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Thread: openWRT is working on 700 g :-)

  1. openWRT is working on 700 g :-)


  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Prishtina, Kosovo
    Posts
    56
    Looks interesting. Maybe we can convince our "local" expert KC to give it a try first since he seems to be the most knowledgeable one.

    I think there are plenty of people that are willing to test run it. Like me...

  3. #3
    note that kamikaze is in the development branch, and not recommended to install unless you have serial or JTAG access (is this even possible on the wl700?)
    Last edited by n00ben; 14-01-2007 at 22:41.
    /regards
    Henrik

  4. #4
    Cool! Though I think I'll let it mature a little more before jumping in.

    I've got one more more round of changes left to do to the Asus firmware I've been working on. After that, I might lend a hand to the the effort.

    Personally, I'd rather run standard linux on the box and dispense with the Asus firmware for good.

    Regarding serial/JTAG access, serial is definitely possible. There's even a how-to.

    - K.C.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by kfurge View Post
    Cool! Though I think I'll let it mature a little more before jumping in.
    If you look at patch it's very simple. Only two kernel modules were modified. In aec62xx to enable some pci-tuning (copied from Asus sources) and skip some IDE init (also copied from Asus sources). Second change is in diag module to detect it's running on WL-700gE. This was needed for buttons/leds and to toggle GPIO 3 (controls power to HDD and switch leds). I talked to nbd and he'll look into cleaning up that GPIO 3 hack later, but it works just fine as is.

    In userspace netconfig script was patched because it's not using solely model detection done in diag module but has some own detections. I guess OpenWrt devs will fix this as well when they have some time.

    Overall I was very surprised how easy it was to get OpenWrt running on WL-700gE. It took several hours from me, but that was mainly because I'm simply no programmer. Well maybe gwbasic 15 years ago, but I'm so confused with Linux cause there's no line numbers on sources!

    Regarding post about Kamikaze requiring JTAG (that's not present on WL-700gE AFAIK) it's not exactly true. Since WL-700gE has working recovery mode (EZSETUP button) and adding serial port is piece of cake (after disassembling entire box) there's not much danger.

    If you follow instructions I posted to OpenWrt (and linked above) it'll simply work. Probably biggest thing missing is some common framework on OpenWrt to pivot_root various storage devices. Let it be USB stick, USB HDD or internal HDD. Nbd said he has some plans on that as well. Basically idea was that since there's normally large storage device available there's no need for jffs2 partition on flash and files normally put to jffs2 can be put to HDD instead on firstboot. In case of problem simply reboot, press EZSETUP after OpenWrt lights READY-led and it'll boot read-only recovery environment from internal flash.

    I think I'll look into OpenWrt initial bootup scripts to see how much changes are required to use HDD instead of jffs2 for writable part of filesystem and then minifoing it to single FS. I was planning some I2C/RTC hacking, but I don't see that much use for them at the moment.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by johu View Post
    Probably biggest thing missing is some common framework on OpenWrt to pivot_root various storage devices. Let it be USB stick, USB HDD or internal HDD.
    An idea on how to implement pivot_root for various storage devices is described here: http://wl500g.info/showpost.php?p=16505&postcount=3

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Netherlands
    Posts
    190

    Hi

    I've read the article on openwrt and its looks promissing
    But two things are not clear to me .
    1) do I have to do the compile section as discribed on the router or on a linux box ??
    2)where can I download the firmware to flash?

    thxx

    Grtz

    Ronnie

    Openwrt or Custom Firmware on asus? - http://wl700ge.hezik.nl/ - Http://wl700g.homelinux.net

    My ASUS collection: WL500gp(80GB usb-hdd - Running OpenWrt Kamikaze 7.09) | WL700gE(250GB - Running OpenWrt Kamikaze 8.09rc1)

  8. #8
    You don't have just a firmware to flash with openwrt - it's completely different from the existing custom firmware available on this forum. openwrt is a seperate linux distribution, the final version available right now doesn't work with the wl-700gE.

    This means you have to use the development branch of openwrt (codename kamikaze) with a patch for a few specific pieces of hardware in the wl-700ge. You have to download the kamikaze source tree, then apply the patch from the forum post linked to at the top of this thread. you must then install using the tftp upload system - that bit is explained in the openwrt instructions.

  9. #9
    It's kind of if you need to ask then OpenWrt + WL-700gE is not for you at this point.

    I patched firstboot and mount_root scripts to treat first hdd partition as flash but use ext3 instead of jffs2. Kinda works, but is kludge. Plenty of space to install ipkgs tho.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by kfurge View Post
    Cool! Though I think I'll let it mature a little more before jumping in.

    I've got one more more round of changes left to do to the Asus firmware I've been working on. After that, I might lend a hand to the the effort.

    Personally, I'd rather run standard linux on the box and dispense with the Asus firmware for good.

    Regarding serial/JTAG access, serial is definitely possible. There's even a how-to.

    - K.C.
    Since I am still having trouble getting everything working satisfactorily with the modified Asus firmware, I too would far rather run standard Linux on the box.

    OpenWRT is probably the best option here.

    The only thing is, I would like to make sure I had my data backed up before I tried openwrt. I'm sure that openwrt wouldn't use the Asus directories, and I'd imagine a hard disk re-format would be necessary?

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by hal2k1 View Post
    Since I am still having trouble getting everything working satisfactorily with the modified Asus firmware, I too would far rather run standard Linux on the box.

    OpenWRT is probably the best option here.

    The only thing is, I would like to make sure I had my data backed up before I tried openwrt. I'm sure that openwrt wouldn't use the Asus directories, and I'd imagine a hard disk re-format would be necessary?
    I installed the openwrt firmware and replaced HDD with another one. I was able to create ext3 file system and mount it.

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