Lets say my company hire it guy, who bought few expensive mikrotik devices.
(This is theoretical question, not happened but its possible to happen)
He wanted to protect everything and give us password.
He connected through rs232 cable and set protected-routerboot
and reformat-hold-button to some XYX value cause we asked him to make router
impossible to reset to not have problems when someone will get close to our devices.
And he wanted to meet us and give all passwords and necessary information, but
day earlier he had accident and died in car crash.
So as sad as it is, we can only use all those expensive devices as bricks?
As an emergency recovery option, it is possible to reset everything by pressing the button at power-on for a set reformat-hold-button time. You will > have to remember > this setting, > otherwise even a reformat will not be possible and the device will not be recoverable.
ummm - the universe doesn’t end whenever max seconds goes by - that’s just the most it will allow you to set the value to… so you should still be able to hold the button for 301 seconds…
As an emergency recovery option, it is possible to reset everything by pressing the button at power-on for a set reformat-hold-button time. You will > have to remember > this setting, > otherwise even a reformat will not be possible and the device will not be recoverable.
If holding button would help, why doc does not mention it?
I take that to mean that if you set the “hold-the-button” period to be longer than the default that you’ll need to remember to hold it at least that long…
So 301 seconds should be enough for a guaranteed “long-enough” period… Not sure if holding it too long doesn’t work though - otherwise that would make for a long long period of guessing…
And wiki.mikrotik would omit this as not important information?
Cause those doc i quoted few times already does not say about it.
But everyone here is talking about holding button and not what i asked about.
Why?
Anyone tested it on own device?
How do you know that it will help if AGAIN:
DOC DOES NOT SAY THAT IT WILL HELP!
As an emergency recovery option, it is possible to reset everything by pressing the button at power-on for a set reformat-hold-button time. You will > have to remember > this setting, > otherwise even a reformat will not be possible and the device will not be recoverable.
Am i the only one who see this text?
otherwise even a reformat will not be possible and the device will not be recoverable.
Why everyone is ignoring this?
There is nothing about holding button for longer period…
Thanks for the correction, the wiki page has been updated to:
As an emergency recovery option, it is possible to reset everything by pressing the button at power-on for longer than reformat-hold-button time.
Even if reformat-hold-button time is forgotten, holding the reset button for more than 300s will allow you to perform reformat.
So you will be able to restore your device, even reformat-hold-button time is forgotten.
This feature is tested, and you should not have any problems with it.
Please note that AFTER complete reformat, on some Routerboards it can take a few minutes until the device will appear in Netinstall window.
It looks like we were right to ignore that. This red text didn’t say “if held for any time longer than the set period, device will explode with the force of a type II supernova.” So it would’ve taken 5 minutes to test it and go “oh - I guess it worked after all” instead of spending a day or two yelling at volunteers on the forum about your interpretation of the Wiki - which turns out to have been written in a misleading fashion.
Why? I mentioned about it i first post.
I think wiki doc is to help, and whole topic was build on it, on this one assumption missing in wiki, as you wrote: written in misleading fashion.
I was trying to get all attention into it and nobody referred to this, but only all were talking about holding button for longer - which was NOT officially recommended in wiki doc page. Now it is. After all this yelling, ok, but if someone would check it in first place it wouldnt be needed. I might be wrong but i think that official wiki doc has more authority than forum volunteers.
Fine. Fine. Now even you know that holding the button for at least 5 minutes does the job. Now it is the time you should make a real test if you don’t believe…
Who said i dont believe?
After pointing out differences between whats is said here and doc, and after reading fixed doc(which now contains additional info), i have no reasons to disbelieve.
If its in doc i am sure its true.
It depends who put this sign on doors.
It could be good willing user - but i dont know if this user is really good…he can be good but i have no way to check it so i would have some doubts.
especially when i saw in other posts that it bricked device.
In that case the best idea would be to check if door is locked or not - i have nothing to loose.
Lets say this room is really on fire - i can check if doors are locked. I dont risk anything cause this are only doors i have to check.
Now, this example has no connection to reality.
Why?
Because device a firm bought cost some money - so there is something to loose.
Do you see it?
Your example:
Room on fire - sign “door is locked” - room is already on fire - i have nothing to loose so i can check it and save life or dont check it and loose life.
Buying device = spending money - in case i wrote about in first post = loosing money (doubts cause wiki says about UNRECOVERABLE DEVICE!!!) - and now seeing that i wouldnt loose money cause i CAN RECOVER!!!
Who is saying this?
Volunteers on forum or authorized wiki doc?
Risking to open door when room is on fire is not real risk cause i can win a life.
Here case is different - i can loose money if device is really unrecoverable.
Now i know that it is recoverable.
When I originally read about protected RouterBOOT, I understood reformat-hold-button as something that will make it time consuming, for someone who steals the device, to make it operable. If you needed to hold the button for exact time (± second or two), it would take you awful lot of time before you’d succeed. After half a day spent by button holding and waiting, you’d probably realize it’s not worth it and next time you’d steal something else.
But if all it takes is to hold the button for five minutes and it’s just one time operation with guaranteed success, what’s the point then? It definitely won’t make life noticeably harder for thieves. So what else? To give security some time to arrive, before evil hacker reformats the device and loads own config? It would be easier for them to just swap the device. Am I missing something?
