Any freshly installed "vanilla" OpenWrt Image, will start with these defaults:

• The internal interface lan and the wireless interface/interfaces wlan0 / wlan1 are bridged together to br-lan
• wifi is disabled
• the IP address of the internal interface/bridge of the OpenWrt-device is 192.168.1.1/24
• dnsmasq is running; it allocates IP addresses in the range of 192.168.1.100 to .250 on the internal interface to connected hosts
• dropbear does not accept connections
• telnet daemon is running on standard port (23)

OpenWrt will keep booting into this state until you set a password:

• login to your router via telnet 192.168.1.1:

  BusyBox v1.17.3 (2011-02-22 23:42:42 CET) built-in shell (ash)
  Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
    _______                     ________        __
   |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
   |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
   |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
            |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
   ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT (bleeding edge, r26290) ----------
    * 1/4 oz Vodka      Pour all ingredents into mixing
    * 1/4 oz Gin        tin with ice, strain into glass.
    * 1/4 oz Amaretto
    * 1/4 oz Triple sec
    * 1/4 oz Peach schnapps
    * 1/4 oz Sour mix
    * 1 splash Cranberry juice
   -----------------------------------------------------
  root@openwrt:~$
  

• type passwd into the prompt. You will be prompted to set a new password for the user root:

  root@openwrt:~$ passwd
  Changing password for root
  New password:
  Retype password:
  Password for root changed by root
  root@openwrt:~$
  

• please choose a secure password, (consult e.g password strength)
• after you set a password the telnet daemon will be disabled, type exit into the prompt
• without reboot, SSH is now available; so is HTTPS if the WebUI (LuCI) is installed with it's TLS-modules
• login again with ssh root@192.168.1.1 or use signature.authentication
• proceed with basic.config

Open your browser and connect to the router at its default address (usually 192.168.1.1). Login using username root with an empty password.

Then click on the left in the top bar on Administration, then go to System in the bar underneath. A page to change the password is displayed.

Write your desired password into the field Password and repeat it in the field Confirmation. Finally click on Save & Apply.

Your password is set now.

Open your browser and connect to the router at its default address (usually 192.168.1.1). The WebUI will now ask you to set a password. Write your password into the New Password field and again into the Confirm Password field then click set.

Open your browser and connect to the Web Interface at its default address (192.168.1.1) the username is admin OR root and the password is password. You can ssh to the router at the default address (192.168.1.1) the username is root the password is password. Unlike OpenWrt the telnet port is not open.

If you encounter problems with login, i.d. you can't login, this may very well be a problem with your firewall settings in Linux or Windows. If you have any firewalls, you may disable them. Also, once you set a password in OpenWrt, telnet will no longer functions (see above).

Try again after a minute or two. On the first bootup OpenWrt will be busy setting up the filesystem and generating SSH keys; the SSH server won't start until after the keys have been generated.

Once you've set a password new telnet connections are immediately terminated. You must SSH at that point.