Earlier this year 2011 I have done flashing of three WRT160NL routers. 
Now I have bought two more of the same model and I get Kernel panic error after flashing. 
Flashing the Original Linksys firmware works and dd-wrt works too, but I prefer OpenWRT.
I tried different versions including the latest one /backfire/10.03.1-rc5/


VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available 
partitions:
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-
block(0,0)

and with the backfire rc5 same thing
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-
block(0,0)


The problem is that Linksys has changed the flash chip. Problem was discussed in forum, 
but there was no understandable result: 
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=29609&p=1


A new Russian link is describing how to set up openWRT on WRT160NL
http://skeletor.org.ua/?p=1699#comment-14442

Kernel panic problem could be solved by trunk version of OpenWRT.

Trunk can be found  at 
http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/
Tried jffs sysupgrade, did not work

Squashfs factory works:
http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-wrt160nl-squashfs-factory.bin

Now OpenWRT  works and I am happy again. 


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No Luci web interface need to install it
opkg update
opkg install luci
/etc/init.d/uhttpd enable
/etc/init.d/uhttpd start

in console set password
passwd
now login in Luci OK
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