Linksys EA8300 Support Thread

[jeff]

If you're reading this, I'm assuming you've got a challenge in front of you, so here's a table of contents

Managing dual-boot firmware

Switch configuration ignores VLANs

First flash of OpenWrt was smooth, now the second one hangs forever

[jeff]

Managing Dual-Boot Firmware

The U-Boot environment variable boot_part is what primarily determines which of the two firmware sections will be used for boot.

• boot_part 1
  • kernel (mtd 11)
  • firmware
• boot_part 2
  • alt_kernel (mtd 13)
  • alt_firmware

When sysupgrade (either over the command line or LuCI) or the OEM firmware flashes a new image, it flashes the "other" one and changes boot_part to boot from the new image next.

After three "failed" boots, U-Boot will try the "other" one from what it was without user action.

This is one way to switch firmware, especially from a box that is hanging before a console is responding. Powering-off the EA8300 before the LINKSYS light goes on solid white (will usually work even before the "failsafe" flashing starts) will almost always go against the "three, bad boots" counter.

With SSH access to the device, fw_setenv boot_part 1 or the like can be used.

cat /sys/devices/virtual/ubi/ubi0/mtd_num 

shows which MTD partition is associated with /dev/ubi0, which should be kernel or alt_kernel

There is a LuCI module for switching, but at this time it does not support the EA8300.

It might be a good "first project" to add the EA8300 to

luci/applications/luci-app-advanced-reboot/luasrc/controller/advanced_reboot.lua

See also

Script: Mount "Alternate" NAND Firmware (Linksys +?)

Working on a new NAND device, I find myself wanting to get changes from one firmware install to the other, or edit the other when it is crashing. The following works on my EA8300 and might be useful for others. Modify the MTD partitions as appropriate, perhaps a couple other things. Hopefully it will save you some time of figuring out the various steps in mounting them. The ROM will appear at /alt/rom The overlay itself at /alt/overlay Combined (and writable) at /alt/firmware #!/bin/sh if […

[jeff]

Switch Configuration Ignores VLANs

The IPQ40xx chips have a unique take on things. "Normal" VLAN config will be seemingly ignored by the device.

On my list to determine the scope of what does work with these devices.

More information:

IPQ40xx Switch Config "Strangeness" (swconfig)

Impacting EA8300 and apparently EA6350v3, the IPQ40xx switch in these devices seems to have a mind of its own about VLANs and configuration. From what I've read, this is a "non-standard" switch that may require additional development work to have functional VLANs. It seems as though the two Ethernet phys are internally "wired" to VLANs off switch port 0. These devices appear to be dual-NIC devices, which may be almost certainly are a different wrinkle than dealt with in other threads / patches…

[jeff]

First Flash of OpenWrt Was Smooth, Now the Second One Hangs Forever

Prior to July, 2019, the OpenWrt EA8300 firmware would fail to sysupgrade (or through LuCI) over existing OEM firmware.

First, get back to the "good" version of OpenWrt. Powering off the "hung" boot three times should get you there.

For now, instructions are at

[Solved] Sysupgrade to recent snapshot hangs on boot with "Waiting for root device /dev/ubiblock0_0"

I've found the problem and it can be resolved prior to me deciding the best way to "fix" the upstream source. What happens is that the OEM firmware has already taken over the root file system partition in a way that sysupgrade, right now, can't take it back. It can be resolved "by hand" using the command line (over SSH) relatively easily. Step 1) Determine which partition you've booted into root@test:~# cat /sys/devices/virtual/ubi/ubi0/mtd_num 11 If this is 11, then you will be …

[davidcevans]

This looks like a good thread to tag on my issue and resolution - apologies if this isn't the appropriate place though...

Wifi issue on flashing new device:

I've just received a BNIB Linksys EA8300 (in fact, two, as there is someone on eBay UK selling a large amount of them) and flashed it to Openwrt (22.03.3 (r20028-43d71ad93e)). The wifi refused to start.

Having looked at the syslog and read a few pieces on the forum it looked like the issue was to do with invalid channel selection.

In /etc/config/wireless I changed each config wifi-device entry from e.g.

option channel '100'

to

option channel 'auto'

...restarted, then enabled each SSID, and the wifi came up successfully.

Hopefully that's useful to anyone else in the same position - if it would be helpful to reconstruct that in more detail, provide logs etc. I would be happy to do so.

I don't know the project well enough to know if that's a change that could / should be rolled into the default device config...

[cbz]

@davidcevans

I've just received a BNIB Linksys EA8300 (in fact, two, as there is someone on eBay UK selling a large amount of them) and flashed it to Openwrt (22.03.3 (r20028-43d71ad93e)). The wifi refused to start.

Just be aware, that not all of these appear to be new (even if they were in plastic sealed boxes), I ordered two, and while one worked fine, the other had an old Chaos Chalmer snapshot on both partitions and has proved to be frustratingly difficult to upgrade (won't accept newer images, flashing the stock image seemingly does nothing, and I'm now going to have to build a 17.X snapshot image for it to see if I can upgrade gradually).

[ReDaLeRt]

The wiki has been updated with the instructions to fully support the newer OpenWRT stable and snapshot releases, since January 1st 2023: https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/ea8300#upgrading_openwrt_from_22035_into_23xx_or_snapshot_images

[sencha]

I am getting repeating following lines in dmesg after fresh install of Openwrt 23.05 and enabling wifi:

ath10k_ahb a800000.wifi: mac flush vdev 0 drop 0 queues 0x1 ar->paused: 0x0 arvif->paused: 0x0

Could this be a glitch as this seems like a debug info?

The wifi functionality seems not to be affected.

[elmystico]

Hello guys
I need bluetooth for my home automation and it seems my router has excellent chip but no openwrt support for this built-in bluetooth chip: Qualcomm CSR8811 (A12U).
BUT I've investigated a little and there's another model Linksys WHW03 V2 with exactly the same chip and openwrt has support for bluetooth for that router.
ipq40xx: add support for Linksys WHW03 V2 · openwrt/openwrt@9e4ede8 · GitHub
Chances are that there's exactly the same hardware conf on both models so maybe it's possible to copy necesary code from one into another?
What do you say guys do you know a person we can talk with that could do it?

[sencha]

Did anyone benchmark lan-wan NAT performance on 23.05.xx ? What should approximately it be?

[sencha]

Seems a bit slow in lan-wan (vlan, pppoe) routing, any way to improve?

[thosmos]

Has anyone else managed to get VLANs working on the WAN port with the DSA driver in 23.05.2? I was able to get them to work previously with the swconfig driver. They work fine on the 4 lan ports.

This doesn't work:

config device
	option name 'wan'
	option macaddr '24:f5:a2:ec:f7:46'

config interface 'wan'
	option device 'wan.38'
	option proto 'dhcp'

whereas this does work:

config device
	option name 'lan4'
	option macaddr '24:f5:a2:ec:f7:47'

config interface 'wan'
	option device 'lan4.38'
	option proto 'dhcp'