Cannot connect to CCR1016-12G after failed upgrade [SOLVED with Wine/Linux]

RouterOS General
1

Hi,
I have this unit in service for a year now, and have upgraded ROS several times in that period. This week I upgraded to the -rc3 successfully, but I had some problems with my configuration afterwards. I decided to downgrade to 6.40. After the attempted downgrade, I can no longer communicate with the router by NetInstall or by serial cable, and the router is in a reboot loop.

When using NetInstall the router simply does not get detected, this with the router connected via the boot port eth12. With serial cable/PuTTY there is no output at all in the console when the router attempts to boot.

I am quite certain it is not damaged hardware, since the router has worked perfectly since I bought it, but it seems I have botched the upgrade/downgrade quite spectacularly.

Is there any other advice I can get to help me out with this? I am at a disadvantage because I am in Thailand, and getting tech support here in a language I’m not comfortable with is extremely difficult.

Thanks for any advice.

2

Wow, that sounds like a pretty bad situation.
You’ve done the basics that I would have recommended…

Next would be holding the reset button for 300 seconds and thus forcing the router to format itself. Hopefully the RouterBOOT is still running and able to do that.

3

Thanks for that information.

Is there anything I should know before attempting the formatting procedure? Any pitfalls I need to be aware of?

4

It it works, the storage will be cleared. it should then default to NetInstall. I’ve found it’s best to have a Windows 7 notebook with no firewall enabled to run NetInstall.

5

OK, I’ve tried this with no encouraging result. After about 2 minutes, the unit rebooted , then it sat with ‘ether boot’ on the touchscreen for a minute or so, which changed to ‘router boot’, and then ultimately it rebooted again. All this with the button continually depressed.

I was able to reproduce this behavior by starting over.

At this point I guess I have to look into service options, but it is a real problem for me here. As a rule it is extremely difficult to get proper service in this country, and I don’t know what alternatives are available to me through MikroTik itself [if I send the router to them].

6

Connect serial cable to your device, open serial console and reboot device. Copy whole output to text file and send to support@mikrotik.com.

Did you try to Netinstall your router when it went into etherboot mode?

7

At this time, as I have said already, Netinstall does not recognize the router, or does not have enough time to complete the discovery. So I can’t use it to install. The router reboots about one minute after the touchscreen displays the ‘etherboot’ message, so maybe there isn’t enough time in there.

I am in the process of checking/buying another serial cable to try in case the one I have is defective according to this diagram:
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Null_modem_cable

If I am lucky, I will find that my cable is defective, and a new one will give us some information about what is going on here.

I will post back when I know more. Thanks

8

OK, I made a new null modem cable from the diagram, and it gets output from PuTTY now. Here is the output of the kernel panic when the router is booted:

=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~= PuTTY log 2017.08.01 23:06:45 =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=


RouterBOOT booter 3.39

CCR1016-12G

CPU frequency: 1200 MHz
  Memory size: 2048 MiB
    NAND size: 512 MiB

Press any key within 2 seconds to enter setup..

loading kernel... OK
setting up elf image... OK
jumping to kernel code
ERROR: no system package found!
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

Starting stack dump of tid 1, pid 1 (init) on cpu 15 at cycle 16410988786
  frame 0: 0xfffffff70051e4f8 dump_stack+0x0/0x20 (sp 0xfffffe003deffc08)
  frame 1: 0xfffffff700517490 panic+0x168/0x398 (sp 0xfffffe003deffc08)
  frame 2: 0xfffffff700055e60 do_exit+0x1c8/0xd48 (sp 0xfffffe003deffcb0)
  frame 3: 0xfffffff700056b28 do_group_exit+0xf0/0x1e8 (sp 0xfffffe003deffd78)
  frame 4: 0xfffffff700056c40 __wake_up_parent+0x0/0x18 (sp 0xfffffe003deffdb0)
  frame 5: 0xfffffff70051f258 handle_syscall+0x210/0x2d0 (sp 0xfffffe003deffdc0)
  <syscall while in user mode>
  frame 6: 0x8b2f0 0x8b2f0 (sp 0x7f96fa30)
Stack dump complete
Rebooting in 1 seconds..Resetting chip and restarting.

I am able to access the menu , and entered ‘o’ to boot the device, followed by ‘e’ according to the instructions. Then I exited the menu. The router rebooted, and got to the etherboot phase, but remained there as it attempted to use bootp protocol.

However, NetInstall still does not discover the router. I have the host computer set to a static IP 192.168.1.5, and assigned 192.168.1.7 to the router in the NetInstall settings. What should the default gateway be set to?

