I am trying to connect a custom device to this Linksys router. This device has a firmware file which I copy and paste into the /lib/firmware folder. The issue I am facing is, on bootup if the device is connected I get an error saying the firmware file was not present in the /lib/firmware folder. But the device works fine if I connect the device after bootup.
I believe the issue is the way I am copying the firmware file. By default, the Linksys Openwrt image uses squashfs which upon further reading is a read-only file system and uses overlayfs to write on the FS which might be the reason of this error but I could be wrong
What would be the correct way to go about putting the firmware file in the router file system, so on bootup the deivce works.
I built the image from source. The only package I added was the LUCI package for GUI support. The custom device is proprietary and I am not sure how much can I reveal so I don't want to give out too many details. Sorry.
Custom files can be "installed" by use of cp on a running system (which will add them to the overlay), or by use of the ./files/ directory in the build system (which will add them to the ROM)
You'll see that it is common to copy files needed by the wireless drivers during boot and that it works quite well. See, for example, /etc/hotplug.d/firmware/11-ath10k-caldata
The rom solution was exactly what I needed. Thanks for that. I would have never figured that out on my own. Oddly enough cp does write to the overlay but it seems that the changes are only retained after bootup. Hence during bootup I wonder if it tried to bring up the system using the read only rom hence causing the system to crash as the changes were not present in the rom.