8. Upgrading the firmware

Before you upgrade, here is a tip the documentation does not mention: disconnect all the patch cables except the one from the machine you are using to upgrade the box. Handling a lot of other network traffic while the firmware load is gong on can corrupt the firmware.

There are three ways you can upgrade your Linksys firmware.

One is to click the "Upgrade firmware" link on the help page. Unfortunately, this required Java in the browser under the 1.38 firmware. That has changed under 1.44. It looks as though you can now fill in the field that says " Please select a file to upgrade:", click the Upgrade button, and have the right thing happen.

Another way is to use one of Linkys's firmware-upgrade floppy images from their website. This requires that you boot Windows or use WINE.

The third way is to use tftp. This is how I did it. There is a tftp client included with Red Hat Linux. To upgrade your firmware this way, do the following steps:

Capture a copy of your settings. The firmware upgrade may wipe some of them. Older versions nuked everything back to factory defaults; newer versions preserve your basic settings but clear some advanced ones.
Download a copy of the new firmware. You should find it at Firmware Upgrades for your Linksys Products on the Linksys site. Note that what you get may well be marked "For Windows Users" and be a zip archive. Open it in a scratch directory, because it will rudely create several Windows files wherever you unpack it. The file you need will be called CODE.BIN.
Disable the router password Note that every attempt I made to do this with Mozilla failed (both under 1.38 and 1.44). Konqueror worked fine. Go to the Password tab, backspace over both sets of asterisks until both the Password and Confirm fields are blank, and click Apply.
Cross your fingers and load the firmware The command session you want will to see will look something like this, with your router's IP address substituted for 192.168.1.1:
tftp 192.168.1.1 tftp> binary tftp> put code.bin Sent 386048 bytes in 10.3 seconds tftp>
Don't panic if the client hangs for a bit before returning and do not abort the transfer. The command is writing to firmware, and the Linksys hasn't got much of a brain. Wait for it to finish.
Re-enable your router password and other settings. You'll be able to tell the upgrade worked because the firmware version number has changed.

You're done.