I just spent hours recovering from an etherboot loop.

1. Make at least 2 working partitions
2. If Netinstall fails to install the OS, do not try again. Copy the remaining working partition to the erased partition first.
3. If Netinstall stops detecting the routerboard, reboot the PC.
4. If Netinstall fails to install, use a different network adapter (I got it working with Intel over Thunderbolt)

Can you explain each of these steps? Because none of them makes sense at the moment. What is the background behind each of these steps?

1. I had 2 working partitions. After Netinstall failed to install twice, I was left without OS on the router.
2. I spent hours trying to get Netinstall to detect the router again, until I found a post saying that the ports get corrupted and you have to reboot the PC. I did it, and it detected the router immediately.
3. I found another post after much searching that said to try with an ethernet dongle if Netinstall fails to install. What I had was a Thunderbolt dock with an Intel controller. It just worked.

I had to use Netinstall because upgrading from the router would not work, it would stay at the same version after reboot.