Adding support for Comfast cf-wr617ac

For Developers
1

Hello.
Trying to build image for chinese comfast cf-wr617ac.

I have dmesg of original FW: https://paste2.org/UFshJLMt

I did this: https://paste2.org/kbB3tPK0

That is what i'm getting on UART: https://paste2.org/e98ehzKJ
Nothing happens after "Starting kernel ..."
I tried to listen for traffic and it doesn't seems like it's problem with TTY or logging, at least not directly - i don't see any traffic originated from mac of the device withing 10 minutes after it boots.

Could you please help me to figure out what i'm doing wrong?

2

Something wrong with your build system. Current trunk for ramips/mt76x8 use kernel 5.4 and branch 19.07 use kernel 4.14 but your logs:

## Booting image at bc050000 ...
14:44:10.961 ->
   Image Name:   MIPS OpenWrt Linux-4.19.91
14:44:10.961 ->
   Image Type:   MIPS Linux Kernel Image (lzma compressed)
14:44:10.961 ->
   Data Size:    1803868 Bytes =  1.7 MB
14:44:10.996 ->
   Load Address: 80060000
14:44:10.996 ->
   Entry Point:  80060000
14:44:10.996 ->
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
14:44:12.564 ->
   Uncompressing Kernel Image ... OK
14:44:15.348 ->
No initrd
14:44:15.348 ->
## Transferring control to Linux (at address 80060000)

show that you use kernel 4.19. And BTW strange kernel load address 80060000 (typical 80000000)

1 Like
3

Thank you for your reply. Weird kernel version caused by the fact that i tried to backport this patches to an older codebase as i seen some similar bugs for master. Apparently none of this related - i spent half of the day flashing wrong firmware for different device. Noticed that size of tftp upload didn't changed after rebuilds

Right now config is:
https://paste2.org/87PEEEKt

and i cannot get local switch or wan port working - always getting https://paste2.org/AfAwd8cG

Obviously i ported my code back to master.

4

Well, it's working for 19.07, there is definitely some issue with master.

I did a PR https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/3118 but not really sure if i'll find enough time to get up to the code. If someone can pick work from here or at least let me know what i need to do to get it merged i would appreciate that.

5

It's possible.
But incomplete patch/PR is not good. It waste developers time only.
I see some errors at first glance:

09:53:04.041 -> [    6.096346] Creating 4 MTD partitions on "spi0.0":
09:53:04.041 -> [    6.101228] 0x000000000000-0x000000030000 : "u-boot"
09:53:04.076 -> [    6.107425] 0x000000030000-0x000000040000 : "u-boot-env"
09:53:04.076 -> [    6.113880] 0x000000040000-0x000000050000 : "factory"
09:53:04.076 -> [    6.120111] 0x000000050000-0x0000007b0000 : "firmware"
09:53:04.076 -> [    6.131725] libphy: Fixed MDIO Bus: probed

so "firmware" partition is not splitted into "rootfs" and "rootfs_data".
In current trunk there are some cosmetic changes of dts syntax.
One of them is removing "ralink" in pinctrl

&pinctrl {
       state_default: pinctrl0 {
               gpio {
                       ralink,group = "i2c";
                       ralink,function = "gpio";
               };
       };
};

Also absence of gpio LED/keys descriptions is strange.

6

Please help,

I bought a cf-wr617ac wi-fi router. When I installed it, the signal status indicator first lit blue, then red and now lights purple-pink all the time. The internet is weak. Is the router broken? Thanks
stevce.cosevski@gmail.com

7

The COMFAST CF-WR617AC is advertised by manufacturer as having 16MB flash memory, but I just checked the stock COMFAST CF-WR617AC newest firmware (CF-WR617AC-V2.6.1), and
dmesg reveals this:

m25p80 spi32766.0: en25qh64a (8192 Kbytes)
[ 0.660000] m25p80 spi32766.0: using chunked io
[ 0.670000] 5 ofpart partitions found on MTD device spi32766.0
[ 0.670000] Creating 5 MTD partitions on "spi32766.0":
[ 0.680000] 0x000000000000-0x000000030000 : "u-boot"
[ 0.690000] 0x000000030000-0x000000040000 : "u-boot-env"
[ 0.690000] 0x000000040000-0x000000050000 : "factory"
[ 0.700000] 0x000000050000-0x0000007b0000 : "firmware"

Could pls somebody more experienced with OpenWrt confirm now, that the data from manufacturer, so that COMFAST CF-WR617AC has 16MB flash memory are definitelly wrong, or is it still chance, that CF-WR617AC has 16 MB flash memory ?

8

Is it fixed.
Can we conclude that Comfast CF-WR617AC is not supported by Openwrt.

9

I did a PR https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/3118 but failed to polish it enough - i lost interest porting it on top of master cause master was broken at that time. I don't see any reasons why openwrt would not support this AP - it works fine for me for last year or so.
I have expected someone to take over which didn't happen - will try to find time and ressurect this PR.

10