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NetGear GS108Ev3 firmware still cannot be updated from Linux (part 2)
To start, i'm want to apologize for this post, but i'm hangry that i spent almost 2 days trying to fix this, only to found that this is really a 5+ year old problem that netgear totally ignores, on a device that is designed be able to work with all OS.
So just got one GS108Ev3 a few days ago, tried to update the firmware and now i have a broken switch. I'm using linux and as i have found, netgear fail to fix a known problem reported more than 5 years ago and with multiple reports already and not even a warning about it in the manual nor in the firmware release notes.
The problem is that the upgrade firmware is broken in linux, no matter what browser is used, as reported here:
Sad that netgear and @StewartLiu doesn't think this is important, it is better to let users find this the hard way, let then brick their switch, then give no real points how to fix, let then search multiple posts in the net until they get the response that we need to finish the upgrade in windows and chrome... if they can find one... Good way to annoy your customers.
This is being reported every few months, but again, no fix and not even a warning
I tried factory reset, all browsers, different linux computers and distros, android, tftp, even external tools like https://github.com/jclehner/nmrpflash (that netgear should support directly, much easier and universal tool than a multi MB GUI tool) and even tried the ProSafe utility in wine, but all failed, the switch is always in update mode and i can't finish updating it in any way.
So after all this years with this know problem, how can i, a netgear customer that only have linux available, fix this and get back a working switch? No, i do not have any windows available, so yes, this is major problem for me and for all linux users, specially because we only found the problem AFTER we bricked the switch.
Any solution found MUST be added to the documentation AND place a warning in the firmware release notes (even if any new firmware fix the issue, people will be using older, broken firmware to update fo the fixed version, so same problem will always happen)
I can accept that a GUI tool isn't available in linux, but ALL features in the web interface MUST work in all OS, specially a managed switches that will for sure be used in more advanced network setups , where linux is usually way more used than windows.
Re: NetGear GS108Ev3 firmware still cannot be updated from Linux (part 2)
Hi
So after a long battle, i managed to find a windows LiveCD, boot up a virtual machine and use it to upload the firmware and exit the upgrade mode. As per the support, with the bootloader version i had, there was no other way. I end updating using firefox (no chrome required) in that windows (LiveCD) virtual machine on top of my linux desktop
After that, the support requested access to the windows virtual machine to test the new bootloader that should fix this problem. Today we managed to enter the hidden bootloader upload page from the windows liveCD VM and update the bootloader to version 2.06.03. With this version i tried again to upload the latest firmware from linux (using firefox) and it worked perfectly.
Support reported that probably the next firmware upgrade will update the bootloader to that version too and fix for everyone.
To update to the next firmware, you still need a windows (either for the firmware update or via support, the bootloader update), but after that linux should finally be able to update firmware without being locked out.
Now i can finally resume my nomad cluster setup! 🙂
I inquired your concern to the higher tier of NETGEAR Support. According to them, it would be best that you open a support ticket with the NETGEAR Support Team here at anytime. Kindly state your concern as well as include the link to this post.
Re: NetGear GS108Ev3 firmware still cannot be updated from Linux (part 2)
Hi
So after a long battle, i managed to find a windows LiveCD, boot up a virtual machine and use it to upload the firmware and exit the upgrade mode. As per the support, with the bootloader version i had, there was no other way. I end updating using firefox (no chrome required) in that windows (LiveCD) virtual machine on top of my linux desktop
After that, the support requested access to the windows virtual machine to test the new bootloader that should fix this problem. Today we managed to enter the hidden bootloader upload page from the windows liveCD VM and update the bootloader to version 2.06.03. With this version i tried again to upload the latest firmware from linux (using firefox) and it worked perfectly.
Support reported that probably the next firmware upgrade will update the bootloader to that version too and fix for everyone.
To update to the next firmware, you still need a windows (either for the firmware update or via support, the bootloader update), but after that linux should finally be able to update firmware without being locked out.
Now i can finally resume my nomad cluster setup! 🙂
