and still have issues.
I will post here the response I gave to the support gentleman just to keep things alligned and I am sorry I give you such a headache :smiley: .

"I have tried your instructions and something is still not working well.

Let me please explain :
Try 1:

  1. My Nor flash IC is Winbond W25Q128 and has GL.inet firmware 2.20 on it
  2. I power the router connected to serial and flash the ART .bin file but for me there is no NAND memory (my router did not come with one) so I get a different message in the console. Please see the attached image glfw2_flash art ok.png
    glfw2_flash art ok_forum
    glfw2_flash art ok_forum1639×1666 79.9 KB
  3. After this I try to upgrade flash from firmware update on 192.168.1.1 with a NOR image for software version 3.104 . The image uploads but the router never restarts ( i waited 30 minutes) .
  4. If I disconnect the power form the router and connect again, the router is still not powering up .

Try2 :

  1. I bought a new flash IC , also Winbond
  2. I have flashed on it GL.inet firmware 2.20
  3. Upgrade the router to 3.104 from the router UI at 192.168.8.1 → all working perfect after the upgrade but not the correct MAC address as I didn’t flash the ART .bin yet
  4. I power the router connected to serial and flash the ART .bin file but for me there is no NAND memory (my router did not come with one) so I get a different message in the console. Please see the attached image glfw3_diff1_no_nand.PNG and glfw3_diff2_atr flashed ok.PNG
    glfw3_diff1_no_nand
    glfw3_diff2_atr flashed ok_forum
    glfw3_diff2_atr flashed ok_forum1364×713 19.8 KB
  5. Now I can not power the router at all, meaning I can not get anything on serial and I can not get to uboot by pressing the reset button and then apply power and wait for the led to flash 5 times.

I will take the NOR memory from the pcb and flash on it again the GL.Inet 2.20 firmware as that is the only one I have a full NOR IC backup for. "

I have just blanked the ART .bin filename on the forum while the support has the clean screenshot.

L.E.: I have just tested all the options above plus I tried flashing the ART .bin from 192.168.1.1/art.html on a MX25L12835F memory IC but the results are identical to the Winbond memory IC. It has to be me doing something wrong but I surely can’t figure what I am doing wrong :sweat_smile:

43

@alzhao

I have figured this on my own and I will share it here how as the support team might be too overloaded to think all the ways to approach this for every customer .

So I got the art backup file , let’s call it " originalart.bin" and then I went in console thru UART and did the following :

  1. type “cat /proc/mtd/” to look for the partition name ( in my case mtd6 )
  2. make a backup of it just in case ( though not much point for me but still) “dd if=/dev/mtd6 of=/tmp/art.backup”
  3. SCP in the router and save the backup locally on a computer
  4. uploaded thru SCP to /tmp/ the file i got from support “originalart.bin”
  5. went into the router UI thru a browser and installed from Applications->Plug-ins the plugin kmod-mtd-rw ( might need to update the repo before you can find it)
  6. Went into UART console and typed “insmod mtd-rw.ko i_want_a_brick=1”
  7. still in console typed " mtd -r write /tmp/originalart.bin art"
  8. the router flashed the ART partition and then rebooted
  9. Now all the details are correct but a full restore to factory setting also will restore the network name and all the other bits.
    The guide is based on [OpenWrt Wiki] How to restore ART partition and there are other ways of doing this from uboot also but I just went the lazy way on this one.

Anyway lots of fun and learning during the process and thank you again to alzhao and @Johnex for each ones tips and support during this process :smiley: .

L.E.: some grammar edits .

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