Howto: Updating the Lantiq XRX200 devices with latest DSL vectoring firmware

In VDSL the actual frequency distribution band plans are listed in Annex A for North Amerika, Annex B for Europe, and Annex C for Japan, not sure where the resr of the world falls into.
ADSL before was different, e.g. Annex B descrbes a bandplan compatible with german ISDN... If your internet works with the current Annex, I would not worry too much.

In essence you need to pick a tone set supported by the DSLAM see https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp%3Flang%3De%26id%3DT-REC-G.994.1-201004-S!Amd5!PDF-E%26type%3Ditems&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi4vMqunIbsAhWPCewKHQqPDcIQFjABegQIABAB&usg=AOvVaw1H7D3oRhnT-vnl397EN38G for some details about mandatory tone sets per Annex.

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Hey! I have flashed the fritzbox firmware and everything seems to be fine, but after uploading the bin, my free space got reduced by almost 1mb, that's obvious I know, but I just want to know if I can free up some space by getting rid of the old DSL firmware, if so what files should I remove in that directory?

Capture123

I also was wondering if I can remove dsl annex A firmware since I'm using annex B, or annex B patch does depend on it?

As with every file/package that comes with the pre-built squashfs image: No, you can't remove it, the contents of the squashfs file system are not modifiable. You can only mark something as deleted, but that doesn't free up any space.

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Interesting, I think it's time to learn how to build a custom image, this should help me implement in the desired DSL firmware, right?

But for now, the only way to retrain that 1mb is to revert back to the original firmware, then remove fritz!box bin?

You can absolutely, and very easily, include your own files in a custom image, you don't even need to do a full custom build for that, the "abbreviated" image builder will do that just fine. But I actually never tried removing single files, according to the documentation it should be possible but it's a bit of a hassle since it's not something the image builder does out of the box.

I don't quite understand what you mean. If you manually, after installing, added a file to the system you can just remove it again. Just like you cannot remove files from the squashfs file system, you also cannot add files to it. Files you install afterwards are not kept in squashfs, but in the overlayfs file system (that, as the name implies, sits "on top" of the squashfs file system and keeps the modifications.)

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Thanks for the links, I'll dive into that to see what I can do. I'm also keeping an eye on extroot, it should be a good alternative path to go with. I don't want to bloat the thread with off-topic stuff, I'll do some research on that.

I don't quite understand what you mean. If you manually, after installing, added a file to the system you can just remove it again.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant, I uploaded the extracted DSL firmware to /lib/firmware. I have just deleted it after reverting back to the original one, and I managed to regain the wasted 1MB.

for testing purpose you can copy to /tmp aka ram, beware all will be lost with reboot.. otherwise as takimata suggested image builder is the best way to go.. i always prepare my image with files packages directive with all my configs so when i mess around for testing an hard reset will reset to my fully working cofiguration.

for testing purpose you can copy to /tmp aka ram, beware all will be lost with reboot.

That's really a good tip, I configured extroot with a 4GB flash drive so for now, tight storage is no longer an issue

I always prepare my image with files packages directive with all my configs so when I mess around for testing a hard reset will reset to my fully working configuration.

As a newbie OpenWRT user, I tend to bloat my device with a bunch of unnecessarily packages just like a child scrabble about his new world, your approach will come in handy, I'm looking forward to implement it.

Thank you, guys.

If you want the vectoring support firmwares but all this building/extracting nonsense is getting you down. As of 17th Feb 2021, these are the latest firmwares that support vectoring (v9.0).

I hope this is okay to be posting this. If not then my apologies.

GoFile Download

Can somebody please send me Annex A and Annex B bin files? There are too many problems to get those bin files extracted from .squashfs file.

Edit: Never mind, I've used 5.9.0.C AVM firmware from https://xdarklight.github.io/lantiq-xdsl-firmware-info/.

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Hello everyone and happy 2022. Been trying for a while to extract the contents of the latest FRITZ.Box_7430-07.29.image but to no avail. Used p7zip to get "filesystem.image", binwalk --extract to get 0.squashfs, builded freetz-ng tools (since is the latest supported and unabandoned repository) and got unsquashfs4-avm-be but running it only outputs 1 folder which is "squashfs-root" and nothing more. Tried different unsquashfs4-avm-be binary from github but is the same. Tried building the old freetz repo but it fails at some coding errors. I've been told about an Ubuntu-basted Fritz-OS prebuilt VM but I don't see its tools inside. Any help in unpacking the latest image will be helpful.

I found the fix myself. It was under my nose all along. According to the https://xdarklight.github.io/lantiq-xdsl-firmware-info/ page, the right order of commands is:

    7z e FRITZ.Box_7430-07.21.image -r filesystem.image
    unsquashfs4-avm-be filesystem.image -e filesystem_core.squashfs

    cd squashfs-root
    unsquashfs4-avm-be filesystem_core.squashfs -e lib/modules/dsp_vr9/

    cd squashfs-root/lib/modules/dsp_vr9/
    bspatch vr9-B-dsl.bin vr9-A-dsl.bin vr9-A-dsl.bin.bsdiff
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Extracted from FRITZ.Box_7490-07.29.image (vdsl vectoring capable firmware files)
vr9-A-dsl.bin https://fastupload.io/9bc5dPXLmgBzqW2
vr9-B-dsl.bin https://fastupload.io/s6QpaNxxn0BCugT

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Hello! The links don't work anymore. Can you post these files again? I'll be very thankful!

Lazy.
vr9-A-dsl.bin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ISr6LvPvntnqPa8TiNu1yVjKYSdPWsGh/view?usp=sharing
vr9-B-dsl.bin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nLjgUIfQwEzLt9gwN-kKVrh-7CtOXmId/view?usp=sharing

BTW, if you use Windows, use WinSCP to copy the files over as it will save you tons of time.

Hello! Thank you very much! I tried to get these files in LINUX myself, but it's still difficult for me. Too many new things. Thanks again for your help!

What is the firmware version of those? Is it still 5.9.1.4 ?

Hello everyone,

it is a real issue to get / compile the "unsquashfs4-avm-be".
It is open source and in my opinion, it would make sense to make the program available precompiled and downloadable somewhere.
At least in this chat.

Could anyone have mercy?

unsquashfs4-avm-be: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k5Is201M1njlTRGwgCLpMQNVOJ8XayjE/view?usp=sharing
vr9-A-dsl.bin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aZvELfYk_QUVyKBUjZmd1fxgAsBet0nE/view?usp=sharing
vr9-B-dsl.bin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17VpIlDo9pTvVxig5onUqrj_uPVQqidFM/view?usp=sharing

DSL firmwares extracted from FRITZ.Box_7490 firmware version 07.57
unsquashfs compiled from freetz-ng tag:ng23080 in Fedora 37.
Someone should really compile a Windows exe version of this unsquashfs.

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same version numbers different md5sum and size than I got from FB7430 7.29