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Author Topic: Support for RT-N16
amain
Administrator
Posts: 137
Post Support for RT-N16
on: May 19, 2011, 22:01

Moving ticket http://dev.debwrt.net/ticket/125 to the forum

Would like to see these openwrt patches found here: https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2011-February/009637.html integrated into a debwrt build for the rt-n16. Currently it appears that the device is unbootable with current builds.
stevester
Pro
Posts: 108
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 19, 2011, 23:16

See above ticket for discussion leading up till current time. The main issue with the Rt-N16 and presumably other brcm4716 based devices atm is the inability to connect to the device via any of its network connections. To move forward from this point on towards the goal of creating a working build debugging must be done via serial (any help with this is highly appreciated!)
zhitch
Newbie
Posts: 11
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 20, 2011, 04:27

I can confirm that the image created from debwrt trunk does not respond via network.... anyone out there have a JTAG?
amain
Administrator
Posts: 137
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 20, 2011, 21:29

Hi Guys, what is the current status? I see there are some patches floating around. Any success getting plain OpenWrt patched and working? That should be the primary goal, before trying it with DebWrt. Serial cable comes in very handy to see how far kernel boots and to login without network.
stevester
Pro
Posts: 108
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 21, 2011, 01:14

Hey amain, yes plain openwrt works fine with the latest patches (including wifi). For some reason attempting to do the same thing with debwrt does not work though. My approach so far has been to use the .config file created in plain openwrt with the patches already applied as a guide and then modify the Config.in/openwrt.mk files in debwrt to reflect the targets/settings found there. No success though :(

Here's some relevant links for anybody interested:

Readme: http://www.znau.edu.ua/temp/asus-rt-n16/openwrt-bcm4716-README.txt
Patches: http://www.znau.edu.ua/temp/asus-rt-n16/2011-05-18T00-05/
Working .trx image for the RT-N16: http://www.znau.edu.ua/temp/asus-rt-n16/2011-05-17T19-27/
Ticket for RT-N16 support in openwrt: https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/6580
amain
Administrator
Posts: 137
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 21, 2011, 10:46

Sounds something 'simple' is wrong. Cause when OpenWrt works, DebWrt normally does too. Can you explain in more detail what does not work? Does the DebWrt kernel get loaded by the bootloader? Does the kernel boot? Does it find bootdisk? etc, etc. If you don't have serial console. Did you use netconsole? What does it say? Or is the device simply bricked after flashing?
stevester
Pro
Posts: 108
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 21, 2011, 15:44

Without the use of a serial cable just yet (have one on the way) it's hard to describe in detail what's going amiss. Networks connections do not seem to work hence the reason for netconsole not working as well (unable to ping device @192.168.1.1). What I find interesting is that I can see activity on the usb hdd status led and hear it spinning up/loading files which to me suggests that it very well could be booting to the point of loading the Debwrt kernel. When my cable arrives I will post detailed output from the device.
amain
Administrator
Posts: 137
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 21, 2011, 15:58

The DebWrt kernel is loaded from flash. It takes couple of seconds to boot. It looks for /dev/sda1 and mounts it as a root fs. If the HDD is actually spinning up and appears to have read/write activity for a couple of seconds, then you can be quite sure that /sbin/init has started successfully. But always better to have a serial console :-)

Kernel and rootfs look for eth0. I know there are devices with multiple 'logical' or 'physical' ethernet interfaces. So maybe it is just as simple as specifying eth1 instead of eth0. You can find out booting OpenWrt and look with dmesg which interfaces are present and look how OpenWrt configures them. Maybe it has a programmable switch which need be initialized first.

tip: once init has started, use a standard USB serial cable. Uncheck #B0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyUSB0 115200 vt100 in inittab. Make sure you have installed the correct kernel modules. DebWrt default compiles a lot of USB serial drivers.

tip: use DebWrt provided downloadable rootfs to minimize other errors ( sometimes as simple as wrongly untarring )
stevester
Pro
Posts: 108
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 21, 2011, 18:17

Thanks for all the advice, openwrt does in fact use eth0 already so this shouldn't be an issue. Thinking of trying a new approach, taking the .config file created from openwrt and merging over the debwrt specific items from the .config file there. Is there any reasons you can think of that would cause this not to work? To me it seems like the best approach atm as this config file has been successful proven to create a working image. Will post results when I finish up.
amain
Administrator
Posts: 137
Post Re: Support for RT-N16
on: May 21, 2011, 22:50

Well your best option for now is the serial console. I assume for now the patches (to some) degree worked because you have activity on your USB HDD during boot.

Another tip :-) : dive into the linux source directory and do a make ARCH=mips menuconfig there to see the actual kernel settings. And/or just diff this .config with the working one.
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