Cisco Meraki MR18 - further official OpenWrt support?

Hi there,
Me and some of my friends use Cisco Meraki MR18 access points (OpenWRT release 19.07.10). Unfortunately, support for ar71xx ended in 2019 and MR18 has not been yet included in official support for releases 21.xx and above. There is residual and very technical information about the positive attempts to install release 21.x on MR18, but nevertheless they are not intuitive for people who do not have advanced technical knowledge.
I guess, there are many people who own MR18 devices and are waiting for these devices to be included in official support in current and new OpenWRT releases.
Is there a chance that the MR18 will be officially support in releases 22.xx and future releases, especially as the older and less powerful Meraki devices (MR12 and MR16) are supported in the current releases.
Are there any plans to add official support for MR18 in the further release?

2 Likes

I have a working PoC on my branch, as does @chunkeey, see Meraki MR18 - port to ath79

I was about to ping @xback and @chunkeey to retest if the issue with NAND controller driver preventing merging MR18 is still present.

1 Like

@Leo-PL Thanks for reply and update in this topic - I'm happy to hear that you worked on it. Would be great to see a road map or approximate dates of official Open WRT release which supports Meraki MR18 (ath79).
@xback and @chunkeey will you be able support it?

1 Like

I am also interested in Meraki MR18, as I have a number of the devices in use regularly running 19.07.7.

The recent security advisories prompted me to investigate, in the hope there was a later release of either v19 or move to v22. If not, I hoped it might be easy to build/backport/patch, but this process looks quite involved.

Seeing this recent post I just thought I would chime in to add my interest in the MR18 hardware.

I don't need any more features than that I'm currently enjoying with 19.07.7. Thanks for everyone for their work on OpenWRT.

2 Likes

I'd love to know what the current thoughts are on this, is the MR18 likely to see support again ?

the ath79 port builds fine, you get wpa3 support and it's working well for what I need.

1 Like

Is it this one I need to compile ? https://github.com/Leo-PL/openwrt/tree/meraki-mr18-ath79

yes, I built an image yesterday from that.

1 Like

So, just to confirm, I only need to

$ git checkout meraki-mr18-ath79
$ scripts/feeds update -a
$ scripts/feeds install -a
$ make menuconfig # Save as .config
$ make download
$ make -j $(($(nproc)+1))

Then use whichever images are created in /bin/targets/ath79/generic ?

Yes, that's all I do, doesn't take that long to build.
I used sysupgrade to flash without saving configuration.

1 Like

Thank you.
I get only openwrt-ath79-generic-8dev_carambola2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin created, and can't flash that as it errors with

The uploaded image file does not contain a supported format. Make sure that you choose the generic image format for your platform.

Why 8dev_carambola2
meraki

1 Like

I couldnt see MR18 in the target profile list until I changed the sub target to ‘with NAND flash’.
Thanks for the tip, is there anything else specific I need to configure there?

Do you require mesh support?

Have you managed to compile an image?

No I dont need mesh support, and haven't managed to flash a working image yet.
Could you post/pastebin a working .config that I could try please?

My config is here:

My latest compilation with included LUCI is here:

1 Like

Same error here

“The uploaded image file does not contain a supported format. Make sure that you choose the generic image format for your platform.”

[Powered by LuCI Master (git-17.342.53118-6d086bf)]) / OpenWrt Designated Driver r47958

Also failed via cli

root@OpenWrt:~# ls
openwrt-ath79-nand-meraki_mr18-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
root@OpenWrt:~# sysupgrade openwrt-ath79-nand-meraki_mr18-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin 
Invalid sysupgrade file for mr18
Image check 'platform_check_image' failed.
root@OpenWrt:~#

Also failed via cli force

root@OpenWrt:~# sysupgrade --force -v -n  openwrt-ath79-nand-meraki_mr18-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin 
Invalid sysupgrade file for mr18
Image check 'platform_check_image' failed but --force given - will update anyway!
killall: watchdog: no process killed
Command failed: Not found
root@OpenWrt:~#

Update first to version 19 (19.07.9).

1 Like

I'm not sure if direct upgrade is supported from ar71xx, I never had a chance to install it on my MR18 when completing Chunkeey's port. Maybe mr18 needs to be added to SUPPORTED_DEVICES?
I think that implementation of platform_check_image for mr18` needs inspecting.
Edit: Also, yes - upgrading to latest 19.07 first is a good idea.