Flashing Removable Media

Devices that support removable media are relatively easy to flash with a custom firmware. The process involves simply writing a file to the drive. Several methods of doing this are outlined below.

Prerequisites

In order to flash a firmware file to removable media, you will need 2 things:

1. A firmware file to flash
2. Removable media that is compatible with your device

If you don't have the firmware file, the wiki page for your device should include a download link as well as details on what type of media is compatible. Once you have these, choose a method below to flash the firmware.

Etcher

Etcher is a program that writes disk images to digital media. It is designed to be easy to use and resistant to errors, making it useful for flashing devices that use removable storage.

We recommend using Etcher to write the firmware due to its ease of use.

Installing Etcher

Etcher can be downloaded from the Etcher website or using your package manager. It comes in 2 versions: A graphical version that enables drag and drop functionality and a command line version that enables power users to script and automate flashing.

Flashing with Etcher

Graphical Etcher

After installing etcher:

1. Open the application and connect your removable media to your commputer
2. Click "Select image" and choose the firmware file that you downloaded from your device page
3. Click "Select drive" and choose the removable media you wish to write to
4. Click "Flash!" and wait for it to finish

CLI Etcher

Flashing the firmware with the CLI version of Etcher is as simple as running:

   etcher firmware.img.gz

Etcher will ask which drive to write to and proceed to write the firmware.

CLI

You can locate your removable media by running sudo fdisk -l the following commands:

Take note of the output. It should contain something like /dev/mmcblk0. That's your memory card.

The firmware builder may produce a compressed image file. The following command uncompresses the file and sends it to the removable media. Be sure to replace the bold filename with the firmware file for your specific device and the bold path to removable media with the path on your system before running the command.

zcat openwrt-massmesh-meshnode-mvebu-cortexa53-globalscale_espressobin-squashfs-sdcard.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk0

Next Steps

Once the firmware has been written to the removable media, return to the page for your device to continue.