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March 23, 2009 03:45 PM

Categories: OpenWRT

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ZenGuy

Member
Joined: 10/03/2008

!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->

I was impressed with the ease of use with DD-WRT. Grab a binary and flash the router, then you're off and running with a slick GUI and all.

That was until I read about the controversial practices surrounding the DD-WRT project.

As a matter of principle I have opted to use OpenWrt instead. Ideally, I would install the OpenWrt Kamikaze software along with X-Wrt as a GUI to access the features. So several questions present themselves:

1) Does the OpenWrt Kamikaze project support the Netgear WGR614L router natively? In other words, can I grab the source, compile it and flash my router without substantial fear of bricking it? The entry on their WIKI page is confusing regarding support of the WGR614L.

2) Why would I want to use the "Bleeding Edge" build of the OpenWrt firmware that is posted on this site, when I could just grab the source from the OpenWrt site? (The bricking bug issue with this version is troubling.)

3) Is installation of the X-Wrt software easy and painless or is this a minefield that I'm about to step into?

4) Is there a clear concise guide on how to do what I wish to do?

I have Linux experience, so I am not afraid of the command line and can follow directions properly. It seems like it should be possible to post some binaries to ease the installation process for newbies like DD-WRT has done.

I think that in the end, most users expect to spend a minimal amount of time flashing their router, and a maximum amount of time using it. I firmly believe that this process needs to be simplified for OpenWrt to get greater adoption on this hardware platform.

Thanks.

Discussion:    Add a Comment | Comments 1-25 of 25 | Latest Comment

Generic Member Avatar
Member
March 23, 2009 11:57 PM

Hi ,
I m not sure abt support of WGR614L in openwrt kamikaze project ....
The bleeding edge environment posted here contains patches needed to support WGR614L and it works fine with WGR614L ....
As far as GUI support is concerned u need to install X-WRT ... but I have seen some people who are already trying this ....

http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/10720/Trying-to-add-GUI-in-OpenWRT

So don't know how much of pain it is ...
Once u r done with OpenWRT installation u can get instructions for what u want to do from OpenWRT wiki .....

Generic Member Avatar
Member
March 24, 2009 7:31 AM

Thanks for the reply.

Do you have any comments about the OpenWrt crash issue?

http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/10735/OpenWRT-Bleeding-Age-crash-issue/

It looks like this thread was started after the release of the Bleeding Edge build, so it's still a concern.

Also, how did you end up recovering your router?

Generic Member Avatar
Member
March 24, 2009 7:57 AM

ZenGuy said: Thanks for the reply. Do you have any comments about the OpenWrt crash issue? http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/10735/OpenWRT-Bleeding-Age-crash-issue/ It looks like this thread was started after the release of the Bleeding Edge build, so it's still a concern. Also, how did you end up recovering your router?

Yep.... the crash happened only when I tried to add the GUI support and flashed the router with the new f/w ..... with bleeding edge build that is avlbl here I did not face any problem ....

It took me some time to get to the real cause behind the crash and that z why it has been not mentioned in initial posts abt this ....

BTW i tried to recover my board with JTAG and it seems I have damaged the flash and JTAG is not able to recognize it ...

bzing2 Avatar
Member
April 29, 2009 4:03 AM

I will wade in here as I am responsible for the Bleeding Edge Environment... I will try and cover the points raised (sorry for briefness, lacking in life time!).

* Unfortunately OpenWRT does not natively support the WGR614L

* The Bleeding Edge Environment was created as a vehicle to carry the patches in the short term; until they are accepted into OpenWRT. Unfortunately attempts to get them accepted have, thus far, failed...

* Building x-wrt is a matter of using the OpenWRT "feeds" mechanism, this can be done on the tree in the above environment! Have a look at scripts/feeds and feeds.conf. (BTW, this means you dont have to do an upgrade on the box using OpenWRT)

* There are two "known" issues with upgading: The fist is the "magic checksum", look at the ngr-flash utility in the above and on this site, and the second is a bug in the flash driver as exercised by jffs2 in openwrt. The former is fixed, the latter is not! Note, you can always build openwrt without jffs2 support.

Hope that helps, again sorry for the non-answers, lacking in time...

Dav Avatar
Member
May 5, 2009 3:05 AM

About OpenWRT flashing, what needs to be done after transfering chk file with tftp? I still have my power button blinking..

