wiredfool

This is an amalgam of experience and the OpenWRT directions from these two similar, but not identical routers.

The Airstation WBR2-G54 is a Broadcom based wifi router, similar in concept to the famous Linksys WRT54GL. It’s linux based, and flashable to allow custom firmwares that give you access to all the linuxy goodness under the hood.

***How to flash

I’m using the OpenWRT White Russian RC4 image for generic broadcom routers. This image won’t install through the web interface, so it’s tftp time. These commands are OSX centric, but will generally work elsewhere.

1. Download the image.
2. Get all the documentation that you’ll need, and disconnect the router from the internet (wan port) and any other computers. I plugged an ethernet cable directly between my laptop’s ethernet port and the lan port #1 on the router, then turned off the airport card. You want to be doing this over a wire, and it reduces confusion if there’s only one other device that might be responding to your pings.
3. Open a terminal window, and ping the router on 192.168.11.1. This is the default address for this router. If you don’t get responses like:

   64 bytes from 192.168.11.1: icmp_seq=660 ttl=64 time=0.865 ms
   

   then you will need to make sure that you’ve got everything plugged in correctly, and that you have valid ips and the like. Leave this ping command running, it will be important in a minute.

4. Open another terminal window, make sure that you’re in the same directory as the downloaded firmware, and fire up tftp. Enter the following, but don’t hit return on the last command, we want it ready to fire in the several second window that we’ll have.

   tftp 192.168.11.1
   tftp> binary
   tftp> trace
   tftp> rexmt 1
   tftp> timeout 60
   tftp> put openwrt-brcm-2.4-squashfs.trx 
   

5. Now, press and hold the INIT button on the router, 5 seconds or so. The DIAG led should flash slowly. Watch the window with the ping running, and you should see something like:

   64 bytes from 192.168.11.1: icmp_seq=663 ttl=64 time=0.867 ms
   64 bytes from 192.168.11.1: icmp_seq=664 ttl=64 time=0.900 ms
   64 bytes from 192.168.11.1: icmp_seq=671 ttl=100 time=2.351 ms
   64 bytes from 192.168.11.1: icmp_seq=672 ttl=100 time=0.992 ms
   64 bytes from 192.168.11.1: icmp_seq=673 ttl=100 time=1.732 ms
   64 bytes from 192.168.11.1: icmp_seq=674 ttl=100 time=2.032 ms
   

   There are 2 things to note here, there is a gap of 5 seconds or so between the second and third line, and the third line has a ttl of 100, rather than 64. This is an indicator that the router is listening for tftp connections and can load the firmware.

6. When you see the ttl=100 line in the ping output, hit return in the other window to start the tftp process. If all goes well, you should see

   tftp> put openwrt-brcm-2.4-squashfs.trx
   sent WRQ <file=open2.trx, mode=octet>
   received ACK <block=0>
   sent DATA <block=1, 512 bytes>
   received ACK <block=1>
   ...
   

7. Sit tight for a few minutes, don’t interrupt the power or you could wind up with a half flashed brick. The router should reboot, respond to the pings again, and be accessible through telnet or http.