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Quick way to re-enter your IP reservations after factory reset
Many of us hesitate much to go for factory reset mainly because of the load of repetitive work you need to do to restore your IP reservations especially if you have many such reservations.
An easie...
CrimpOn wrote:
......... I am not confident that "saving configuration" would be of much use in my situation, because the ways that my Orbi is disappointing me have appeared since an automatic firmware upgrade and I have continued to enter new device reservations. At this point, I suspect that "something is amiss" that only a reset to factory would address, and I have avoided doing that because of the prospect of typing in all those MAC addresses.
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Completely agree. usually why I choose to do a factory reset is that I suspect a data corruption somewere and a backup/restore will just get me back to where I was.
CrimpOn wrote:
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In addition to device reservations, the NVRAM dump also includes lines like this:
orbi_dev_name12=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Dicks New Tablet
The numbers do not match the "reservation" numbers. Any idea if this is something that could be entered with Telnet commands, or will it propogate automatically?
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The entry orbi_dev_name12=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Dicks New Tablet is the "Device Name" that you can edit in the "Attached Devices" list below (in the blue box):
You will also find another entry with the same MAC address like this
orbi_dev_name_ntgr9=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Samsung Tablet that corresponds to the device type (the red box) in the snapshot above.
The numbers do not match. The system uses only the MAC address to match the different entries with each other.
CrimpOn wrote:
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And.... I presume that changing the device reservations to be in order by IP address would not cause a problem, since the "factory reset" creates a totally empty table. (This is one of my other disappointments with Orbi firmware: that we cannot sort displays by column. This would not help the "attached devices" display, but it would at least cause the reservation table to be in IP order for a little while.
Yes, you can edit the commands as you wish, everything should have been wiped after a factory reset. You can also use the telnet commands to change an existing setting, so if you enter the config command for the same variable twice like this:
config set reservation3="192.168.1.20 A0:99:9B:0B:3F:5B Dicks Macbook"
config set reservation3="192.168.1.20 A0:99:9B:0B:3F:5B The new Macbook"
Then the second command will override the first one.
CrimpOn wrote:
.......... I also want to take the opportunity to give a few devices different IP addresses than before. (Should I change the IP's before and give devices time to "learn" them before the reset?)
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You don't need to change the IP's before, once you change the reservation, if you don't power cycle the device, then Orbi will not respond to the requests from the device (with the old IP address) which will force the device to renew it's DHCP lease and thus get the new IP address.
CrimpOn wrote:........
Disconnect hardwired connections to the router except for one PC (so they won't connect "too soon")
While it is powered on, stick a paperclip in the router until the LED turns amber
Do the same thing to the satellite - (is it OK to wait until later to do this?)
Using an ethernet connected PC, connect to the router ("admin", "password")
Do NOT create an SSID/password or router admin password
Go to the debug page and turn on telnet
Telnet to the router and use the commands to set the device reservations, names, ntgr's
Go to Advanced->Setup->LAN Setup and click "Apply" so the reservations will commit
(during this process, no WiFi devices will attach because they cannot find the SSID they want)
Go to the Wireless Setup page and set the SSID / password
Reconnect ethernet cables to the router
WiFi devices will begin connecting. Some will get the same DHCP they always had, some may get new IP addresses
Sync the router and satellite
Save the configuration file which can be reloaded in the future
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That looks like a perfect, well studied sequence to get a smooth factory reset. Go for it! :)
I am happy to report that "reset to factory" has fixed my Orbi RBR50 in terms of logging. The log now contains everything I asked for. i.e.
- Admin logins
- NTP (network time)
- DHCP assignments
- DoS and Port Scan
- Attempts to access blocked web sites (I turned that off because it also reports EVERY web site - stupid, stupid, stupid)
Thanks to ekhali for showing me how to do this with a minimum of effort. I will be interested how long my Orbi keeps logging as I want. At least, "it worked for me this time."
