Manual Flashing Installation

Flashing & Installation

A step-by-step guide to getting a pre-built Gargoyle image onto your router. If you want to build the firmware yourself instead of using a pre-built image, see Building and Flashing.

There is no stable, official release yet — see Supported Devices. Everything here uses the current beta community test builds. Flashing beta firmware can brick your router; don't flash a device you can't recover, and don't use these builds on a router you depend on.

1. Identify your device and get the image

Use the Firmware Finder to search by model name/alias, or drag an existing Gargoyle backup file onto it to auto-identify your board. See Supported Devices for which hardware targets are currently covered.

Each device has (at minimum) two image variants — download the right one for your situation:

• -factory — for flashing from the vendor's original stock firmware, via that vendor's own upgrade page or recovery method.
• -sysupgrade — for flashing over an existing OpenWrt or Gargoyle installation.

x86 images come as -squashfs-combined (BIOS boot) or -squashfs-combined-efi (UEFI boot) — pick based on how your PC/VM boots.

2. Verify the download

Every image on the releases page has a .sha256 file next to it. Check your download against it before flashing anything:

sha256sum -c gargoyle-<device>-factory.img.gz.sha256

A corrupted or incomplete download is one of the more common causes of a failed flash — this step catches it before it becomes a bricked router.

3. Flash it

Coming from stock vendor firmware

Use the -factory image through your vendor's own web-based firmware upgrade page, or that vendor's specific recovery method (this varies by manufacturer and model — check the OpenWrt wiki page for your exact device if you're not sure how your vendor handles firmware updates).

Already running OpenWrt or Gargoyle

Use the -sysupgrade image. The easiest path is through the router's own web UI: Backup, Restore & Firmware Update → System → Update Firmware — upload the file there and follow the on-screen validation and confirmation steps.

Jumping to a newer OpenWrt base (for example, moving from an older Gargoyle release onto one of the current 25.12 test builds): do not tick "Attempt to Preserve Settings." Configuration formats changed between base versions, and carrying old settings across a big base jump causes hard-to-diagnose breakage rather than a clean migration. Back up your configuration first (you'll want it for reference), flash clean, and reconfigure from scratch.

x86 (PC or VM)

Gunzip the combined image and write it directly to the target disk:

gunzip -c openwrt-x86-64-generic-squashfs-combined-efi.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sdX

Replace /dev/sdX with your actual target disk — double-check this before running it, dd will happily overwrite the wrong drive with no confirmation prompt.

4. First boot

Once flashed, the router boots at the standard OpenWrt/Gargoyle default: 192.168.1.1, password password. Connect a device to its LAN (by cable is more reliable for this first step than WiFi, since default WiFi state varies by device) and browse to http://192.168.1.1/.

You'll land on the Initial Settings page, which asks for exactly two things before you can go any further:

• New Password / confirm — the login page won't accept the old default password once this is set.
• Timezone — picked from a dropdown.

Click Save Settings. After that, go to Basic Setup to configure your actual WAN connection, LAN, and WiFi.

If something goes wrong

• Router unreachable after a config change: see Troubleshooting / FAQ — most network-affecting saves auto-revert on their own within about a minute if you never confirm they worked.
• Router completely unresponsive after flashing: don't assume it's bricked immediately — see the failsafe-recovery section of Troubleshooting / FAQ. Recovery methods (TFTP, serial, vendor recovery mode) are device-specific; check what your exact model supports before you flash it, not after, so you know your recovery path in advance.

See also

• Supported Devices
• Building and Flashing — building your own image from source
• Backup, Restore & Firmware Update
• Troubleshooting / FAQ