New 1.0.4.6 based custom firmware

[kfurge]

As promised in various threads, I've posted my custom 1.0.4.6 based firmware image, instructions, and commentary at:

http://home.comcast.net/~kfurge/wl700ge.html

Usual disclaimers: Dangerous, reflash at your own risk, as-is, no warranties, etc...

Future images to come as significant progress is made. Hope some of you find it useful.

- K.C.

[fireflash]

As promised in various threads, I've posted my custom 1.0.4.6 based firmware image, instructions, and commentary at:

http://home.comcast.net/~kfurge/wl700ge.html

Usual disclaimers: Dangerous, reflash at your own risk, as-is, no warranties, etc...

Future images to come as significant progress is made. Hope some of you find it useful.

- K.C.

Nice dude! Can't wait to try it!

[hal2k1]

As promised in various threads, I've posted my custom 1.0.4.6 based firmware image, instructions, and commentary at:

http://home.comcast.net/~kfurge/wl700ge.html

Usual disclaimers: Dangerous, reflash at your own risk, as-is, no warranties, etc...

Future images to come as significant progress is made. Hope some of you find it useful.

- K.C.

OK, I have taken the plunge and installed this. I think I followed all of the instructions correctly.

I can telnet to the router, as advertised, so that works.

I seem to have all of the same functionality as I had with the original firmware ... so no damage to report so far.

How do I know if and when the HDD spins down? The "IDE" light is on faintly, and by feel the disk seems to be spinning. The parameter 180 in the rc.local file means 180*5 = 900 seconds = 15 minutes, does it not?

I guess I'll have to wait a quarter of an hour to find out if that is working then.

I'm keen to try at least the ctorrent_1.3.4-dnh1-1_mipsel.ipk package from the openmss project, but I'm not sure how to proceed on that front.

But anyway, so far, so good. A big "THANKYOU" for your efforts so far, kfurge.

[hal2k1]

I guess I'll have to wait a quarter of an hour to find out if that is working then.

I can report that HDD spin-down also works.

I have seen no errors so far.

[kfurge]

The parameter 180 in the rc.local file means 180*5 = 900 seconds = 15 minutes, does it not?

Yes, it's 15 minutes. It's hard to tell sometimes if the HDD is spinning or not. I find the best way is by feel or by putting my ear on it.

I'm keen to try at least the ctorrent_1.3.4-dnh1-1_mipsel.ipk package from the openmss project, but I'm not sure how to proceed on that front.

To test whether or not the packages worked, I did the steps below. Don't take them too literally, I'm recalling them from memory, but they should help guide you in the right direction.

1. Unpack the .ipk file with ar -x on a linux box
2. Copy the data.tgz file to /shares/MYVOLUME1/MYSHARE1
3. Unpack the data.tgz file (tar xvzf data.tgz)
4. Add opt/bin to your path
export PATH=/shares/MYVOLUME1/MYSHARE1/opt/bin:${PATH}
5. Add opt/lib to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/shares/MYVOLUME1/MYSHARE1/opt/lib
6. Run your binary

Steps 4 and 5 will have to be repeated every time you login. This is annoying, so I plan to integrate these steps into my next image.

- K.C.

[Bartens]

As promised in various threads, I've posted my custom 1.0.4.6 based firmware image, instructions, and commentary at:

http://home.comcast.net/~kfurge/wl700ge.html

Usual disclaimers: Dangerous, reflash at your own risk, as-is, no warranties, etc...

Future images to come as significant progress is made. Hope some of you find it useful.

- K.C.

In Firmware 1.0.4.2 the Switch on the back worked fine in AP mode. but not in the 1.0.4.6 - can you modify the firmware so this works??
The only problem with the switch is that I dont get any IP address - it works fine if I set up the IP manually - but no automatically setup will come through from my VPN router.

Thanks!
>>BARTENS<<

[kfurge]

In Firmware 1.0.4.2 the Switch on the back worked fine in AP mode. but not in the 1.0.4.6 - can you modify the firmware so this works??
The only problem with the switch is that I dont get any IP address - it works fine if I set up the IP manually - but no automatically setup will come through from my VPN router.

Thanks!
>>BARTENS<<

Sorry, right now I don't have time to fix Asus bugs. Perhaps when my to-do list is finished I'll be able to look into bug fixes.

FWIW, it's unlikely this problem is fixable by anyone outside of Asus. The basic router initialization is handled by a program called rc. It was buildable in 1.0.4.2, but is only distributed in binary form with 1.0.4.6.

- K.C.