I posted a comment here
http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/discussion/10978/Hunk-1-FAILED/#1934

Tathagata Das Avatar
NETGEAR
May 6, 2009 12:08 AM

After transferring the chk image with tftp board will be automatically rebooted. You do not need to do anything explicitly. Are you able to access the board ?
Can you send me the console dump for debugging the problem ?

Dav Avatar
Member
May 6, 2009 1:16 PM

Here are the step :
>tftp 192.168.1.1
>verbose
>binary
>put openwrt-wgr614l-squashfs-ww.chk
Here I can see that the data is transfered to the router
When it's done, nothing happens..
I have the green power led blinking, the orange test led on, and my ethernet led on.
I still can ping the router but that's it.
So, no, I can not access to the board.

Dav Avatar
Member
May 28, 2009 3:14 PM

I tried with another image (dd-wrt.v24-11793_NEWD_mini_wgr614v8-L.chk), I got the same efect... I'm stuck!! please help!

Dav Avatar
Member
May 28, 2009 6:36 PM updated: May 28, 2009 6:37 PM

After transfering the file, nothing seem to happen (power led is still blinking). So I reboot manually.
I can see that during the reboot, the router tries to reach 192.168.1.2 (whatever the real address of my laptop is). Then if this IP address exists, it tries to download a vmlinuz with tftp..

arp who-has 192.168.1.2 tell 192.168.1.1
arp reply 192.168.1.2 is-at 00:1a:92:4d:12:f0
IP 192.168.1.1.1233 > 192.168.1.2.69: 16 RRQ "vmlinuz" octet
IP 192.168.1.2 > 192.168.1.1: ICMP 192.168.1.2 udp port 69 unreachable, length 52

Is this normal????????

Generic Member Avatar
Member
May 29, 2009 1:08 AM

ya this is normal ... but if it does not get vmlinuz it would automatically boot from flash ....
Actually WGR614L supports two boot options :
1 . Boot from network
2 . Boot from flash

During boot process it first looks to boot from network and if does not get vmlinuz in this case then it starts booting from flash which contains ur image ..

Dav Avatar
Member
May 29, 2009 7:30 PM

problem is it does not boot from flash... I dont know why !!!!!!!!!!!

Generic Member Avatar
Member
June 1, 2009 1:29 AM

LEDs blinking means that ur board is OK and has not got bricked .....
I would suggest u to flash it first with official netgear f/w for WGR614v8 avlbl at:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/10175/WGR614L-Firmware-v1.1.2_1.0.23/

and then try to flash it with unbroken image .. like the dd-wrt one which u used in ur last post ...

Dav Avatar
Member
June 1, 2009 7:23 PM

achilles said: LEDs blinking means that ur board is OK and has not got bricked ..... I would suggest u to flash it first with official netgear f/w for WGR614v8 avlbl at: http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/10175/WGR614L-Firmware-v1.1.2_1.0.23/ and then try to flash it with unbroken image .. like the dd-wrt one which u used in ur last post ...

Hi Achilles

I just tried to flash my board with the official netgear with the link you provided.. I have the same effect (nothin happen after the transfer is complete, and nothin better when I reboot)

It seems that my board doesnt want to boot on any image i transfer !!
What Can I do??????????Cry

Dav Avatar
Member
June 9, 2009 5:38 PM

Can anyone help me? Why my board won't boot on any image I transfer???
What are my options now (except throwin this router away)?

Generic Member Avatar
Member
June 10, 2009 12:07 AM

Well .. u probably need to access its console through a serial cable and see what's happening inside ...
May be then we can solve ur issue ...

Dav Avatar
Member
July 30, 2009 6:11 PM

Okay, I finally got a console access. Here is what I got:


----------------------------------------------------------------
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-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF, ipaddr 192.168.1.1, mask 255.255.255.0
gateway not set, nameserver not set
Loader:raw Filesys:tftp Dev:eth0 File:192.168.1.2:vmlinuz Options:(null)
Loading: Failed.
Could not load 192.168.1.2:vmlinuz: Timeout occured
Loading .
Image chksum: 0xFFFFFFFF
Calc chksum: 0x00000000
Reading ::
---------------------------------------------

So, here I upload a chk file with tftp (tried netgear and alternatives ones)
Here is the result

-----------------------------------------------------------

Reading :: Done. 3268666 bytes read
Reading ::

-----------------------------------------------

I should see a "loading" after the received bytes, right?
What 's wrong ?? why my router wont load the firmware?

thks in advance

Tathagata Das Avatar
NETGEAR
July 31, 2009 12:07 AM

It may happen that your last firmware erase some or total nvram section. If bootloader fails to match the board id then it would not write that image into flash.
You can reset nvram variable from hardware or you can reset board id and try again.

