Web Interface Method

The following text describes how to use the original firmware's web interface to flash FreeWRT. The object of demonstration is an ASUS WL500GP, but this guide should fit more or less fine for other systems, too.

If you flash a router from LINKSYS, we strongly suggest to use the popular PING EXPLOIT to allow recovery, if your image is broken or the flash process was interrupted by a power shortage.

There are some things that you should have done previously:

• read the special documentation page about your hardware in our wiki, some systems need special precaution before flashing
• a firmware image has to be built (matching the used hardware, of course)
• the router has to be powered on
• your computer needs to be connected to one of the LAN ports (using IP address 192.168.1.2/24)

After preparation is complete, open your favourite browser and type 192.168.1.1 into the address bar. You should reach the web interface's startup page:

Then click on System Setup:

In the new menu click on Firmware Upgrade, and enter the name of your firmware image into the appropriate field:

Finally click on Upload. As the whole process of writing the image to flash and rebooting (don't forget that it creates ssh hostkeys on first boot) takes quite long (yes, a couple of minutes). Better go and get a coffee or tea.

When everything went well, you can login using ssh. The default username is "admin". The default password for images created via ADK is "FreeWRT". It is possible to change this password in the ADK, before image creation.