On Jul 6, 2014, at 11:00 AM, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:

I would check for the presence of the dropbear-xinetd package and /etc/xinetd.conf and xinetd.d/ssh



The dropbear-xinetd package was absent while the other items 
above were present. I created a new build with dropbear-xinetd but 
the behavior is the same. 

I used the failsafe mechanism to get telnet access into the boxes and 
tried to pull in a good firmware image into /tmp as described here:

https://archive.org/details/EnterOpenwrtFailsafeModeAndReflashAFirmware

However when dropbear refused to start even manually I discovered 
there is no dropbear executable on the router. 

I compiled this build with :

  CONFIG_DEFAULT_dropbear=y
# CONFIG_PACKAGE_dropbear is not set
CONFIG_PACKAGE_dropbear-xinetd=y
# CONFIG_PACKAGE_dropbearconvert is not set
# CONFIG_PACKAGE_dropbearconvert-xinetd is not set

which was the config for 3.10.44-6 release, as described in 
cerofiles-3.10 github repo, and which has a working ssh. 

Do I need CONFIG_PACKAGE_dropbear even though 3.10.44-6 
seems to get dropbear without including this config ?

In the absence of dropbear  is there a good way to transfer files. 
I couldn't find any file transfer options available in failsafe mode
other than a wget built into busybox. To use this I would 
have to setup my mac as a webserver. 

Ranga