9

I would set the notebook to 192.168.88.2, router at 192.168.88.1.
If you can, run Windows XP - not in a virtual machine. Disable any software firewall.

10

OK, I understand that; what about this? From the NetInstall manual page:

Note: In Windows devices when static IP is being used, then you also must have default gateway specified.

As for XP, that isn’t available easily, but I do have a Win 7 machine, and I did disable the firewall. That box has a physical COM port on the mainboard. Most of my other gear runs Linux.

11

when static, I’ve always used 192.168.88.1 as the gateway

Windows 7 should be okay, but make sure you run as Administrator. NetInstall will need to bind to port 67 and 68, which require running ad admin.

12

@IntrusDave:
So I assign the 192.168.88.1 address to the router in the ‘Network Boot’ settings in NetInstall, running as admin.

Then I enter that .88.1 into the Windows connection properties on the host in the ‘Default Gateway’ field. Then I give the Windows box a static 192.168.88.2 address in the connection properties, and likely have to remove the DNS servers, as well, I’d think. Does that all sound right?

It’s been a very, very long time for me without using Windows. I tend to forget where stuff is. Too bad there’s no Linux app for this.

If that all makes sense, I’ll get on that this evening.

Thanks for staying with me on this.

13

Yes, that is what I do.

Unfortunately, no linux for NetInstall. I use WinBox on the Mac (I prefer Mac for my system). But I have never gotten NetInstall to run correctly under Wine.

14

It is about time that something is developed for that.
It should be easier than in Windows…
Maybe some image for a VM or usable in a Raspberry Pi?
Requiring a Windows machine with clean networking for this is becoming more and more problematic with every new version of Windows.

15

Well, I have to give up for tonight, because I’m completely running out of patience. This is far too dodgy a process, with Windows’ network requirements. Every time I make a change, I’m rebooting, the changes sometimes get lost and have to be entered again, the adapter itself misfires and has to be reinstalled on a few occasions, there are virginal sacrifices to be required in the near future…well, you get the point. I have to agree with this:

Requiring a Windows machine with clean networking for this is becoming more and more problematic with every new version of Windows.

I simply can’t get NetInstall to see the router, no matter what settings I use. Etherboot runs and runs in the tty, but gets nowhere, times out, and starts over again. The MAC address never shows up in NetInstall. I followed precisely the steps I posted in my last message, and have tried several variations on the theme without result. I must be missing something; I don’t believe that the unit is damaged/defective because of a software update with absolutely no functionality problems prior to the update event.

This guy apparently has NetInstall working in Wine: http://www.wirelessinfo.be/index.php/mikrotik/pages/netline I have not attempted it as yet, am too burned out by all this to do it now.

I just now notice something, though, and that is my version of NetInstall seems to be quite old, version 5.20. Not sure if it matters, but there is normally a release of NetInstall with each software version, so I will reach out for version 6.40 tomorrow, and see if it acts differently.

16

Well, after a few frustrating days I tried this out on a Gentoo box, and it worked very nearly perfectly, with almost no effort.

I wish I had thought to do this before in Linux; I didn’t have to do anything special. I just plugged the boot port on the damned thing into an unused port on the network switch. I did not even pull out the other running clients on the network, and did not even plug the host directly into the router [one-to-one]. Then I ran Netinstall with root privs in Wine on one of the Gentoo boxes on the network, set a random address in the running subnet, and held the reset button until it started etherboot. Then the LCD displayed Netinstall running, which picked up the MAC address quickly in the Netinstall window, as it should. The whole experiment took about 5 minutes to set up and accomplish.

The only bug I had was that when the packages were displayed in the lower pane of the Netinstall window, selecting ‘all’ crashed the installer, so I began again and selected the ‘routeros-tile-6.40.npk’ file ONLY, installed that and rebooted. That package gave me a running router.

Then I closed down Netinstall, opened Winbox in Wine, and installed the remainder of the packages there. [Although I’m not sure, perhaps the routeros-tile-6.40.npk file contains the entire set of packages? If it does, I reinstalled them in winbox, then.]

And to think, I could have had this done days ago in under 10 minutes, from bricked router to factory settings.

Anyhow, to everyone who pitched in, especially @IntrusDave, thanks for your help. And to anyone suffering from Windows fuxoring Netinstall, try Linux/Wine. I’m glad I did. The Wine version I used was 2.13, but I also tried 2.0, and that works for me as well, so I’d guess that any 2.x Wine version would work. Gentoo now has slotted Wine installation, so I was easily able to try multiple versions.

17

Great to hear that! I now use winbox under wine, it occasionally hangs but otherwise it works reasonably well.