Dear lazyweb,

I'm fiddling about with a TP-Link OpenWrt WDR4300 v1 device, which had been working just fine for a handful of years. Now that I did pass it on it cost me several hours of annoying debugging on site yesterday - friggin’ configuration would not stay live but will auto-revert to default.

The typical way when moving it to a new purpose or location is reset to default, then log in and configure things again (IP address, network details, wifi name and such). Then apply settings, done. Depending on the setup takes 10-15 minutes max. This specimen now accepts all the new configuration, puts them to use, but after about one minute without further interaction silently falls back to default values for all.

When that happens, everything is as it normally is after a reset to default. Wifi is off, ssh is on, and it lives on 192.168.1.1. Except for the new root password (if you set it) there is no trace you even tried.

I have tried:
* reset to failsafe by triggering the on-device button until the led flickers, logging into device again reset to default - then I can change the root password, which stays after power cycling, but the off behaviour stays as described
* disconnecting the service laptop after clicking "apply"
* not disconnecting the service laptop after clicking "apply"
* pinging while at work: two terminals, one pings the 192.168.1.1 the other 192.168.222.1 or whatever. First address pings until I hit "apply", then 2nd (actual target address) pings, and after one minute 1st one pings again, wtf
* if configured, the new wifi shows up within the timeframe, and is usable for a brief period, then is turned off

Not yet tried:
* in OpenWrt of old version 10. something, there used to be a 30/30/30 type reset. Does this even work now?

What gives?

#openwrt #tplink #hardware