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Learn Your Recovery Processes - Ubiquiti Router Example

You should always be familiar with the reset or recovery process of your equipment.

Sometimes you need to reset some equipment so you can configure it from scratch, or no one knows the password.


Then there are those moments when a firmware upgrade fails, the equipment reports random system errors, or acts ‘strange’ after a power outage.


I ran into an issue where a router was constantly reporting processes crashing 24/7. This router was in my lab with no interface facing the internet and no traffic running through it, so

it was pretty idle and still spat out errors constantly.  Of course, I tried setting it back to factory with no change.

The first thing I did was compare it against other similar model routers with the same firmware to ensure that these messages were somehow normal.  Whew, no other router was reporting any of these messages.


I tried unsuccessfully to upgrade the firmware via UISP management console, the router's web interface, and via the CLI/SSH session.

I then contacted Ubiquiti to get the latest firmware upgrade instructions since the only instructions I found online were 5 years or older. Even though it looked like what I just did, I started by resetting the router to factory and tried multiple times with no luck.


I reported my results back to Ubiquiti along with screen shots and detailed notes. Ubiquiti responded with the router recovery procedure.


Here’s the weird part: I must have tried the procedure a dozen times with no luck and firmware error messages. Every time I reset the router back to factory, I powered it off and back on.


This morning, I thought why don’t I make a video on the process since I couldn’t find anything current and had to set up a DHCP server for the router to get an IP address since the documented IP address was incorrect.


Murphy's law kicked in, and it worked this morning.


Good thing I was recording the whole thing.



 


 

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