None of the above sounds difficult, I just need the initramfs for the netboot thanks.
Sent a PM.
I have one MikroTik RBD53iG-5HacD2HnD with factory RouterOS v7 laying around 
So I can dump you this one, if you can give me instruction/scripts ...
That router is not interesting, as it is already supported.
I know it's already supported, but it should be running RouterOS v6 when flashing.
But this one has v7 from the factory, so I'm unable to downgrade it to v6 to be able to netboot and flash it 
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The two issues are different in nature. The pure ROS7 boot and sysupgrade is already fixed by @johnth , its just not pulled in to openwrt master yet. Once thats done, we can extend device support so v7 compatible images can be build. For this we dont need more device dumps.
What we need is dumps from devices that has the new LZ77 encoded wifi bdf/cal-data. Your device is not like that.
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I see that there are no changes for ath79 target here - do you think that copying image recipe from either ipq40xx or ramips should work? I'll be happy to test that.
Thank you. My dirty python decoder worked as expected on that file, it was different to the first, and matched the emulated uncompressed file, so the block format I found stands for now.
For NOR targets, yes, it is worth testing, will need to make it match the mikrotik nor recipe in common-mikrotik. I have not looked at ath79 NAND (not planning to).
I initially avoided it for the big endian. I remember seeing some data endian converted by RouterBOOT on MIPSBE, but I don't remember whatā¦ Hopefully they do the same for the NPK.
I can test this later as well, but feel free to try.
Cheers
Ok, I'll try that soon (hopefully).
As for NAND, it seems, that RouterBOOT v7 can actually boot current image format as is. So there is nothing much left to do with that regard, maybe save for inventing a better method, than generating dummy yaffs section for kernel, which was the reason for disabling NAND devices in the first place.
Hi @johnth
This is great news.
There are two questions in my mind:
-
Can you please create a pull request for the "routerboot-v7" branch of yours, so it can get to Openwrt and we can start adding device support based on that? I am testing it on two devices already and it works, so we can add "tested by" tags right away.
-
On the LZ77 part: I assume the platform driver cannot really use a python script, so I wonder whats next? There are two devices which are ready for Openwrt, only this part is missing for them to be fully functional.
I got a chance to test this, and my ath79 wapg with RouterBOOT 6.45.8 boot the bootimage NPK file-container kernel fine. I don't know how far back RouterBOOT started to be able to load bootimage NPK file-container kernel, but the backup booter 3.41 worked here as well.
RouterBOOT backup booter 3.41
RouterBOARD wAP G-5HacT2HnD
CPU frequency: 720 MHz
Memory speed: 300 MHz
Memory size: 64 MiB
Storage size: 16 MiB
Press any key within 2 seconds to enter setup..
loading kernel... OK
setting up elf image... OK
jumping to kernel code
[ 0.000000] Linux version 5.15.98 (john@john) (mips-openwrt-linux-musl-gcc (OpenWrt GCC 12.2.0 r21569+48-9b6dd57a33) 12.2.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.40.0) #0 Sat Mar 18 06:54:53 2023
[ 0.000000] printk: bootconsole [early0] enabled
[ 0.000000] CPU0 revision is: 00019750 (MIPS 74Kc)
[ 0.000000] MIPS: machine is MikroTik RouterBOARD wAP G-5HacT2HnD
[ 0.000000] SoC: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9556 ver 1 rev 0
[ 0.000000] Initrd not found or empty - disabling initrd
root@OpenWrt:~# hexdump -C -n 64 /dev/mtd$(find_mtd_index kernel)
00000000 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 01 ff ff 62 6f 6f 74 69 6d |..........bootim|
00000010 61 67 65 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |age.............|
00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
00000040
urgh, no way around this if we want to directly boot kernel from RouterBOOT. ipq40xx NAND (UBI) are the only Mikrotik devices I have seen which do not use YAFFS.
Both of these are proof-of-concept rather than a clean tool.
Maybe you could convince a maintainer that you need this whole python framework to build the NPK, but ideally someone creates a new tool to do it. If you wanted to use this as-is, you would need to get python3-venv added to the buildbots for it, but first tests should be added for the additional functionality I tacked onto the framework, and that sent upstream for code review.
Someone extends rb_hardconfig hc_wlan_data_unpack with the logic to decompress the Mikrotik LZ77 block format.
