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From: Bill Kearney on 23 Jun 2006 07:13
From the way you've described the situation it seems clear the firmware
upgrades between the two depend upon different configuration data. That's
inconvenient, to say the least, but at least it's not a permanent failure
issue. Best to get a spare, configure it as desired and physically swap the
units in the field instead of trying to do an in-place, over-network
upgrade. It would be nice if they'd warn you of this possibility, does the
README give any clue?

From: Robert Coe on 25 Jun 2006 20:47
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 07:13:37 -0400, "Bill Kearney" <wkearney99(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
: From the way you've described the situation it seems clear the firmware
: upgrades between the two depend upon different configuration data. That's
: inconvenient, to say the least, but at least it's not a permanent failure
: issue. Best to get a spare, configure it as desired and physically swap the
: units in the field instead of trying to do an in-place, over-network
: upgrade.

Well, yeah, so it seems. But most of those access points are in inconvenient
locations, and swapping them out is a pain. After all, not having to do that
is why you want to manage such devices remotely. Let's just say that my
opinion of Linksys hasn't gone up as a result of this experience.

: It would be nice if they'd warn you of this possibility, does the
: README give any clue?

I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think not. I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed.
From: William P.N. Smith on 26 Jun 2006 07:00
Robert Coe <bob(a)1776.COM> wrote:
>most of those access points are in inconvenient
>locations, and swapping them out is a pain

Would it be possible to do a factory reset on them in software before
upgrading them, and then reconfigure them after the upgrade?

You'd have to make sure they'd still fit your existing subnet and not
collide after the reset, but it might be easier than swapping them
out.
From: Robert Coe on 26 Jun 2006 22:23
On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 07:00:17 -0400, William P.N. Smith
<news2006c(a)compusmiths.com> wrote:
: Robert Coe <bob(a)1776.COM> wrote:
: >most of those access points are in inconvenient
: >locations, and swapping them out is a pain
:
: Would it be possible to do a factory reset on them in software before
: upgrading them, and then reconfigure them after the upgrade?
:
: You'd have to make sure they'd still fit your existing subnet and not
: collide after the reset, but it might be easier than swapping them
: out.

If I did the factory reset first, I would not be able to talk to them again.

BTW, contrary to what somebody said earlier, it's not the case that doing the
upgrade reset the router to factory specs. It merely made it unusable until I
reset to factory specs and reconfigured.
From: Robert Coe on 29 Jun 2006 21:17
On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 14:52:25 -0400, Robert Coe <bob(a)1776.COM> wrote:
: The other day I upgraded the firmware on one of my Linksys WAP54G access
: points from 2.08 to 3.04. I did it remotely from a PC in another building. All
: went well until the upgrade was declared complete, whereupon the access point
: became totally unresponsive. It continued to serve wireless clients, but could
: not be managed. Even manually rebooting didn't help. I finally had to swap it
: out, reset it to factory settings, and reconfigure it from scratch. (The
: upgrade did "take"; the displayed firmware level is now 3.04.)
:
: Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I did the same thing to another WAP54G
: over the weekend, from home. Now I can't contact that one either, so I guess
: I'll have to swap it out tomorrow and reconfigure it from scratch.
:
: Is this a known problem? Is there a workaround (installing an intermediate
: upgrade, for example)? I've got about a dozen more WAP54Gs I'd like to
: upgrade, and swapping them all out would be a pain.
:
: Bob

Just on the off chance that anyone is still interested, I finally figured out
the answer to this problem. The upgrade changes some, but not all, of the AP's
settings. The critical one changed is the default gateway, which is set back
to 192.168.1.1, even if the AP is set to get its IP settings via DHCP. So if
you're trying to manage the AP from a computer on a different subnet, the
upgrade causes the AP to lose the ability to respond to your commands, because
it can no longer find you. A reboot doesn't help; all you can do (short of a
reset to factory settings and full reconfiguration) is to log into a computer
on the right subnet, set the AP to a static IP, change the default gateway to
the correct value, and then set it back to DHCP. Damn.
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