[d3viant]

kfurge - is it possible to password protect utelnetd on your firmware without having to modify the source code further?


I like to telnet into my router from the outside world, so password protection is fairly important

[sollie]

Thanks, it works for me, but when i use the third rc.local file, my webserver isnt working. So i switched to the second file.

Sollie.

[IMM22]

This Firmware finally solved my problems

THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS

1000X THANKS


For some reason I cannot telnet the router? Is the port number 23? Do you need to make telnet in the boot time? strange. The telnet is always refuses. maybe that's because I change the IP adress to 192.168.1.2 since my ADSL router modem that I connect to wl700ge via a Lan port as the ip 192.168.1.1, don't know ...
I test with telnet wl700ge, and with telnet 192.168.1.2 and none seem to work

[kfurge]

Thanks, it works for me, but when i use the third rc.local file, my webserver isnt working. So i switched to the second file.

Sollie.

I probably should have been more clear on the web page. The third rc.local file is only for demonstrating some of what can be done within the script. It's not general purpose like the other two.

If you review the script, you'll notice I kill the Asus thttpd then restart it to point to my content (which is not present on your router).

- K.C.

[kfurge]

kfurge - is it possible to password protect utelnetd on your firmware without having to modify the source code further?

I like to telnet into my router from the outside world, so password protection is fairly important

I'm working on this. It just requires a busybox built with login support.

One of my goals is to limit the amount of changes to the original Asus code. This will help shield me from future Asus upgrades.

To that end, I was hoping that one of the openwrt project busyboxes had login built in so I could just bolt it on, but it seems like they don't, so I'll probably have to enable it in the Asus code.

Another firmware image is coming soon anyway because I stumbled across the /dev/random blocking problem while configuring dropbear. Turns out our little box is starved for random entropy, so I need to tweak devfs a little bit to redirect /dev/random to /dev/urandom.

When I get this image ready, I plan to include some form of login support. Stay tuned...

- K.C.

[Stiefel]

While using the custom 1.0.4.6 firmware i got to a point where i got stuck with a device that does not mount the HDD anymore.

In the beginning everything worked fine by following the instructions of the tutorial. I flashed the custom firmware using the routers webpage. Then i was able to make ipkg work, installed dropbear, users, etc. Rebooting was not a problem, everything worked smooth.

Then in a final step I added two things to the rc.local:
1. Start TwonkyMusic
2. Added the 3 suggested lines for HDD spin down

Then I did a reboot. Now apparently something was wrong, the device would not boot in the beginning. I heard the HDD working for 6 seconds, and then a "spin down"-noise. This repeated several times (about 10 Minutes). During that time i could not ping, sometimes i saw a strange "default" WLAN SSID.

After the 10 minutes, I could log in again, but VOLUME1 was not mounted anymore :-(. If i go to "Disk Managment" on the routers page it says: Type: "raw" and Status: "unmounted" !?

Telnet, FTP and CFIS does not work because of this. So i am essentially locked out of the router. The initial telnet trick via CGI also does not work anymore because of this :-(

When i go to "Applications - Basic Config" it says: "Applications is disabled temporarily for building system mirror." !?!?

-----------

I think i may have created a corrupt rc.local. Either the start of the TwonkyServer does hold the script, or more likely the "spin-down" commands do unmount the HDD (since a remount is involved, btw. I have the 250GB version of the WL-700g)

Question 1: when is the rc.local executed? I am wondering how this could affect the boot behaviour?

Question 2: Can anyone suggest a recovery procedure? The most obvious for me was to install the original firmware, which should just ignore the rc.local and boot up fine. However, this did not work: i flashed using the webpage, got only a blank page as result, rebooted after 4 Minutes, but nothing changed.

Question 3: I dont even know how to check if i now have the custom or the original firmware installed :-( Any easy way to see this, e.g. on the routers webpage?

Flashing using the Asus Tools is not possible for me, since i am on MacosX. I will try playing with tftp now.

Any help is highly appreciated :-)

Stefan

[gratitude182]

@stefan

do you have rested the router already?

grat182

[Stiefel]

Thanks gratitude182.

The solution was indeed to hold the reset button until the ready light blinks.

After that all settings were reset and the hdd was mounted again. Then i could use the cgi trick to telnet in again, edit the rc.local, and install the custom firmware again.

I think I could even reproduce the error: it happened again, when i switched on the "User Management" and then rebooted...

So i will leave the user management switched off for now - which means the box will be wide open.

Anyway, TwonkyMusic is now running nicely and I am happy for now...