[GL.Inet gl-s1300] Stuck with the old 'Chaos Calmer' OpenWRT

Technical Support for Routers
1

Hey I bought this router recently and I spent 3 hours following these steps over and over and I cant update Openwrt to the current version.

These are the files I installed using uboot

/openwrt$ sha256sum *
a1c37b24cc3f2c419ac570e18271ce096963c4bdbdfa433a577075d6165b95d8  openwrt-21.02.0-ipq40xx-generic-glinet_gl-s1300-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
44aa7fa97f4313a96ab70513104733307e34b51ef243c6751c3096ba56e04c04  s1300-factory-to-openwrt.img

I was able to ssh into the router


sh root@192.168.8.1
root@192.168.8.1's password: 


BusyBox v1.28.3 () built-in shell (ash)

     MM           NM                    MMMMMMM          M       M
   $MMMMM        MMMMM                MMMMMMMMMMM      MMM     MMM
  MMMMMMMM     MM MMMMM.              MMMMM:MMMMMM:   MMMM   MMMMM
MMMM= MMMMMM  MMM   MMMM       MMMMM   MMMM  MMMMMM   MMMM  MMMMM'
MMMM=  MMMMM MMMM    MM       MMMMM    MMMM    MMMM   MMMMNMMMMM
MMMM=   MMMM  MMMMM          MMMMM     MMMM    MMMM   MMMMMMMM
MMMM=   MMMM   MMMMMM       MMMMM      MMMM    MMMM   MMMMMMMMM
MMMM=   MMMM     MMMMM,    NMMMMMMMM   MMMM    MMMM   MMMMMMMMMMM
MMMM=   MMMM      MMMMMM   MMMMMMMM    MMMM    MMMM   MMMM  MMMMMM
MMMM=   MMMM   MM    MMMM    MMMM      MMMM    MMMM   MMMM    MMMM
MMMM$ ,MMMMM  MMMMM  MMMM    MMM       MMMM   MMMMM   MMMM    MMMM
  MMMMMMM:      MMMMMMM     M         MMMMMMMMMMMM  MMMMMMM MMMMMMM
    MMMMMM       MMMMN     M           MMMMMMMMM      MMMM    MMMM
     MMMM          M                    MMMMMMM        M       M
       M
 ---------------------------------------------------------------
   For those about to rock... (Chaos Calmer, e7067e3+r49254)
 ---------------------------------------------------------------

I tried to upgrade from the cli and it doesnt upgrade from chaos calmer after restarting

I ran


 sysupgrade -v openwrt-21.02.0-ipq40xx-generic-glinet_gl-s1300-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

It seems like the internal memory is still in read only mode and even if I install the ‘openwrt-21.02*’ bin it doesnt make a difference. Is anyone using this router and had the same problems?

I also tried to force install it and it failed

root@GL-S1300:/tmp# sha256sum openwrt-21.02.0-rc3-ipq40xx-generic-glinet_gl-s1300-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin 
9200e4bce851f88b6bb4b0bbbf28f5e88a0834b19522b99d927a0c4dc7c22df0  openwrt-21.02.0-rc3-ipq40xx-generic-glinet_gl-s1300-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin    
root@GL-S1300:/tmp# sysupgrade -n -v -F openwrt-21.02.0-rc3-ipq40xx-generic-glinet_gl-s1300-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin 
Sending TERM to remaining processes ... logd ubusd netifd gl_crond dnsmasq sh acfg_tool askfirst smbd nmbd ntpd gl-ble-daemon sh gltertf lighttpd rngd sleep 
Sending KILL to remaining processes ... ntpd rngd askfirst 
Switching to ramdisk...
Performing system upgrade...
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
4194304 bytes (4.0MB) copied, 0.090966 seconds, 44.0MB/s
0+1 records in
0+1 records out
3408183 bytes (3.3MB) copied, 0.073613 seconds, 44.2MB/s
Could not open mtd device: /dev/mtd8
Can't open device for writing!
Upgrade completed
Rebooting system...
2

Follow the instructions exactly - using the 18.06 version… if you keep coming up with QSDK, you are missing important step.

You don’t need to do this from u-boot - use the WebUI recovery.

3

How about using the factor to openwrt img

4

Hey thanks for the reply, I think I understand what you mean. I got confused about this line on the wiki

’ Upload OpenWRT .bin firmware image’ and I just used the one provided on the template which is more recent.

I checked the ftp server and there’s no 18.06 image for the s1300,

https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06.0/targets/ipq40xx/generic/

I believe the first version that has a build the s1300 is this one

https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/21.02.0/targets/ipq40xx/generic/

how should I proceed?

5

Which one? I checked the github repo and I could only find the s1300 factory to openwrt

6

You can just flash the bin file using uboot?

7

Yes I did that and it doesnt write to the partition, seems like it is still read only

8

I’m sorry for the late reply.

S1300 is EMMC parition firmware by default.But ‘EMMC partition firmware’ is not currently supported on openwrt-21.02.0.So you need to switch ‘EMMC partition’ to ‘nor partition’.

First,you need update ‘s1300-openwrt-to-factory.img’.please refer ‘GitHub - gl-inet/openwrt: This repository is fork from openwrt official repo, we will update the latest tag and release GL.iNet firmware based on it.’ and download ‘s1300-openwrt-to-factory.img’.
Then, You could upgrade the firmware compiled by openwrt-21.02.0 normally.

9

Hi I will try this over the weekend and will let you know the results