I can't figure out if Mikrotik RB952Ui-5ac2nD is "fully" supported or not before buying a few of them. The "techdata page" says it's supported since 18.06.0, but there is no "device page", and searching this forum says that in March 2019, most features were not working:
No image available, must use imagebuilder
Flashing requires trickery
Switch only partially working
5 GHz wireless not working
I guess the situation has probably changed in the last year, but could someone confirm it? Does absence of a "device page" mean that the device is not fully supported? Is there maybe a summary page with the current status of what works and what is still not completely working?
At least it is supported on the deprecated ar71xx target...
Deprecated means that 19.07 will be the latest stable release for this device as long as anyone port this device to the device tree based ath79 target.
The platform code/mach file doesn't look that bad and i don't know why the important hw parts like ethernet and wifi shouldn't work.
It was already listed as "supported" by ar71xx in March 2019, which apparently means that it's at least possible to run OpenWRT on this device (if you build the image with imagebuilder from ar71xx target and trick the firmware to detect the SoC properly):
But after that, "there is no switch configuration and port LEDs, WLAN 5g (QCA9887) does not work, USB does not have a power port, port 5 is lit red".
So now I'm wondering if the situation has changed since then.
Apparently, 5 GHz wireless hardware in this device is QCA9887, which is driven by ath10k, and it requires non-free firmware, so basically we shouldn't count on 5 GHz even if everything else works. Is my understanding correct?
Probably you only need to install the required driver/firmware packages like: kmod-ath10k-ct-smallbuffers ath10k-firmware-qca988x-ct ath10k-firmware-qca9887-ct
The device config doesn't define any wifi drivers/firmwares, probably because it's not working...?
There is no ac wireless chip that doesn't require a firmware blob.
The ath9k/ath10k drivers are open source and are running on our main cpu in kernel space.
The firmware is almost any time closed source and runs on the wireless chip itself.
If the chip vendor would open source also the firmware, they would give a huge insight in the hw implementation of the chip and this isn't desired.
So OpenWrt does use binary firmware blobs but only runs open source drivers.
Thank you for confirming! I just considered writing you a PM asking to confirm it since you seem to have one.
So the problems you encountered in Mikrotik RB952Ui-5ac2nD are fixed by now? Did you use the prebuilt 18.06.8 image or did you have to use imagebuilder for this device specifically?
Yes problems fixed!
In the finished assembly 18.06.8 there is no support for vlan (Menu Switch). You need to edit the config, but Lucy will swear.
I built myself an image from the source with the necessary packages.
If that does not work either, then you'd have to build an image from source; there are manuals about that, too. I'm not sure if @Pahalan meant actually "built from source" or "build with imagebuilder" - let's hope you can get away with just the imagebuilder...
Basically, that means you don't need an imagebuilder or sources - just follow the "common guide for installing on Mikrotiks" and use the generic images, and it should work. Maybe you will have to install some additional packages after that, but there is enough flash for that.