Rooting Google WiFi

Plenty of other sites have already brought this up, but I wanted to have it referenced here for myself. I gave it a shot for myself & while I think I followed it all the way through, still seem to be missing the root access part. Will have to give it another round & see which step I may have missed.

GitHub: marcosscriven/galeforce

  • Remove the screw & gently pry off the bottom of the unit.
  • Hold the [RESET] button while plugging in a USB-C adapter with Power Delivery. The two I bought to use are: (1) dodocool USB C Hub Type C 3.1 Power Delivery, (2) USB-C Hub, iClever Mutiport Adapter
  • Keep the [RESET] button held until the status light is blinking orange
  • Next step, press “the tiny bubble switch” that marcosscriven shows in his post
  • The status light will then blink purple again, & then restart itself
  • Wait for the device to complete the reboot, & begins blinking purple again
  • Insert the pre-formated USB stick & press the “bubble switch” once more. You should then be all set!

Here is where I ran into the issue. At this point you should be able to login as root:

ssh root@192.168.86.1
Password: changeme

And for the love of god… Please, Please, PLEASE, make the first thing you do, is change the password. If you’re running through this process, you’re probably already a bit of a g33k, so changing the password should already be the first thing on your mind.

For those who aren’t g33ks, the password can be changed with the passwd command

EDIT 20170723-0912EST:
Yesterday I had opened an issue on the galeforce repo, with the problem I was having (listed above): Solid Purple But No SSH? #3. marcosscriven responded to me, to lend a hand to me & another user that was having the same issue. I’m assuming my problem was definitely user-related, so I gave the process another shot.

I followed the exact same process, except this time I used the OnHub Recovery Utility to make the USB drive. After that, I was all set!

A Google WiFi device in Developer Mode

Round 3?

So this will now be the third time I’ve made up this site? Seem to randomly be losing access or run into some issue or another. But, let’s see how long it lasts this time.