September 27, 2008 10:51 PM

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

October 29, 2008 12:56 PM

Happy to see some patches for OpenWRT. I have given these a bash and it all compiles, and even better executes; but only if I tftp boot the board (ie, get it to download vmlinux.gz). For the life of me I cannot create a .chk file that works (I have done so with DD-WRT so understand the process).

Am I alone? Is anyone else having this problem? Does anyone have a fix? Will some one from Netgear step in? Would seriously love some help!

October 30, 2008 6:34 AM updated: October 30, 2008 6:37 AM

You have hit the nail on the head; creating the .chk file is my problem. You may find the info in this post some useful background to where I am at! Basically I can get the unit to boot via tftp (ie get the board to download the kernel image), but not from flash (after uploading a .chk file).

Your post suggests that I should convert the .trx file into a .chk file; however . its clearly not going to work! I refer you to this post by Nachi about creating images! Point here is that the first image in the trx should be LZMA compressed, and in the file created by OpenWRT its not its gziped! I will provide evidence for that in just a sec, but first lets try out your suggestion...

First lets create the image:

## The following are executed in the bin dir of OpenWRT
echo "U12H072T00_NETGEAR" > compatible.txt
touch emptyfile
packet -k openwrt-brcm-2.4-squashfs.trx \
       -f emptyfile -b compatible.txt \
       -ok kernel -oall kernel_rootfs \
       -or rootfs -i emptyfile
## Upload kernel_rootfs.chk using tftp

Now lets give it a go:

CFE> tftpd
Reading :: Done. 2166842 bytes read
Loading ..........................
Programming...done. 2166842 bytes written
Write len/chksum offset @ 0x0038FFF8...done.
Decompressing..........done


WGR614v8 - 1.5 (Fri Jun  6 15:53:24 CST 2008)
et0: Broadcom BCM47xx 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Controller 4.130.30.0
Device eth0:  hwaddr 00-1F-33-D1-C9-36, ipaddr 192.168.1.1, mask 255.255.255.0
        gateway not set, nameserver not set
Loading ..........................
too long file.
LZMA failed

As you can see that has failed, which is not a great surprise to me! OpenWRT, at least the way its setup for me, puts an lzma chain loader at the beginning of the TRX. This loader has been gziped, not lzma'd, hence the error above. The following posting describes how OpenWRT lays out its flash images, well worth a read!

Just to confirm here is a hexdump of the trx file created:

00000000  48 44 52 30 00 10 21 00  46 dc fb 2f 00 00 01 00  |HDR0..!.FÜû/....|
00000010  1c 00 00 00 04 09 00 00  00 a8 07 00              |.........¨..|

Whats important are the offsets (last three uin32_t's). The first section is 2279 bytes long, which happens to be the size of loader.gz in uild_dir/linux-brcm-2.4.

Ok I have already attempted to create images without the lzma-loader in other posts, so I guess the next thing to try is lzma the lzma-loader and hope that that works as expected!

First lets create the image:

mipsel-linux-objcopy -O binary -R .reginfo -R .note \
  -R .comment -R .mdebug -S loader.elf loader
lzma e loader loader.lzma
trx -o linux.trx loader.lzma vmlinux.lzma root.squashfs
packet -k image.trx -f emptyfile -b compatible.txt \
  -ok kernel -oall kernel_rootfs -or rootfs -i emptyfile

Ok, lets give that a try:

WGR614v8 - 1.5 (Fri Jun  6 15:53:24 CST 2008)
et0: Broadcom BCM47xx 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Controller 4.130.30.0
Device eth0:  hwaddr 00-1F-33-D1-C9-36, ipaddr 192.168.1.1, mask 255.255.255.0
        gateway not set, nameserver not set
Loading .........................
Decompressing..........done

Unfortunately as you can see I end up in the same place each time! I think I understand the process of the image creation, but clearly I am missing something! I know my tool chain works, and I know my kernel works, as I can tftp boot. What I can't seem to do is create an image that actually boot from flash.

What would be helpful is some more information on the boot loader (I know its CFE, but its clearly not the original from Broadcom). I also believe there is a difference between the North American and European versions of the loader; is this correct?

Any pointers to where I am going wrong here would be greatly received! Is anyone else getting to this point, or does it work for you? If it does work, can you tell me what I am missing!

October 30, 2008 2:34 PM

Great!! and thanks for sharing this...