Oleksandr ShyshatskyiandClaude Opus 5
ebc3d60c58
A printer flashed back to stock came up with the FlashForge screen and no Klipper behind it, and stayed that way however many times the stock package was flashed. The .cfg files were the obvious suspect and are not the fault: stock's run.sh does `cp $WORK_DIR/klipper/config/* /usr/data/config/ -rf`, and the printer's busybox unlinks a dangling symlink rather than writing through it, so printer.base.cfg and the seven beside it come back on every stock flash. The ff-*.cfg links left behind resolve to nothing and are included by nothing. Even the SAVE_CONFIG block our Klipper wrote into printer.cfg is harmless -- configfile.py marks every autosave section valid through access_tracking, so `[ff_tool 0]` there is not a config error on a stock klippy. All three were put to the printer's own binaries in the replica. What survives is /usr/prog/klipper/klipperDaemon. Every release links it at the mod, whose `start` does nothing on purpose -- klippy is an s6-rc longrun and a second unsupervised one would fight it for /dev/ttyS4 -- and the stock package has no klipperDaemon to copy over it: not in the software component, not in its md5sum.list, no line in run.sh. Stock's start.sh ends in `klipperDaemon start`, so the UI starts and klippy never does. installer/recovery.sh is the repair, packed by bin/pack-recovery.sh into a .tgz that carries no mod at all: FlashForge's own klipperDaemon, taken off a factory /usr/prog and gated on its md5, and their Klipper configs out of the stock package the build reads. It sweeps FlashForge's config directory by shape rather than by a list of names -- a symlink into $MODDIR there can only be ours -- refuses to run while the mod is still the firmware, and never touches printer.cfg, which no package has a copy of to put back. Output goes to work/recovery/: bin/pack.sh wipes work/out, and the replica lane installs the newest .tgz there as the mod under test. qa/replica/test_recovery.py holds the whole story against a real machine: the link the mod leaves, the busybox cp, the refusal, `klipperDaemon start` leaving no pid file, then the same command forking a real klippy once the file is back. Publishing lives in Klipper4FlashForge/stock-recovery, which checks this repo out and releases there, so a repair for owners of old releases is not buried among firmware releases they must not flash to get it. Two things found on the way, both in the harness rather than the mod: seed-prog.sh appended USER-CONFIG-MUST-SURVIVE as a plain comment after the SAVE_CONFIG header, and Klipper drops the entire autosave block on the first line there that does not start with '#*#'. Every replica ran with klippy seeing none of the machine's saved PID, shaper, mesh or probe values, and failing on an unrelated-looking missing option. It is written inside the block now, an older image's copy is repaired in place, and test_install.py asserts the invariant. installed_image() keyed its cache on the package md5 alone, so a rebuilt PRINTER_IMAGE silently handed back a bake from the old base -- which made the fix above read as ineffective twice before the cache was the suspect. The tag mixes in the base image id now, and build-printer-image.sh takes IMAGE_TAG so a rebuilt image can be published without moving a tag ci.yml pins. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015hdzEqXuFcY4xXALGPbBFV
Reforge
Custom firmware for the FlashForge Creator 5 and Creator 5 Pro.
It installs the way a normal FlashForge update does: copy one file to a USB stick, plug it in, power the printer on. No jailbreak, no soldering, no opening the case, no ssh needed to get started — the printer's own updater does the work.
Packages are published on the Releases page — two files per release, one per model, marked pre-release while the mod is young. Help and support: the Discord.
Unofficial and unaffiliated with FlashForge. It voids your warranty and you are responsible for your machine. See Status for what has actually been tried on hardware before you flash anything.
Status
It runs on real printers — both a Creator 5 Pro and a Creator 5 have been flashed and exercised; the pictured hardware is the Pro:
A checked box happened on that machine; an empty one has not, yet.
For everyone:
- Install and migration from stock firmware — the printer's own updater does it; your unit's factory calibration imports itself on the first boot
- Printing — gcode straight from the slicer, nothing edited
- Toolchanges — a current Klipper with real toolchanger support, in place of the 0.12-era tree FlashForge ships
- Nozzle-offset calibration
- Mainsail at
http://<printer-ip>/, with a current Moonraker behind it — anything that speaks the Klipper API works - Camera — mjpg-streamer, already on the printer; the mod just starts it
- Wifi
- HelixScreen on the printer's own screen
- Chamber heater — tested on the Creator 5 Pro; the regular Creator 5 correctly uses its heater-free chamber configuration
- Creator 5 (non-Pro) — package installed and exercised on hardware; see the feature-specific validation notes in the feature list
- Going back to stock — tested with the matching stock packages; the stock package restores everything it carries. Moonraker is not in it, so the mod's build stays and keeps working — see Support
For the tinkerer:
- ssh as root — a random password is chosen on the first install
and written to
anvil-password.txton your stick; updates keep it (make passwdbakes in your own)
What you give up
FlashForge's application is one binary, and replacing it takes everything
that lived inside it: the network API on :8898, and with it FlashPrint,
Orca's FlashForge profile and the mobile app. Moonraker's API takes over.
Flashing the stock package brings them back.
If your prints already come out the way you want and you like the printer's own screen, this mod is not for you. It trades FlashForge's polish for Klipper's reach, and it expects you to be comfortable with a Klipper config and an ssh session when something breaks — Is this for you is the honest version of that question.
Get it
Creator 5 and Creator 5 Pro are not interchangeable. The printer refuses a package built for the other model — the most common reason a flash "does nothing". Yours is in Settings → About.
| Your printer | The file on the Releases page |
|---|---|
| Creator 5 | Creator5-anvil-<date>.tgz |
| Creator 5 Pro | Creator5Pro-anvil-<date>.tgz |
Download the stock FlashForge package for your model before you begin. It is the undo button: flashing it back puts the printer as it was.
Start here
| Is this for you | Who should flash this, who should stay on stock, and what it asks of you |
| Installing | The flash, the first boot, your root password |
| Your first print | The go/no-go checks, calibration, and the two verification files |
| Support | The logs, and the way back to stock |
The full manual is at
reforge.readthedocs.io. If you want the
insides — one file, firmwareExe, with the stock boot scripts, updater and
recovery path left untouched — How it works is under
For contributors.
For the complete beta inventory and validation boundaries, see the feature list.
Credits
Built on the work of others: ghzserg/FF publishes the stock packages and factory image everything here starts from; Mainsail, Moonraker and HelixScreen are shipped as released; the toolchanger status API follows viesturz/klipper-toolchanger so tool-aware UIs work unchanged.