Dav Avatar
Member
July 31, 2009 3:56 AM

Tathagata Das said: It may happen that your last firmware erase some or total nvram section. If bootloader fails to match the board id then it would not write that image into flash. You can reset nvram variable from hardware or you can reset board id and try again.
Can you tell me how I can do that?

Tathagata Das Avatar
NETGEAR
July 31, 2009 4:51 AM

Power off the router. Press the hardware reset pin. In that pressing condition power on the board. You can see some message in the console.
You probably see message like "Committing NVRAM". After that release the pin.
Then try to upload the firmware again.
If that does not work then set board id from CFE prompt.

nvram set board_id="U12H072T00_NETGEAR"
nvram set boardid="U12H072T00_NETGEAR"
nvram commit

Actually I forget the name of the variable. It is either board_id or boardid.

Dav Avatar
Member
July 31, 2009 12:29 PM updated: August 2, 2009 6:26 PM

I tried the reset + power process you explained, here is the result:

--------------------------------------------------------
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-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF, ipaddr 192.168.1.1, mask 255.255.255.0
gateway not set, nameserver not set
loaddefault!
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-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF, ipaddr 192.168.1.1, mask 255.255.255.0
gateway not set, nameserver not set
loaddefault!
------------------------------------------------------------
and so on until I release the reset pin (and then I got the same output than before)...

So I guess I should try the nvram commands on the CFE prompt..

Dav Avatar
Member
July 31, 2009 1:19 PM updated: August 2, 2009 7:06 PM

So I used CFE prompt (I had difficulties to get on it with minicom).

Anyway I tried all of the command you mentioned :
nvram set board_id="U12H072T00_NETGEAR"
nvram set boardid="U12H072T00_NETGEAR"
nvram commit

In each case I got : command status=0
is it ok?

Then I tried to flash the board (again) but ther is no visible improvements!! :(:(
What else can I do?

I looked at this post http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/10709/CFE-1.5-Question
CFE> nvram get board_id gives me the right response
U12H072T00_NETGEAR
command status=0
I read stuff about CFE 1.3 Should this solve my problem?

Tathagata Das Avatar
NETGEAR
August 3, 2009 1:45 AM

From the log it looks to me that you have successfully written the board id. You can definitely try with CFE 1.3. You can upload CFE 1.3. It should solve your problem.
Let me know about the outcome.

Dav Avatar
Member
August 3, 2009 9:46 AM

Tathagata Das said: From the log it looks to me that you have successfully written the board id. You can definitely try with CFE 1.3. You can upload CFE 1.3. It should solve your problem. Let me know about the outcome.

yeah the boar id is fine.. but this has no effect on my problem.I am expecting the "loading" after reading tftp.. do you have a clue on what is going on?

About CFE, is it ok for european board? It seems ther are some differences between north american and european boards.. is it about the CFE? what about official Netgear firmware.. the one on this website is for both north american and european boards?

 I think ill try the CFE 1.3 tonight.

Dav Avatar
Member
August 3, 2009 5:53 PM

Ok I succeeded. The details for those who are in the same trouble

- I set a up a tftp server on my laptop (192.186.1.2)
- I flash the CFE in 1.3 version
CFE> flash -noheader 192.168.1.2:v8_cfe_1_3 flash1.boot
- reboot
- I had to set a mac adress (writen below the board)
CFE> ifconfig eth0 -hwaddr=01:23:45:67:89:10 -addr=192.168.1.1
- start the tftp server
- flash with the netgear firmware
- write the mac@ with burnetherac
- write the board id with burnboardid
And I got into the web interface (still some old settings were applied, I had to trick some of them)

Tathagata Das Avatar
NETGEAR
August 3, 2009 11:48 PM

Congratulation for recovering the board successfully.

Discussion:    Add a Comment | Back to Top | Comments 1-25 of 25 | Latest Comment

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