GL-AR750S upgrade future

Hi all

I plan to replace many outdated access points by GL-AR750S devices. I tested the GL-AR750S and it vastly outperforms current equipment. Congratulations! Here is my question: will GL-AR750S (yes/no) upgrade from 19.07 to 21.02? I ask because I would like to make this almost 3 year OpenWRT jump as part of the replacement initiative. Once again : GL-AR750S is a cute and nice piece of HW/SW !

I replaced pre AR-750S devices by AR-750S too. The device have a flash which is big enought for newer firmwares, if available without show stopper bugs like DNS leak. On this time are the last one known firmware for this device (and some other) without DNS leak:

  • Firmware ar750s-3.105-0104

For my experience and known status of bug fixing, you can check the follow:

For alternate and possible DNS leak free Firmware, you can check the follow:

That’s not what the OP asked … read their post and answer the question instead of going off about your DNS problems that no one else seems to have. This is what they queried >>>>

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Here is a useful post related to this thread:

Maybe you can try openwrt vanilla firmware

https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=21.02.0-rc2&target=ath79%2Fnand&id=glinet_gl-ar750s-nor-nand

You may need to set up everything manually.

@alzhao and others : thanks for reply and considerations.
I have already tried to flash openwrt-21.02.0-rc2-ath79-nand-glinet_gl-ar750s-nor-nand-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin but the GL-AR750S boots up without WiFi or Ethernet. I also considered openwrt-21.02.0-rc2-ath79-nand-glinet_gl-ar750s-nor-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin but GL web-GUI, and Luci and sysupgrade complain it is not a valid firmware. So I reverted back to latest GL firmware using de-brick via u-boot with openwrt-ar750s-3.201-0402.img (19.07.7). I commented in OpenWRT forum on existing thread: Before I buy GL-AR750S-Ex - #5 by NofanTasi - Hardware Questions and Recommendations - OpenWrt Forum but no reaction there yet. So I thought: maybe GL.iNet will one day upgrade to 21.02 and that’s why I asked about it here on the GL.iNet forum. I will open a separate thread on OpenWRT forum specifically asking if anyone succeeded flashing 21.02 on GL-AR750S. If anyone on this thread succeeded, please let me know,
update: separate thread on OpenWRT
21.02.0 on GL-AR750S - Installing and Using OpenWrt - OpenWrt Forum

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you can just try the firmware using uboot. If it works then you can go ahead with it.

You may not upgrade directly from the current openwrt version because of ar71xx and ath79 problem

@alzhao
The migration from ar71xx to ath79 could indeed be the issue. In fact, I once installed 19.07 on my GL-X750 following the device specific openwrt installation comment (telling to use u-boot indeed to go from ar71xx to ath79). But, the GL-AR750S device specific openwrt installation does not have such comment. It says: use web-gui (as in git commit). Nevertheless it is worth trying. I will do so and keep people informed. If success, I can update the device specific techdata page.
update :
I installed the 21.02.0-rc2 nor (not nor-nand) on the GL-AR750S using u-boot web recovery. This nor file is an u-boot image as opposed to the nor-nand file which is a tar archive. Note that GL-X750 ath79 upgrade files are also u-boot images. It all makes sense. The box runs fine as access point with very satisfying performance. I have not bothered retrying the nor-nand flash anymore. Basically I am happy and will buy several GL-AR750S to replace all my existing access points.

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Thanks for your sharing. Have a nice day

FYI
I updated the device specific openwrt techdata page.

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Source: Firmware openwrt-ar750s-3.201-0402.tar, possible still same DNS leak or again - #32 by Willist

“Based on openwrt 19.07.7
…
Important bugfix:
…
3. Fixed DNS leakage BUG when using CloudFlare after connecting to OpenVPN”
Source: Source: https://dl.gl-inet.com/firmware/snapshots/3.203_beta4/ar750s/ReleaseNote.txt