New WL-530G research - custom firmwares coming

[db90h]

This is my first post in this forum, so I'll first say "Hi". I've plagued other forums, so I suppose it's time to plague this one as well .

I apologize for this post being 'out of place'. I didn't really see an appropriate place to put it..

A few days ago a nice guy (Dan Flett) sent me an ASUS WL-530G to work on 'hacking'. I've since made a lot of progress. I anticipate I'll release a public custom firmware image for this unit soon that uses the vendor supplied firmware as a base. I'll probably also add support for these images to my Firmware Modification Kit.

Anyway, you can find what I've completed in the last couple days here:

Hacking the WL-530G - R&D Wiki - (work in progress)
UPDATE: As luck would have it, my server just started having troubles. If you get a 'network path not found' error, please just try again in a while.

I suspect the wiki will go through considerable transformations in the coming days.

If anyone has any requests or has interest in this, please do respond. I would also love to see the forum admins here create a new board for this unit so that we can discuss it..

[db90h]

As predicted, I've done much more work since my original post.

I've nailed down the exact procedure for extending the vendor supplied firmware images with anything you want, and written necessary tools. I'm adding the capability to manipulate these images to my Firmware Modification Kit, so that anyone can easily create their own custom firmwares based on the vendor firmware images.

Here's a firwmare image that makes a simple tweak to re-enable telnetd on 1.9.4.6 (it was disabled in the 1.9.x.x series):

http://www.bitsum.com/files/wl530g/W...-telnet_EN.bin

The next one I build will have a more complete busybox and, in general, much more extensive modifications. The vendor firmware soruces will let you set up an ARM cross compile environment easily, and the vendor sources all build themselves except for mvap32 (a customized hostapd implementation.. it's missing the Marvell specific stuff).

Enjoy.

[db90h]

Ok, here's another one.. as promised above.

+ Better busybox
+ msh instead of ash (busybox)
+ telnet enabled
+ removed snmpd (to make room for above..)

DOWNLOAD LINK REMOVED .. NOW DEPRECATED

This will probably be the last I waste time on this. I will now work on porting openwrt. Hopefully it won't be too difficult. I wish I had a serial console on this box, as I feel so damn blind without it....

I'll also quit posting updates here until I see an indication anyone is interested.

[db90h]

I released a new build of my custom firmware. The last one I just threw together, so this is much better. I was able to restore snmpd and include more busybox utilities. I recommend upgrading to this for anyone who used the previous.

So, change list:

+ snmpd re-included
+ more busybox utilities (even more coming in next build)
+ vi fixed
+ removed some unnecessary stuff that accidentally got copied into last image

Latest download: http://www.bitsum.com/files/wl530g/W..._en_082806.bin

I'll always have the latest information and releases posted here: http://www.bitsum.com/openwiking/owb....asp?p=WL-530G. Keep checking it for updates, as I will not continue posting notifications here.

[Antiloop]

I released a new build of my custom firmware. The last one I just threw together, so this is much better. I was able to restore snmpd and include more busybox utilities. I recommend upgrading to this for anyone who used the previous.

So, change list:

+ snmpd re-included
+ more busybox utilities (even more coming in next build)
+ vi fixed
+ removed some unnecessary stuff that accidentally got copied into last image

Latest download: http://www.bitsum.com/files/wl530g/W..._en_082806.bin

I'll always have the latest information and releases posted here: http://www.bitsum.com/openwiking/owb....asp?p=WL-530G. Keep checking it for updates, as I will not continue posting notifications here.

firmware has been mirrored at http://files.wl500g.info/asus/custom..._en_082806.bin
furtherwhile is this the complete 'changelog', and which firmware/gpl is it based on?

unfortunately I don't have a WL530g so can't test anything at all

[db90h]

Thank you for mirroring it. However, I strongly suggest you update to today's build, which fixes a broken WLAN issue in the previous build. I'm sorry for this, I consider these more like daily snapshots of an eventual killer firmware so didn't even test yeterday's build every well. Today's build I have tested pretty well though. After you update to this build, you might want to refrain from mirroring each one. I'll note in my release notes which I have tested well.

What I'm doing is using the latest binaries from vendor firmware 1.9.4.6 by extracting that firmware, installing new packages I've built using the 1.9.4.2 GPL build root, then rebuilding the firmware image. I've documented this procedure and soon will have it totally automated as part of my Firmware Modification Kit, giving anyone the ability to create custom firmwares.

Since ASUS doesn't update the GPL toolchains with every minor version, this also has the added benefit of not generating out-dated custom firmwares.

Changes (08/29/06)

+ Fixed broken WLAN (whoops)
+ Included iwlist

Download (today's): http://www.bitsum.com/files/wl530g/W..._en_082906.bin
Download (always latest): http://www.bitsum.com/files/wl530g/W..._en_latest.bin
RSS feed for updates: http://www.bitsum.com/smf/index.php?...xml;board=16.0
Wiki: http://www.bitsum.com/openwiking/owb....asp?WL%2D530G

[EDIT] Oh, and as far as the complete change log, currently it is:

+ a much larger set of busybox utilities
+ msh (busybox) instead of ash
+ enabled telnetd
+ added iwlist

Busybox applets:
[, basename, busybox, cat, chmod, clear, cmp, cp, cut, date, dd,
df, dirname, dmesg, du, echo, env, expr, false, find, free, getopt,
grep, gunzip, head, hostname, ifconfig, insmod, kill, killall,
klogd, length, ln, logger, logname, logread, ls, lsmod, mkdir,
mktemp, modprobe, more, mount, msh, mv, nc, nslookup, pidof, ping,
printf, ps, pwd, rdate, reboot, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, sed,
sh, sleep, sort, syslogd, tail, tar, tee, test, tftp, touch, tr,
traceroute, true, umount, uname, uniq, uptime, usleep, vi, watchdog,
wc, wget, which, whoami, xargs, yes, zcat

NOTES: Since this router has no MMU not everything runs smoothly. Most things work fine, but you might run into odd errata every once and a while. The core capabilities of the router should all work great though, as the same binaries and configuration as is present in the vendor 1.9.4.6 firmware is used here. The mistake in the 08/28/06 build was that the 1.9.4.2 mvapd accidentally got copied into the 1.9.4.6 based firmware, so this was a stupid mistake, not anything serious.

Plans for the future?

+ squashfs instead of cramfs
+ a writable jffs2 partition
+ Updated busybox version
+ Include latest and full wireless-tools
+ Compatibility with Firmware Modification Kit - see http://www.bitsum.com/firmware_mod_kit.htm
+ pre-built packages (IPKs) users can install into their own firmware images using the kit above
+ port of OLSR to the router
+ anything else that comes up...