@PacketLoss can you please confirm you have SSH enabled on those routers running r31899 , SSH usually bricked the router on previous versions (anything above r30432)
@PacketLoss Please try enabling SSH as Slimbig suggested. Also, please do a soft reboot followed by a complete power cycle, ie removing power cable briefly. I remain skeptical although it would be welcome news if the issue were resolved.
I have SSH disabled for awhile. I could have had SSH enabled on my core/internet facing 880 enabled at some point. I never had wireless radios enabled on the core 880. I did mirror them when I started getting the blinking death issue. But didn't help.
Running r30432. I messed up my vlans and now I can't get back online. What to do?
I can put dir-880l a2 into emergency recovery mode and flash dlink firmware. Surprisingly, the old settings were stored. Flashing back to any tested version of dd-wrt is successful but unable to connect. 30-30-30 reset just puts dir-880l into emegency recovery mode.
At the moment I am stuck with dlink firmware. How to flash dd-wrt and connect?
Posted: Fri May 12, 2017 17:28 Post subject: Working version...
It's been a time since I posted here, because I got sick trying the new betas and getting stuck with bricked routers.
As it seems, the problem hasn't been solved yet.
Just to give you an idea, I run my DIR880L (added May 27th: Version A1) with version DD-WRT v3.0-r30880 std (11/14/16). However, i decided not to enable ssh as it is on a internal network only.
My router is up since more than 33 days and survived a power outage, booting without any problems.
So far I haven't tried any other release, because I've better things to do than flashing and unbricking routers.
Maybe the information is helpful for some of you...
Last edited by ReinerS on Sat May 27, 2017 8:45; edited 1 time in total
ReinerS - which hardware version? A1 or A2?
For all future posts I hope members will include the hardware version. There seems to be different issues depending on the version.
Posted: Sat May 13, 2017 17:27 Post subject: Unbricking my DIR-880l, Version A1
Here is how I got mine unbricked using a Windows 7 PC and D-Link firmware. But before you begin, please note that I started having some odd computer issues shortly after the fix. After running my anti-virus and anti-malware programs and finding nothing, I deleted all the unbricking-related downloads but still had to run a System Restore to a point before the downloads occurred in order to get the PC running right again.
What I needed:
- My Windows 7 PC
- My recently bricked DIR-880l
- Fresh firmware. http://support.dlink.com/ProductInfo.aspx?m=DIR-880L . I used Firmware (1.07.B08)
- A CJRSLRB(TM) WINDOWS 8 Supported Debug Cable for Raspberry Pi USB Programming USB to TTL Serial Cable. $9.16 at amazon.ca. Free shipping from China. Shipped three days after order and arrived in Canada 17 days later. Sweet.
- The driver for the above-mentioned serial cable. I got mine at http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx?p_id=225&pcid=41 . Download it, unzip it, click on the unzipped file and install it.
- Download and install PuTTY. http://www.putty.org/
- You will want to know which COM port your serial cable will be using. After you have installed its driver, plug the cable into your PC, go to Start, type “device” without the quotation marks, click Device Manager, expand Ports (COM & LPT) and note which COM port # is associated with your new Prolific driver.
- Scissors
- Electrical tape
- Phillips screw driver
- Wire cutting pliers
- Metal paper clip
- Hydrogen peroxide, bandages and Polysporin, just in case
- Defibrillator, just in case
- Plastic tool for prying off the router’s top cover
- A stand, hollow in the middle, to set the circuit board on
- Familiarity with the MacGyver television series
How I did it:
- Cut three 7/16’ straight lengths of paper clip which will serve as pins
- Cut two 1” lengths of electrical tape
- Disconnect the router power cord
- Remove the router’s three antennae, then unscrew the nut and washer from each antenna coupler.
- Pry the four black rubber feet off the router and unscrew the four screws.
- Insert the plastic tool into the seam along the side of the router and work your way around the edges until the top can be pulled off.
- Note – The next step involved removing the big silver cover on the board. In retrospect I don’t think that was necessary and believe I could have removed just the one screw in the middle. But I’m not taking everything apart again to find out. What I did was to…
- Unscrew the five visible screws, one on each edge and one in the middle, then remove the silver cover.
- Pry up the edge of the circuit board at the front of the router and along the edges until you can slide the board out.
- Near the top right corner you will see the letters REV etc., etc., and to the left and below those letters there are four wee holes. (A very thoughtful person provided a pic. If you’d like to see what you should be looking at, scroll down to and download the”dlink board.pdf” at https://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=268579&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=135&sid=2adae7cd3f6e72e238fe5ad7c089f4b6 .
- Now for the MacGyver section of the tutorial: Place one length of electrical tape on the bottom of the board so as to cover those four little holes. Again, cover them from the bottom.
- Take your paper clip pieces and insert one into the end of the white, black and green wires. I turned each one a couple of times and they stayed in place. You won’t need the red wire for this mission so just fold it up out of the way.