Anyone is welcome to try either or both of these thingsā¦
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Hi @johnth
To be honest, I thought that at least the general routerboot-v7 parts can be just pulled in. I did that on my branch with the Chateau 12 and Hap ac3 and it just worked without any issues or hacking. I did not realized that is also proof of concept, like the LZ77 part.
On the LZ77 part, I do hope that you or someone more capable than me might pick this up and make the platform driver extension. There are some devices already which only needs this to be fully functional on Openwrt, like the Chateau 12LTE or the Chateau 5G.
whats the root password, it boots up on 192.168.10.1 but it's asking for a root password
For the record, I've just installed OpenWRT 22.03.5 on a new cAP AC, without much in the way of a hitch...
I did not even have to persuade the RB to boot via bootp for me, it just did that "out of the box".
I just modded my entry in ISC dhcpd.conf to let it know the MAC address of my new cAP AC, so that when a bootrequest comes, the correct "next server" and "filename" gets served, and the RB downloads the OpenWRT initramfs image via TFTP (hpa-tftpd here). From there, I flashed the squashfs image without a problem.
Apparently the cAP AC is based on the IPQ4018, and the flash chip gets detected by the spi-nor driver - i.e. it's a serial NOR flash, as opposed to a NAND device... if that makes any difference.
In the device today, I've noticed the following version of RouterBoot:
cat /sys/firmware/mikrotik/hard_config/booter_version
6.48.6
Based on the big red warning in the common TOH entry for Mikrotik devices, about RouterOS 7, the RouterOS 6 series starting from 6.46 is supposedly a no-no just as well. Anything past 6.45.8 actually.
I'm looking at another Mikrotik machine here, an hAP AC2. This one's got RouterBoot 6.45.9. And another piece of the cAP AC, with 6.47.9. Both of them historically flashed OpenWRT without a problem.
Exactly where is the dividing line? Should I expect trouble, once I happen to get my hands on a cAP AC with RouterOS v7 ex works in the future? Or is this whole IPQ4018-based family exempt from that fat red warning? In my context, the red warning feels misleading / not detailed enough...
Looks like that wiki page has been added to far to many times without anyone doing cleanup. Urgh, what a mess.
From what I have seen:
RouterBOOT v7 no longer works with the historic YAFFS ELF kernel boot. It wants YAFFS NPK bootimage boot, which OpenWRT does not do (yet).
ipq40xx NAND works, because it uses UBI to boot.
Aside from that, on some very old hardware, there is not enough RAM for RouterBOOT to be able to load an initramfs image, and a few devices can not boot an installed kernel either.
There are many versions of RouterBOOT where DHCP boot is broken: don't use it.
Someone said they had a hap ac3 which had LZ77 wlan data, but could seemingly not be bothered to share the data to get it to work: No Wireless Mikrotik RBD53iG-5HacD2HnD - #3 by digga106
I have a Hap Ac3 LTE6 kit (very same base board), but both the Hap Ac3 and the Hap Ac3 LTE6 kit are ROS6 devices, so it would be strange to have a 77ZL version from it, as netinstall allows them to be downgraded to ROS v6 images, which would fail if the hard_config is LZ77 based...
With that said, if you have some time to upgrade the platform driver with the LZ77 part (not sure how the ROS v7 boot part is atm), I could instantly add two devices to Openwrt 
ipq6xxx will also have support at some point in time, those devices will also benefit if we can boot Openwrt on them as well
The LZ77 packed wlan hardcfg tag has been around long before RouterOS / RouterBOOT v7:
[john@john _routeros-arm-6.46.npk.extracted]$ grep -H -r --binary-files=text -r -i lz77 $(find . -iname 'flash.ko')
./squashfs-root/lib/modules/3.3.5/misc/flash.ko:flash ERROR: radio data lz77 decompress failed: %d
./squashfs-root/lib/modules/3.3.5/misc/flash.ko:radio data lz77 decompressed from %d to %d
Not yet, still somewhere in my todo listā¦
Just to keep awareness on this one.
@johnth in case you want me to test anything, please let me know.
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See https://github.com/john-tho/openwrt/pull/5/files
very rough, expect test device to burnā¦
probably simple mistakes aplenty.
Untestedā¦
Would have been sooner with at test device (will code for hardware), ha.