Totolink X5000R bootlooping due to unsupported SPI-NOR in current kernel

[ThranduilII]

Describe the bug

Totolink stealth changed the spi-nor in their router. New spi-nor is ZB25VQ128ASIG with JEDEC id bytes: 5e 40 18 5e 40 18.
I believe support has been added per this thread: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210918072256.3505379-1-daniel@0x0f.com/T/ but has not been integrated into OpenWRT as of now.

OpenWrt version

23.03.3

OpenWrt target/subtarget

mt762

Device

Totolink X5000R V 1.0

Image kind

Official downloaded image

Steps to reproduce

Downgrade to OEM first release firmware. Upgrade to OpenWRT using OEM webupgrade GUI.

Actual behaviour

Bootloop after installing OpenWRT.

Expected behaviour

OpenWRT to run without bootloop

Additional info

No response

Diffconfig

No response

Terms

• I am reporting an issue for OpenWrt, not an unsupported fork.

[dfateyev]

@981213 I believe, you may be interested in this issue

[ThranduilII]

I have requested pull requests for 5.10 and 5.15 patches that would allow the router to be flashed without any issues of bootlooping.

[carlosfilhoadm]

Hi @ThranduilII

I bought a X5000R in August 2022 and intended to finally install OpenWRT on it in the next few days, but thankfully found this issue report first.

Will the next release (22.03.5) include your patches in order to fix this issue?

Thank you.

[dfateyev]

I see #12475 was closed without merge

[carlosfilhoadm]

Thank you @dfateyev

[carlosfilhoadm]

I haven't seen any commits for this issue in git.openwrt.org. Is it still unsolved, then?

Does it also affect 21.02.7?

[d687r02j8g]

Is there a way to recover from the bootloop?

@ThranduilII the below user tried using your 23.x image but doesn't seem to work. Is there anything special the user needs to do? They are stuck flashing openwrt

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/got-stuck-on-system-running-in-recovery-initramfs-mode-totolink-x5000r/160442?u=d687r02j8g

[ThranduilII]

Is there a way to recover from the bootloop?

@ThranduilII the below user tried using your 23.x image but doesn't seem to work. Is there anything special the user needs to do? They are stuck flashing openwrt

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/got-stuck-on-system-running-in-recovery-initramfs-mode-totolink-x5000r/160442?u=d687r02j8g

That user is using an image that does not have the merge that would solve the boot loops issue. I never ended up merging my commits as I am a novice here on GitHub.

I have compiled an image for the current 22.03.5 on my own fork and I have been running it for the past 19 days.

I'll head over to that thread and link my compiled image.

[carlosfilhoadm]

I installed the latest release (22.03.5) on the X5000R.

OpenWRT is working normally, even though the device was purchased on August 2022.

I assumed that if the installation had failed, I would have used the emergency recovery page to revert it.

[ThranduilII]

I installed the latest release (22.03.5) on the X5000R.

OpenWRT is working normally, even though the device was purchased on August 2022.

I assumed that if the installation had failed, I would have used the emergency recovery page to revert it.

If the firmware doesn't support your device in any way, it will boot loop like what happened to my x5000r before I patched in the support for the Zbits SPI-NOR. Glad to see it works for you.

[lnxbil]

I installed the latest release (22.03.5) on the X5000R.

OpenWRT is working normally, even though the device was purchased on August 2022.

I assumed that if the installation had failed, I would have used the emergency recovery page to revert it.

Works for me too. 22.03.5 added a fix for another device that may have solved the problem with the X5000R too.

[Smankusors]

btw, the 22.03 security support will be ended in 11 April 2024...

If anyone wanted to upgrade to the 23.05 and wondering if it's safe to do so, you can determine the SPI flash chip manufacturer by following these steps:

1. login to your router via SSH
2. run command dmesg | grep spi
   you should see an output similar to the following:

   [    0.648548] spi-nor spi0.0: en25qh128 (16384 Kbytes)
   

3. in quick Google search, I found out that it's manufactured by Eon, and I verified that it exist on the kernel source code (v5.15)

I gave the upgrade a shot with the sysupgrade image and it worked like a charm! OpenWRT is up and running on the latest release build. 😄