- Looking at the top of the board, with REV etc., etc., up and to the right, insert the green wire into the left-most of the four holes, (let’s call it hole #1), skip hole #2, insert the black wire in hole #3 , and the white wire goes in the right-most hole, #4. They don’t have to go through the electrical tape you placed on the bottom of the board; it’s there mainly to keep the paper clip pins from falling out of the connectors. Sure beats soldering.
- Use the other piece of electrical tape to attach the serial cable to the stand so it won’t be dislodged when you plug the USB connector into the computer.
- Hoping not to shock myself, I pressed my fingers against the front edge of the circuit board and inserted the power cord, then watched that familiar orange flashing light do its irritating thing.
- Now for the fun part! Plug the USB end of the serial cable into the computer USB port whose COM# you previously noted.
- Go to Start, type “Putty” without the quotation marks, click putty.exe, click Run. Beside Connection type click Serial, under Serial line type COMx where x is the port number you previously noted, change Speed to 115200, click Open.
- With any luck at all you are looking at a PuTTY terminal. Press Ctrl and C. Do you see the letters CFE? If so, good.
- Type nvram erase . Hit enter. If memory serves you will see a value of 0. If so, good. I’m pretty sure.
- Type reboot. Hit enter.
- Just leave well-enough alone for a few minutes to a maximum of two weeks. You, Madam or Sir, have just managed to erase the nvram settings that were confounding your poor router and rebooted it in a fashion your friends will never believe you were capable of and would never dare try themselves! Congrats.
- Now, I follow non-Microsoft support instructions reasonably well, but I was unable to understand how our fellow flashers flashed new firmware using tftp. So being careful not to shock myself, I turned off the router, removed the serial cable from the circuit board and computer, and plugged an Ethernet cable from the PC into one of the router’s four LAN ports. Then, being careful not to shock myself, I turned the router back on, opened my computer’s Network and Sharing Center, clicked Change adapter settings, right-clicked Local Area Connection, clicked Properties, clicked Internet Protocol Version 4, clicked Properties, clicked Use the following IP address, entered 192.168.1.5, Subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and clicked OK. Then opened a browser window and typed 192.168.1.1 and saw the DD-WRT graphical user interface with the firmware that presumably caused the brick issue. Go figger. You may be content to stay with that firmware, disconnect everything and put your router back together. But I decided to try and change to an older firmware version and managed to brick my poor router again. I wish I had had this tutorial to work with at the time! Luckily I was able to remember the previous steps and once again erased the nvram and rebooted the router. Then, being careful not to shock myself, I turned off the power to the router, disconnected the serial cable, reconnected the Ethernet cable, pushed in the reset button, kept it pushed in for five seconds and, without releasing said reset button turned the router back on, continued to hold it in for twenty seconds more, released the reset button at long last, all the while having been careful not to shock myself, returned to the PC, changed that IP address in the Network and Sharing Center from 192.168.1.5 to 192.168.0.5 , still subnet 255.255.255.0 , opened a browser window and pointed it to 192.168.0.1 then lo and behold the D-Link emergency flashing window appeared. I selected the D-Link firmware I previously downloaded, uploaded it to the router and I’m sending you this missive on my nice, twice-unbricked DIR-880l. (After putting it back together.) What an adventure! Very satisfying getting that puppy working again after reading the many clues to the process left on this site; rather reminiscent of reading The Da Vinci Code. Hope you enjoy seeing that orange light illuminated alongside its neighbouring blues and nary a one flashing.
PS - I did manage to get DD-WRT v3.0-r31980M kongac (05/11/17) up and running and no issues after a month or so.
Last edited by Ontarier on Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:56; edited 1 time in total
ReinerS - which hardware version? A1 or A2?
For all future posts I hope members will include the hardware version. There seems to be different issues depending on the version.
I buggered up my nvram trying to setup vlans on the dir-880l switch ports and ended up locked out of ddwrt. To fix, I needed to access console by serial usb. I was able to restore my ports. (nvram erase does not seem to help in this situation.) I am back.
Used 20cm length 2.54mm male to female Dupont cables, a USB to RS232 TTL CH340G and putty for a no solder solution.
For an external serial connection, route Dupont cable out the usb side and then tie them to the grill.
Now my dir-880l is in AP mode and guest wifi is routed over its own vlan switch port.
Happy, happy to get her done but really it should not be so time consuming. I will have to say, ddwrt is falling way behind another project in this field.
I buggered up my nvram trying to setup vlans on the dir-880l switch ports and ended up locked out of ddwrt. To fix, I needed to access console by serial usb. I was able to restore my ports. (nvram erase does not seem to help in this situation.) I am back.
Used 20cm length 2.54mm male to female Dupont cables, a USB to RS232 TTL CH340G and putty for a no solder solution.
For an external serial connection, route Dupont cable out the usb side and then tie them to the grill.
Now my dir-880l is in AP mode and guest wifi is routed over its own vlan switch port.
Happy, happy to get her done but really it should not be so time consuming. I will have to say, ddwrt is falling way behind another project in this field.
Do you have a guide or instructions for how you setup your guest network vlan? I would like to do the same thing on my router, but haven't been able to get it to work properly.
