Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Today I had to remove my favourite network card to fit other PCI card (microATX board has only 2 PCI slots). And then I got my old problem — desktop card MAC was same as router one so wrt54gs refused to work with it.
I tried to set wan_hwaddr, def_hwaddr NVRAM entries to other MAC but it was ignored each reboot (even after nvram save). Finally I found a way to resolve/workaround it.
As OpenWrt use simple init from BusyBox I added one script into /etc/init.d/ directory — S07-hrw-set-nvram:
nvram set wan_hwaddr=C0:FF:EE:C0:FF:EE
nvram set def_hwaddr=C0:FF:EE:C0:FF:EE
nvram set il0macaddr=C0:FF:EE:C0:FF:EE
So as result MAC of router card is set to my value and do not conflict with my desktop network card.
Tags: wrt54 Comments Off
Saturday, June 9th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Koen’s post about AVR32 Network Gateway and few posts on usenet reminded me that many people still think that small devices are crap and lack power to do anything.
Do they? I think that not. Here I use two small embedded devices:
- Linksys NSLU2 as NFS server (plans are to add TFTP, Samba, CUPS and Bluetooth AP)
- Linksys WRT54GS as router/firewall
Both do their work without any problems, both runs Linux and opensource distributions (OpenSlug and OpenWRT).
Soon will add something based on one of AT91 devboards but more to experiment with software then normal usage. And as I have 20 pin header soldered to OpenMoko debug board it can even be bricked (JTAG port was already tested with other device then Neo1973).
Great thing is that systems like AT91SAM9263EK, Gateway or STK1000 (another AVR32 devboard from Atmel) can be used to produce many different devices — I remember talk with one guy who shown his developer board (about A4 size) and final device (small rugged mobile device with barcode scanner) and told that this devboard was used to create about 10 misc models.
My friend made a project of own device based on AT91 ARM cpu with few peripherials. Total cost was less then 100 EUR and it can be used to different tasks and also give possibility to learn how to write kernel code (to handle all addons).
As Cliff Brake wrote: you cannot afford to not use Linux in your own projects. There are too many drivers and ready to use code to not make use of them. You can even get nice modules for less then 100 dollars (ARM, AVR32, x86 based) if you do not want to design own one. Then next step is OpenEmbedded and you have problem which software to choose as there is too much to choose :)
Tags: consulting free drivers jtag linux minicom nslu2 openembedded openmoko wrt54 Comments Off
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Today I bought Linksys NSLU2 machine. It is small, ARM based NAS and it is running Linux out-of-box. Unpacked, connected to home network and after checking that it is working I reflashed it with OpenSlug 3.10. So now it runs 2.6.16 kernel (instead of old, hacked 2.4.something) and opensource system (built with OpenEmbedded).
What for I bought it (other then taking space under desk)? I plan to run few services on it:
- NFS server with DL_DIR contents (all sources used by OpenEmbedded builds)
- TFTP server (to server kernels, rootfs images for miscelanous devices on my desk)
- SMB server (music, movies)
- Bluetooth access point for my Neo1973 phones and other devices
Too bad that small embedded PCs are harder to get that such gadgets. I hope that one day I will be able to buy machine which will replace my WiFi AP/router and NSLU2 (NAS, BT AP) in one.
Tags: bluetooth computers free drivers openembedded openmoko wlan wrt54 7 Comments »
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
My home router is powered by OpenWRT WhiteRussian RC5 which I installed months ago. For my usage it is ok, but as there is a new release I decided to look does it is worth upgrading.
Their website give access to Changelog but as ’svn log’ output nearly which is bad because they write useless comments like “fix dependency” or “oops... typo :)” so you can’t find out what was really changed. And you can not upgrade with ipkg update; ipkg upgrade — reflashing is required.
Looks like sooner or later I will give a try to DD-WRT or other distro.
Tags: misc wlan wrt54 Comments Off
Friday, June 30th, 2006 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
During last days I moved from my C760 to Tosa. It is heavy, big and has awesome screen — I can use it even with lowest brightness setting (one step from “no backlight”). Stylus is made from plastic but is longer then styli from other Zaurus models. Internal WiFi is able to do WPA on firmware level but driver do not support it ;(
First day was SharpROM day because I forgot to take CF card from home to flash OpenZaurus. SharpROM looks quite OK but some things was weird. For example handling of QVGA applications — screen was switched into 240×320 mode with ‘please wait’ message on start and exit… This slowdown plus no possibility to switch off that switching force user to rather skip using such apps. WiFi settings has profiles support which is nice but due to fact that internal wireless use wlan-ng drivers I could not get WPA so was not able to connect to my home AP.
Same day evening I flashed OpenZaurus 3.5.4 (OPIE flavour) into device. System boots and works but I needed to install some upgrades to get fixed keyboard mapping etc. Reconfigured AP to get connection, configured WiFi in tosa and ipkg update;ipkg upgrade was working. Lot of stuff upgraded and after reboot I got working keyboard but lost HostAP configuration files (will hunt this bug and add proper fixes into OpenZaurus upgrades feed). Lack of Control key make it not so usable with OPIE terminals so I use OPIE-IRC on it instead of logging into my irssi-over-screen session. And there are two keys which functionality is something which I must find out (one above Cancel and Backlight/Rotate one).
Machine works quite nice but after using 2.6 kernel on PDA for over one year I feel that 2.4-crapix is slow… Resuming from suspend need time to get machine responding, enabling WiFi means machine not responding for a while too… I hope that 2.6 will get into usable state soon.
Tags: openembedded openzaurus opie tosa wlan wlan-ng wpa wrt54 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 14th, 2005 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
BusyBox v1.00 (2005.05.25-20:30+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
_______ ________ __
| |.-----.-----.-----.| | | |.----.| |_
| -- || _ | -| || | | || _|| _|
|_______|| __|_____||||________||| |____|
|__| W I R E L E S S F R E E D O M
root@OpenWrt:~# uname -a
Linux OpenWrt 2.4.30 #1 Wed May 25 16:25:58 EDT 2005 mips unknown
in near future it will be partially replaced by “wrt54oe” distribution build using OpenEmbedded.
wifi, wlan, wrt54, linksys, openwrt, openembedded
Tags: wrt54 1 Comment »