Hacking a WRT54G v8 With DD-WRT
Posted by hank, Sat Oct 06 11:20:00 UTC 2007
So, last month sometime, BrainSlayer got DD-WRT working on version 8 of the WRT54G. Now this was great news to me when I read it since I’ve been wanting to get rid of the crappy LinkSys management from the beginning. Some of the procedure worked, and some of it didn’t for me.
Do not try this if you don’t know exactly what you’re getting into.
Here’s what I ended up doing:
Go here and look at the state of things.
Read flashing.txt. It helped me immensely.
Download the DD-WRT firmware and the version 8 VXWorks killer and put them in a safe place.
I use Ubuntu, so at this point I installed tftp:
sudo apt-get install tftp
Go to the flashing dialog and flash the VXWorks killer firmware you got.
Once the router reboots, get a beer while it warms up. This should take 1 to 2 minutes.
Unplug the router and plug it back in.
Wait while it boots (20 seconds).
Set your ip and default gateway:
# Replace <interface> with whichever network interface you're using.
sudo ifconfig <interface> 192.168.1.100
sudo route add default gw 192.168.1.1
- Ping the router. Hopefully this works…
hank@rofl:~$ ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.792 ms
- Send the new firmware over. Make sure to set your mode to octet! You should see a bunch of blinky lights on the router for a few seconds, then tftp should output the number of bytes transferred.
hank@rofl:~$ tftp 192.168.1.1
tftp> mode octet
tftp> put dd-wrt.v24_micro_wrt54gv8.bin
Get another beer. While you do that, your firmware is being reflashed and DD-WRT is booting up. You should see the power light go on, then off, then on again, then blink, then stay on.
You should be able to get DHCP now. Try it:
sudo dhclient <interface>
If that worked, head over to http://192.168.1.1 to the admin console.
Change the settings to your liking. The default account is root/admin
Change the maximum connections to 4096 and the TCP and UDP timeouts to 90 each in the main Administration page.
This should yield you an awesome setup. I’m very happy with mine.
References
Hack Attack: Turn your $60 router into a $600 router
Files
Oh, and just in case DD-WRT’s site goes down in the middle of the procedure (like it did to me), here are the files:
Blog Posts
October 18, 2007 @ 10:16 AM
Mine is just doing the last process over and over. The light keeps turning on and off, I think its constantly rebooting and I cannot access it. =/
October 18, 2007 @ 10:18 AM
Update: ok, well I can get a ping but only for a short time while its booting.
October 20, 2007 @ 05:19 PM
I’m having the same exact problem.. just keeps rebooting. I can ping it for 3 seconds, and then the system restarts.. is it bricked?
October 20, 2007 @ 09:18 PM
Well I am half saddened and happy that I’m not the only one to have failed at this procedure. I’m currently making a jtag cable for it as its bricked… …just managed to find four 100 ohm resistors, Now i gotta dig up my soldering gun.
October 20, 2007 @ 10:38 PM
Crap - sorry folks - mine’s still working fine, so I’m not sure what’s wrong with yours. There is some information i found here on debricking:
Also, see this page for more crap you can try. I’m sorry this didn’t work for you guys. Once you figure out what went wrong, please let me know so I can add a warning/step to this guide.
October 21, 2007 @ 12:51 AM
I managed to find that out myself after trying tftp again after I got ping replies for a short time. I’ll post and progress on successfully getting dd-wrt working or reverting to linksys firmware.