Installing OpenWrt 21.02 on the TP-Link AD7200

[Alex Henrie]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 11:35 PM Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 4:04 AM Stijn Segers <foss at volatilesystems.org> wrote:
> >
> > Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24 at gmail.com> schreef op 20 april 2021 07:28:32 CEST:
> > >
> > >So, what is the correct procedure for installing OpenWrt on the AD7200?
> >
> > Try downgrading to an older firmware. If that does not work then you'll need to hook up serial to see the messages the flashing process spits out.
> >
> > Chances are OEM firmware checks for a software version now e.g., which is unset at this point (see tplink-safeloader.c code).
>
> Thanks for the suggestion. The firmware upload fails with the same
> error if I try to upload an older version of the stock firmware. The
> latest version of the stock firmware (which is the version that is on
> the router I have) is 2.0.1.

I haven't gotten a serial cable hooked up yet, but I tried with
another AD7200 router that is running stock firmware version 1.0.10
and was not able to upload OpenWrt to it either. Its web interface
gives the error "Invalid file type." When started with the reset
button held down, it looks for a file named
ArcherC2600_1.0_tp_recovery.bin on TFTP, but again, the file transfers
and then the device simply reboots back into its stock firmware.

-Alex