Adding OpenWrt support for Zyxel EX5601-T0

For Developers
1209

Both 2.5GbE port, whatever their name is, I'm traveling for the 7 days, no access to any Openwrt device.

You pasted them after the exit line ?

,)

1210

Haha, no I added both lines before the exit 0 line and also tried it both in the browser and using SSH/nano to edit rc.local directly.

1211

Only reason I can think of would be a race condition.

Try adding sleep 30 before running those lines.

1212

Thanks! Adding sleep 30 seems to do the trick.
By the way, the other 2.5Gbit port is lan1. But in my case, that one is running at 1Gbit by default.

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1213

Would I still be able to buy one of those? Iā€™m located in germany. Any advice?

1214

You can, at wifilinks.

1215

Ah I see, they just raised the price. Would be 75ā‚¬ with shipping to germany. I think I got mine for 55ā‚¬ last time. Might as well get another Flint 2 if itā€™s on sale again (warranty etc)ā€¦

1216

I think I paid 60ā‚¬ + S&H for two, it was at BF last year, might be worth waiting for, price might drop.

1 Like
1217

Yea it was 30ā‚¬ + 15ā‚¬ shipping to germany. I should have bought two myselfā€¦

1218

Iā€™m about to flash my second EX5601-T0 to OpenWrt. Cannot remember how it was 2 years ago, but I see the official instruction (git commit) has a couple of steps that arenā€™t entirely clear to me:

  • Can I use the OpenWrt U-Boot layout image or the stock image or either? Prefer the U-boot image.
  • The zyfwinfo file, shall it be just added into the sysupgrade tarball, root, not into a specific directory?

Thanks!

Right now I have a stock EX5601-T0 with V5.70(ACDZ.2)C0 software. These devices are very easy to buy cheap second hand in Finland, as one of the local operators was providing these with their internet connections and many people change operators or have their own deviceā€¦

1219

XOR, uboot mode maximizes flash space by wiping everything else.

don't think there's been any attempt to flash a Finnish unit, you might need serial - https://openwrt.org/toh/zyxel/t-56.

Is the ISP Elisa - Adding OpenWrt support for Zyxel EX5601-T0 - #1121 by MSameer ?

also found https://olli.sulopuis.to/2025/02/24/nain-asennat-openwrtn-zyxel-ex5601-t0-reitittimeen/, but I'm too lazy to run it through google translate.

1220

Thnx, added to the wiki.

1221

Thanks for the response. It's an Elisa device indeed. I have one already that I flashed approx two years ago and it was quite ok to do that time. I have a serial cable I can use, so that's not a problem. I'll commence the flashing then and update here.

1222

I went with the serial cable and the mtk_uartboot method, which is what was described in that Finnish link @frollic posted. I started with disabling the zloader, but there was a root password that I didnā€™t have, so I just resorted to the mtk_uartboot way of doing things. Quick summary:

  1. Download the ex5601-ubootmod files and mt7986-ram-ddr4-bl2.bin from Index of /releases/24.10.4/targets/mediatek/filogic/

  2. Connect serial to router and run mtk_uartboot:
    mtk_uartboot.exe --serial COM5 --aarch64 -p mt7986-ram-ddr4-bl2.bin -f openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-bl31-uboot.fip

  3. Connect ETH2 to PC, change computer IP to 192.168.1.254 and start a TFTP server (I used tftpd64). Configure the root path to be your temporary folder and rename the file to omit the version number: openwrt-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-initramfs-recovery.itb

    Now Recovery image is downloaded and started on the router. Router admin will be available at 192.168.1.1 with Luci.

  4. I needed to install openssh-sftp-server package with opkg in order to move the images into the system. You could connect the WAN port, but that wasnā€™t very easy for me, so I created a wireless wwan interface and connected to the local WiFi network. (Wireless ā†’ Scan). Had to run opkg update with ā€“no-check-certificate, didnā€™t work without (thinking now, that might have been because time wasnā€™t correct on the router). Install kmod-mtd-rw at the same time.

  5. With SFTP server running, I could now scp the following to /tmp on the router:
    openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-bl31-uboot.fip
    openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-preloader.bin
    openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb
    openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-initramfs-recovery.itb

  6. Then it was a matter of executing the following commands:
    insmod mtd-rw.ko i_want_a_brick=1
    ubidetach -p /dev/mtd5; ubiformat /dev/mtd5 -y; ubiattach -p /dev/mtd5
    ubimkvol /dev/ubi0 -n 0 -N ubootenv -s 128KiB
    ubimkvol /dev/ubi0 -n 1 -N ubootenv2 -s 128KiB
    ubimkvol /dev/ubi0 -n 2 -N recovery -s 10MiB
    ubiupdatevol /dev/ubi0_2 openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic*-ubootmod-initramfs-recovery.itb
    mtd write openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-preloader.bin bl2
    mtd write openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-bl31-uboot.fip fip
    sysupgrade -n openwrt-24.10.4-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-ubootmod-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb

And I was done. There probably is an easier way, but this worked fine.

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1223

After flashing and successfully installing OpenWRT (Uboot method), Should I still be able to use the ā€œSupervisorā€ password to login via root alongside my OpenWrt password?

Everything seems to be installed correctly just seems weird that it still is usable after deleting the other volumes.

1224

Bought a second T56, via bol.com for 45 Euro. It was new, came with V5.70(ACEA.0)T56C_b7_1006.

I still had the 24.10.0 files on my mac, so I installed that version and upgraded with owut to 24.10.4.

Thanks again all, for the great work.

3 Likes
1225

Iā€™ve recently bought a Grain branded EX5601 on ebay in the UK.

Firmware version V5.70(ACDZ.4)C0

Boot log shows it is unlocked:

F0: 102B 0000
FA: 1040 0000
FA: 1040 0000 [0200]
F9: 0000 0000
V0: 0000 0000 [0001]
00: 0000 0000
BP: 2400 0041 [0000]
G0: 1190 0000
EC: 0000 0000 [1000]
T0: 0000 0229 [010F]
Jump to BL

Created a backup of the partitions and flashed uboot mod version without issues. Only strange thing is that it is labelled as EX5601-T0 but does include a SFP port for fibre.

1226

T1 is the one without SFP, but even the T1 presents itself as a T0 in OpenWRT.

1227

First off very nice work!

The wget on the zyxzel firmware doesn't support ssl. You can use curl so that would turn it into

cd /tmp
curl -LO https://github.com/carlicious/zloader/releases/download/v1.0-alpha/bl2.img
curl -LO https://github.com/carlicious/zloader/releases/download/v1.0-alpha/fip.bin
curl -LO https://github.com/carlicious/zloader/releases/download/v1.0-alpha/zloader.bin.gz.uImage_patched

and

cd /tmp
curl -LO  https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/24.10.2/targets/mediatek/filogic/openwrt-24.10.2-mediatek-filogic-zyxel_ex5601-t0-stock-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
1228

Hey guys I just recently got my EX5601-T1 to Openwrt 24 and i was wondering if there is anyway to get the stock firmware back on this from Openwrt. My main purpose was to avoid the pesky ISP locked devices because I couldn't do simple things without having to call them for them to do them on my behalf. Preferably I would like to run stock Zyxel firmware that's unlocked but there is no guides online on how to do so. I am fairly tech savvy just not amazing with Linux lol so any guides might just has to say a little extra if that's OK. Thanks for reading my message and here is to hoping someone knows how to do it!!

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