Linksys WRT1200AC, WRT1900AC, WRT1900ACS, and WRT3200ACM Purchasing Information
The Linksys WRT3200ACM has two boot partitions available, essentially equivalent to having two separate disk drives in a computer (one with Windows and one with Linux for example). The OpenWRT website article on the WRT3200ACM explains the dual booting.
Flashing Firmware
The comment made on the OpenWRT website about flashing an image, "flashed in an alternating fashion" is accurate, but incomplete. If you're doing this from the Linksys firmware partition you'll find that the device reboots to the same Linksys firmware. If one is flashing from OpenWRT or DD-WRT (the only two I tested), the device flashes the image and reboots to the newly flashed partition. I lost the link for switching partitions from within the Linksys stock firmware, but several websites document different ways to do it. The following sections have the commands for OpenWRT and DD-WRT.
Commands for OpenWRT
- To determine which boot partition is active: /usr/sbin/fw_printenv -n boot_part[1]
- To change which boot partition is active: /usr/sbin/fw_setenv boot_part 1 OR /usr/sbin/fw_setenv boot_part 2[1]
Commands for DD-WRT
- To determine which boot partition is active:ubootenv get boot_part[2]
- To change which boot partition is active: ubootenv set boot_part 1[2]
For the determination and setting of the active boot partition, there were several web sites that referenced the same command as for OpenWRT, but I couldn't find the "fw_" commands.
OpenWRT Tricks and Tips
References and Thanks to...