Just wanted to share my experience. I picked up an A2 version of the router and up until last week as running a random 2017 version of the software. It was working great ... until... randomly it all just died on me and the firmware could not be restored.
I'm not sure what went wrong but DLink replaced it (I had to pay shipping). When I get a chance I'll probably give r30432 a try to see if it lasts longer than a few weeks. I decided I'd give the stock firmware a go, but not being able to resolve local DNS names is painful.
I'd only had the router for a month when it died, so IDK if it was coincidence and I got a bad one or the firmware actually caused the problem.
Sure, I am able to provide guidance on how to connect ddwrt running in AP mode on a DIR-880L to provide guest ssid plugged to a separate vlan on a managed switch.
Just to be on the same page, please explain what it is that you have tried that is not working. It would help if you provide details of your network.
So just to follow up with my set of now 4 DLink 880ls. I had 2 running newest (they are in a way extended APs going to one 880 in basement). My 4th router is for my LAB to a ASA firewall. I upgraded that 4th one to newest code using the 30/30/30 at start, then web flash and all is working so far.
I loaded my TWO APs to this code as well and they are running good.
DD-WRT v3.0-r31899 std (04/24/17)
Now I took my core 880 and did the 30/30/30 and loaded 31899 and it got the blinking death. I nvram erased it, and it still had the previous version on it. I then said well let me try via gui, it took and loaded 31899.
So seems I jump a hurdle of some sort. I have again 4 880Ls running 31899.
I have this model coming in the mail tomorrow and getting all ready here to install the DD-WRT on it. I was wondering how one is able to get A1 or A2. Is it just some random thing, or does getting one from the past/present decide that? I would like to think getting one right this moment would be an A2 and getting one back in early 2015 would be an A1.
First off, thx for all the testing you have done with various versions, its been a big help. I was wondering though, when you have the time (or anyone else who doesn't mind) if you can test the latest version (r32597). I read much of this thread and it seems the r30432 is the only true stable release all around. You said you're currently using 31899 and that is doing ok on multiple 880s. Can you elaborate on that some more if you don't mind? I'd very much like to use that if it works decent (no wifi knockouts, no bad speed, intermittent drops, or other anomalies) since it's a much newer version. Not really thrilled about having to use one that is nearly a year old...not to mention that if some new exploit is found like there was several years ago, i can only imagine if there will be a working release for this router...
...which is another question i have. Is the OpenVPN/OPENSSL exploit fixed on r30432 (and subsequent releases)? I remember OpenVPN 2.3.2 was the bad version that caused this huge stir back then. Really don't wanna be using a release with a major hole in it like that as it would somewhat defeat the purpose of using a VPN in the first place.
I mean, the fact D-link outright supports dd-wrt is a huge plus. While reading reviews from those who purchased it some time ago, they had no issues uing dd-wrt on them, though those were reviews back in 2015/early 2016 long before the problems started to arise past r30432. A shame this has been an on-going issue for nearly a year now--very strange. Seems SSH was the culprit, something i never use much, if at all, so shouldn't be a problem for me if i use something more current than r30432.
I mainly bought this router over the other more prominent brands due to how virtually everyone of them (Netgear, Linksys, Asus, TPLink) had enormous red flags going on--things such as:
-Someone said they couldn't change/forward ports without logging into some ridiculous bs "Global Account" (or something to that effect). I mean...seriously folks!!???
-FW locked (many of the newer models of those brands are now doing this)
-Forced to use lame apps. One that i read supposedly ties right into the Windows Apps area (Yeah....suuuuuure...and also was said to require some kind of log on to some account--Netgear and/or Linksys seemed to be big on this issue). I completely wiped nearly every W10 app in existence, including Cortana) for a reason. A huge reason...using these global accounts or apps is just more monitoring/snooping/logging bs.
-A Linksys tech actually responded to an angry customer, saying "Due to a new FCC Regulation, we no longer support DD-WRT, but you can use our own WRT...blah blah blah. More like "Due to new NSA Regulation" (Fixed) Lol why would the 'fcc' give a frog's balls about what FW people are using?
Unreal.
It's just blatantly obvious what is going on. Since router basically involve major communications data, well,it's no shock to me that many of the mainline brands wound up selling out, no different than the social media companies/networks that did some years back.
Been using the good ole trusty wrt54gl for over 10 years now. That thing should be put in the Smithsonian, it's just surreal what it was capable of doing and what it still can do, it's just so damn weak and slow when heavy encryption is used on a VPN due to having such ancient hardware. Still going to hold onto it though. Kinda like the President's and VIPs on the Doomsday plane that uses mostly all antiquated tech so newer tech can't compromise it easier
Anyhow, much thanks in advance for whatever help ya'll can give
Ok, so I got this today and just a real quick question.
I noticed it has a push-button power button. Can I do the 30/30/30 without having to literally unplug the power brick, or is using the power button adequate enough?
Lol why would the 'fcc' give a frog's balls about what FW people are using?
