Posted on

Cisco RV series GUI login loop

If you’re trying to login to a Cisco RV series router and get stuck in a login loop (password is not rejected or accepted) then following the steps below.

You’ll be able to access the router again and have the configuration preserved!

  1. Format (FAT32) a USB stick.
  2. Download the latest RV340 firmware from Cisco’s website.
  3. Copy the firmware to the USB stick.
  4. Rename the firmware file to {PID}.img. Make sure to replace {PID} with the actual PID of your unit. This can be found on the unit’s label. For example, my unit’s PID is “RV340-K9”, so the file on the USB stick was renamed to “RV340-K9.img”. The PID and VID are displayed next to each other, so make sure you only use the PID.
  5. (Optional) Connect to the RV340 via the console port to confirm it’s booting up correctly.
  6. Insert the USB stick into the RV340.
  7. Turn on the RV340.

At this point, the unit will boot up and then apply the firmware upgrade. It will then reboot.

You’ll have to wait around 10 minutes for this process to complete. During this time the DIAG light will occasionally flash red.

Once the unit has booted up try logging into the GUI again.

Posted on

Access Cisco RV340 CLI via SSH

The Cisco RV340 looks like a great replacement for the now discontinued Netgear SRX5308, but dispite Cisco stating that Command Line Interface access is available via SSH, they don’t actually provide you with any instructions on how to connect!

When trying to connect via SSH the connection is promptly closed.

In order to get this working you need to enable SSH and then connect to a different port.

To enable SSH simply download a backup of the router’s configuration, open it in a text editor and find the following code.

Change the value false to true and then save the file.

Make sure you upload this file back to the router, apply the configuration and then reboot – just to make sure your changes are persistent.

You should now be able to connect to the router on port 2024 using the same credentials as the web GUI.

PuTTY SSH connection to Cisco RV340