I have successfully flashed three air routers but tonight I came up against an unusual one.
This was a used unit in the standard Ubiquiti packaging and inside the box was a quickstart guide under the brand "Media Force"
It seems that this unit was originally supplied to the Royal Air Force by Media Force for internet access at the barracks of RAF Culdrose.
This was given away by an electrical test sticker on the psu.
Having tried unsuccessfully to do a hard reset I decided to try a tftp firmware recovery.
Try as I might I could not get the firmware to take.
It will go through the motions but when it re-starts, the original firmware remains.
Now usually when a hard reset is carried out, the air router defaults to 192.168.1.1 with username and password of "ubnt".
However this one defaults to 192.168.0.1 and an unknown username and password.
I can connect to the device over wifi with the supplied Key printed on the sticker underneath, and also with direct cable connection, but I am stuck at the login page without knowing the username and password.
I have concluded that the firmware is somehow locked down but I have not seen this on Ubiquiti gear before.
Has anyone else come across this problem before and if so, did you manage to get around it?
Best Regards
Eddie de G7DNM
You are here
Air Router (Media Force) Branded Firmware Locked.
Tue, 09/13/2016 - 17:46
#1
Air Router (Media Force) Branded Firmware Locked.
Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer
1) see if the factory AirOS image will tftp load, then try AREDN. (caution to not bypass AirOS v5.5 and v5.6 downgrade step at any point.)
2) use the 'bricked' device with bad load of AREDN from a v5.6 AirOs image -- pull cover, attach serial console, do the uresue command option that forces-allows the image to be loaded bypassing some of the checks. Guessing how much the uboot has been locked down here...
Joe AE6XE
At any rate, just in case you run into that problem, you may need to revert back to 5.5.8
Looking up Media Force UK on google was interesting. Looks like an ISP dedicated to providing internet access to the troops.
Being its re-branded firmware there are a LOT of things possible, just like Ubiquiti would say about AREDN firmware "We can't know what the firmware does or changed" Being it is for the armed forces I know if I was writing firmware I would sure as heck lock it down to keep the number of service calls I had to do. Not sure if "Media Force" has the same opinion on the matter, but I can honestly say with how inquisitive some troops can be I wouldn't make it easy to be field configured.
Apologies for my late response, been a little busy on the DIY (Done It Yet) front.
Thanks to everyone for there response to my question.
I will try to tftp into the air router when I get some spare time.
Maybe it could be that simple but knowing my luck I think not.
In the meantime I came upon this while digging around.
Maybe it will help.
https://community.ubnt.com/t5/airRouter/Remote-provisioning-airrouter/td-p/327085
Regards
Eddie de G7DNM