Hi,
I recently bought a used RUTX50 without power supply - it was sold as untested…
I thought I could try my luck.
Unfortunately, it does not seem to boot up. All lights (except WAN&LAN ports) are on and flicker on-off-on once at powering the device with a new 18W power supply.
It does not react to the reset button - not after 4s and not after 20s. LAN ports are dead as well.
Is there any way to unbrick it and recover it or does this signal a more serious hardware defect?
If I open it could I use UART or any other method to recover it? It is hard to find ressources on it.
Hi Mike,
thank you for pointing that out. I overlooked it.
Unfortunately this does not work.
If I keep the reset button pressed, all lights (except the LAN&WAN ports) flash in one second cycles on-off until I release the reset button. After I released the button all lights stay on - except the Ethernet ports, they do not flash at all. On the PC it says - Ethernet not connected, PC ethernet does not flash as usual, if connected to my LAN.
I plugged it into the PCs Ethernet port directly - two different cables, all ports…
Could it be that the Ethernet part is broken?
Is there maybe another method to check via the USB-A port?
Unfortunately, when it comes to the USB port, that is territory that I’ve never strayed into. It looks like you can configure an RS232 console and access with Putty, but to what extent this helps you, could be questionable. I’m assuming it is not enabled by default and as you can’t access the UI, it seems a ‘Catch 22’ situation.
Probably best to see what Monday brings, when the Teltonika guys are on-line in the community.
Just my grain of salt /etc/inittab contains a /sbin/askfirst which starts a /usr/libexec/login.sh process on /dev/ttyMSM0.
If you have a USB->tty => tty->USB cable converter and the RUTX is able to boot you’ll have a login: prompt on this interface. Useful only if you have a completely broken network/firewall configuration and are too lazy to restart from scratch.
Another way is to connect to the IPQ4019 serial port the connector is on the printed circuit board a soldering iron is of great help there. Never had to do it on RUTX routers, done on many other devices (AX9000 WRT3200ACM R8500 RAMIPS and a few others ie Foscam cameras etc).
Huh may need some not basic knowledge …
If you’ve already tried out the bootloader menu and it didn’t help in any way, then you could also try @flebourse 's suggestion. Otherwise, my only recommendation would be to inspect the PCB physically to see if there are any burnt parts or anything of the sort.
physically check, if the LAN port hardware is fixable.
TTY via USB
It could be disabled.
In both cases I will need the password, right? The sticker on the device is damaged, so that cannot see it. Will this be an issue or can I flash a blank firmware with a standard password?
This will be an issue.. Once a device is reset, it goes back to the default password on the back label of the device. Unfortunately, we don’t save those in our database either for security reasons.
No, probably not. It is enabled by default on all OpenWrt and derivative firmwares. The kernel must be started however for the login process to be active.
Maybe this topic could give you some ideas. If it is possible to obtain an uart connection I would try to boot the device with the added “init=/bin/sh” option to the bootstring. This will bypass the password stage and you’ll be able to change it on the fly. I’ve done similar things many times.
IMHO worth a try. You might need a 3.3V TTL to USB converter.
I have the opportunity to return the RUTX50 to the seller for a refund. I have to take this opportunity, since I have doubts about the Ethernet ports (no lights or connection at all - I need them for my use case).
I want to thank you all for your support and it is good to know, that there would be more possibilities available to reset the device if needed!
