GL.iNet AR750S NOR/NAND not producing the factory image

For Developers
1

I compile a custom version of OpenWRT for my router, however yesterday I noticed that there wasn't a factory image being built.

After digging around for a bit I decided it was best to reference the stock OpenWRT snapshot builds and see what the differences were.

After looking at https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/ath79/nand/, I noticed that it also doesn't contain the factory image as well, only containing the sysupgrade.bin and kernel.bin.

Is this intended behavior? May I ask what is causing the absence to build the factory.img?

Thanks :smiley:

Edit:
Dug around a bit more in the github mirror and found:


Seems like you would have to compile a NOR version and then use sysupgrade because of the uboot web limitations?

2

After reading all of the messages around this situation I am still confused as to how I would compile a proper firmware now. Is it currently not possible to compile for a newer kernel and I would have to revert back to 4.19?

3

You better ask help from @blocktrron who authored the relevant commits.

It is quite possible that kernel 5.4 has outgrown the space allowed for kernel by the OEM bootloader.

It sounds to me that the initial flashing is more problematic, but the subsequent OpenWrt sysupgrades might be easier.

4

It sounds to me that the initial flashing is more problematic, but the subsequent OpenWrt sysupgrades might be easier.

Yep, that's also my understanding.

The problem now is to fully understand how to get past the initial flashing period.

I noticed that the uboot on this devices has a limitation of 16MB, but back then I used to do a stock compile of OpenWRT, flash that since it's <16MB, then compile OpenWRT with the packages I want and do a sysupgrade.

Now I can't seem to figure out how to get to a stage to even flash a "clean" build.