Davidc502- wrt1200ac wrt1900acx wrt3200acm wrt32x builds

ghoffman · October 19, 2020, 7:19pm

i will repeat my plea to increase the size of the lernel partition to 6 MB for wrt1900v1 and for wrt32x. the rationale is clearly stated here:

github.com/openwrt/openwrt

Comment by hnyman to [RFC] treewide: try reduce kernel size on some targets

openwrt:master ← lucize:slimmvebu

> in the discourse of the RFC to take a more future-proof approach as been done… with dc50694 instead of constantly fiddling with the kernel source, increase the the boot partition to like 6 MiB and be done. ipq806x devices apparently survived the event even with the inherent inconvenience it may have caused their owners. Based on the experince from IPQ806x, I would recommend the kernel partition size increase approach to be tested. Looking for that kind of partition size modication solution might be easier than looking for a kernel contents change. Changing wrt32x DTS to have kernel+rootfs as 6+117 instead of 3+120 for both dual-boots should work, I think. The total size would still remain as 123 MB, so reverting back to OEM should be possible quite nicely. (for wrt1900ac that would be 6+34 vs. 3+37, I think) For reference R7800: * kernel size change: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/dc50694bd1a8f81b40c185bc8cacbdc8e821a3c6 * and subsequently my commit fb8a578aa7 that futher increased the size taking a "Netgear reserved" area into use. (You can read from forum about my tests and debug, I also tested reverting to OEM from modied firmware) With ipq806x devices, the change broke the OpenWrt sysupgrade from older OpenWrt builds, and required using Netgear TFTP recovery flash to install the new version. (But flashing from OEM still works ok). I think that Linksys does not provide quite that easy TFTP recovery flash tool, so jumping to modified kernel size build might require flashing first OEM firmware and then using that for flashing the new OpenWrt, as OEM flashes images in a single sweep, right? Reason why ipq806x OpenWrt sysupgrade failed: our sysupgrade script writes kernel and rootfs in two steps to the locations given in the currently running DTS, not the DTS in the new image. I haven't looked at the mvebu sysupgrade specifics, but I think that follows the same model. If the OEM firmware flashes the image in one sweep, the new OpenWrt image with larger kernel area would likely be flashed quite ok.

github.com/openwrt/openwrt

ipq806x: increase kernel partition size for the Netgear r7800

committed 06:34PM - 22 May 18 UTC

pkgadd

+7 -7

Starting with kernel 4.14 and gcc 7, the kernel doesn't fit into the 2 MB reserv…ed for the kernel partition by the OEM firmware anymore. This patch increases the kernel partition from 2 MB to 4 MB, at the expense of the rootfs, for all supported kernels. WARNING: This breaks sysupgrade! Flashing a firmware containing this changed partitioning from an older image with 2 MB reserved for the kernel partion requires the tftp recovery procedure, thereby losing all settings. This patch is based on a corresponding change by Pavel Kubelun <be.dissent@gmail.com> and has been tested by Michael Yartys <michael.yartys@protonmail.com> Signed-off-by: Stefan Lippers-Hollmann <s.l-h@gmx.de>