As subject, I need to debug netinstall, and there is no way to do that without a serial port.
Has anyone tried soldering on to the internal UART header in the hAP AC^2? Does it work?
I’ve tried this before, I think on a hAP AC Lite, and the port is disabled somehow which is why I am asking if the same is true on the AC^2.
Chris
It will not work, it only works with special RouterBOOT version that is not public.
What do you need to debug? Maybe we can simply help you make it work.
Hi
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/netinstall-broken-for-hap-ac2-and-or-6-42-6/121719/1
^^ this problem. I have also emailed support about it (ticket ID 2018072522004283, currently unanswered)
The problem with debugging any netinstall problems is that, if the script does not run for some reason and therefore there is no IP address configured, you end up with a brick. There is no way to debug, you just have to guess what is wrong by trial and error. This makes development extremely difficult.
Hence asking for a serial port.
Is this ‘special’ version of RouterBOOT available? I am quite happy to sign an NDA and/or send you a list of over 13,000 serial numbers of routers that I have purchased from you to demonstrate that it is worth your effort to help me.
So the initial problem I was trying to debug has now been solved.
But that doesn’t explain this question. Why would Mikrotik go out of their way to disable the serial port on the smaller routers? CCR’s have them, so I can only assume it is not a security issue.
What’s so bad about power users who are capable of soldering a header to the board having access to a serial port for debugging purposes?
I’m pretty sure it got to do with why teltonika also disabled the serial port - it was flagged as exploit/vulnerability.
Disabling UART means a lot less information is available with low effort. Chip off extraction is next on the list if you want to find vulns in a close source product like this.
Its just good security to disable it on the production build.