WRT54G Won’t Upgrade
After half an hour of messing around with my Linksys WRT54G v5 hardware, I was finally able to upgrade the firmware on the device. I try to maintain a secure setup by using WPA encryption, HTTPS web-based management, and Ethernet-only administration. However, it seems that all my conscientiousness worked against me when attempting to upgrade from v1.00.6 to 1.00.9. For reasons known only to Linksys, you can’t upgrade the firmware while logged in over HTTPS. The kicker, though, is that you get no warning or indication that anything is malfunctioning — the upgrade simply doesn’t happen. A text-based progress bar is displayed for about 3 minutes, and (about one in three times) you get the following stupid error:
Upgrade are failed. Fantastic.
The solution to this is to re-enable plain HTTP administration, log in unencrypted (using http://), and then retry the upgrade.
September 3rd, 2006 at 1:13 pm
How come you don’t use HyperWRT anyway? It has lots of cool features!
http://www.hyperwrt.org
September 3rd, 2006 at 3:39 pm
I’d use HyperWRT, but it won’t run on v5 hardware yet :-(
September 3rd, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Do you recommend the WRT54G anyway even if the upgrades seems to be painfull? My old dlink 624+ dies all the time and I need a new router. I want the Airport Express USB and audio things but need extra ethernet for my server. Is the WRT54G a good choise?
September 3rd, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I do like my WRT54G, but I just happened to run into a slightly obscure problem. HTTP is the default method for accessing the device, but by using HTTPS, I unknowingly caused problems. All that aside, I would still recommend the WRT54G.
I use a Netgear router at work, and it’s *horrible*. We have to reset it at least once a day because it simply locks up.
September 4th, 2006 at 7:28 am
Thanks. I think I’ll replace my Dlink with a WRT54G and maybe an airport express later (hopefully they will soon get updated)
September 5th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
I have a WRT54G v2 and love it. If you can’t find anything pre-v5 then go with a WRT54GL. The ‘L’ model “returns to a Linux-based internal OS as opposed to the v5’s VxWorks firmware”. (source Wikipedia)
September 8th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
I have an AirPort Express and enjoy it a lot, however, I miss having more than one Ethernet port. It’s a nice little device that’s great for home audio or going on vacation to an Ethernet-equipped hotel, but it does not make the cut for a full time home router. And rightly so — it wasn’t designed for this. Lets hope Apple comes out with an A/V model on Monday!
December 4th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Thanks - I struggled with this for about an hour before I stumbled on your post. I had exactly the same problem… frickin’ annoying.
April 12th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Man am I glad I found your post. I never would have guessed that it was the HTTPS causing my problem. What morons. Thanks for posting it!