Foobab's Help Desk

[foobab]

Alright this article is for those extra special nubs with extra special needs.

When starting out simply follow Darren's instructions up until step 7.

instead of typing in exactly what he has, notice the /# instead of ~#

After first logging you must first "cd .." to get to the root folder. A simple mistake anyone could make.

Step 8, every time starting up WinSCP always remember to change the connection type to "SCP" instead of the default "SFTP" setting or else it will always return a "Network Error: connection refused" and close.

After step 9 you are asked to reboot. Previously you should have uploaded out.hex into the /tmp/ directory but after rebooting typically(?) it will get deleted. I simply re uploaded out.hex after the reboot before proceeding to step 10.

After entering the instructions for step 10, my router seemed to freeze or get caught up on something. I simply unplugged it, plugged it back in, reconnected and carried on redoing step 10. You may have this experience as well.

In step 11, I tried various thing to no avail until I upgraded the Freifunk Ap51 EasyFlash GUI utility to the latest version of 1.0-42. The version Darren included in his download file was a little old and didn't work for me. I have included the version that worked for me at the bottom of this post along with other useful files which I will explain later.

Another common concern at this point is the lack of a crossover cable when connecting the fon directly into the computers RJ54 Ethernet port. After being troubled myself I used my makeshift homemade crossover cable multiple times, it worked but have since realized this was unnecessary. The fon as default configures itself to accept either... as stated in the documentation. At this point I found it good to disable the wireless card on my laptop to avoid any interference during the flash.

When you press go, you should receive a few "no packets" returns until your computer processes recognize whats going on and the program responds. When this happens you will see some actual data output YAY :) such as peer ip and your ip. At this point you may think it is finished but it is not. The program then continues on displaying "flashing root", "flashing xxx", no not porn, and whatever else. THE PROGRAM WILL CLOSE when it is finished.

Some problems I encountered at this time is that it simply seemed stuck after displaying "your ip" wait at least 5 minutes and if nothing extra shows up expect something wrong. My fix was to close peer guardianand close my firewall (zone alarm). Don't ask me why, it worked. (twice actually)

After completing steps 16, 17 and 18 "successfully" I was plagued by not having a /karma/ directory when asked to copy everything in it to the /www/ directory. Not sure how this happened but by retransmitting all the .ink files and reinstalling all of them once more, it worked. Also if you did not receive the same error as Darren when installing the first, you should after repeating. First I received an error something like "return:1 = notgood" error instead of the classic "detected r1" error displayed in Darren's screen capture.

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I have seen many people posting questions such as "have I bricked my router, is it now a 40$ paperweight." If you truly believe it feel free to mail it to me pm me for my address. In all seriousness I highly doubt this is possible. Included in the file of this article I have included the original files necessary for reinstalling the fons original firmware. Simply unzip and open the default files with the included Ap51 EasyFlash GUI. The version your fon router will have is 0.7.1.1. You can even go back and forth between Openwrt or Fon if desired.

http://www.ar5k.com/foobab/factory.rar