Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 16:50 Post subject: Linksys Requiring Signed Firmware
Hi everyone, I'm posting this to both DD-WRT and Tomato firmware forums as I believe this affects all of us.
I have a Linksys EA6500 v2 router, but I think my problem isn't specific to my router but to new Linksys firmware in general. I saw another similar post here related to the EA8500 having the same problem.
In short, I'm running the latest Linksys firmware on my router: 1.1.40 (build 176451).
I tried flashing it with Tomato and then DD-WRT. Both firmware uploads resulted in the router saying: "Invalid Firmware File" "This firmware file won't work on this router. If you downloaded it from linksys.com it might have become corrupted."
In the other thread talking about an EA8500 router, someone mentioned that Linksys is now signing their firmware files and the router requires the downloaded firmware to be signed or it won't flash it. I contacted Linksys this morning and confirmed that (lucky me), my current firmware is the first firmware requiring that firmware files be signed, so there is no way for me to upload either DD-WRT or Tomato from the web interface.
I located the previous firmware version through Archive.org, but I get the same error trying to flash the router to an older Linksys firmware. Even tried uploading the older Linksys firmware via TFTP and the TFTP program errored out saying: "Unable to get responses from the server". Had a static IP and everything set and could ping it....
I'm out of ideas... Anyone have any idea how to flash this router to an older non-signed Linksys firmware that doesn't require firmware files to be signed so I can get DD-WRT or Tomato working?
Joined: 14 Dec 2015 Posts: 774 Location: 127.0.0.1
Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 19:43 Post subject:
In the Linksys UI does it have a restore previous firmware button?
To try and get you back to the older one that doesn't require signing? _________________ Tutorial for flashing WRT series WRT Installation,Upgrade & Basic Setup–Cliff Notes
r52242: WRT3200ACM, WRT1200ACv1 & 1 Velop in bridge mode(IoT subnet), r52242 WRT1900ACv1 AP
Velop:2 WHW0101, RE6500, RE9000(AP)
Spectrum - 1000/50
SysLog Watcher 5, New security Onion box coming soon, Fingboxes, PiHoles, NEMS, Cacti, rpisurv
In the Linksys UI does it have a restore previous firmware button?
To try and get you back to the older one that doesn't require signing?
Thank You!! I found the restore previous firmware under troubleshooting and luckily it reverted me to a previous firmware. Thanks again...
I do have another problem now... I can't seem to flash DD-WRT beta to the router.... I can flash Tomato Shibby 140 AIO to the router, but DD-WRT keeps failing with the default firmware, so I flashed tomato first, then tried DD-WRT but the router goes into an infinite boot / reboot cycle and I had to recover to the factory firmware using tftp with good timing....
I looked around but could not find any reference to an intermediate factory-to-ddwrt.bin image to allow successful flashing on the EA6500 v2.... Any thoughts on how I can get DD-WRT working?