Netgear 7500v2 LED's

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

The LED's for my Netgear 7500v2 router are in consistent with the Netgrear factory instructions (see https://kb.netgear.com/25607/What-are-the-LEDs-and-buttons-on-the-the-top-of-my-Nighthawk-X4-R7500-router-called) I understand that some of these are configurable through the LED configuration and LuCI. However, there are others that are not configurable and simply don't make sense. Examples include:

  • Network switch LED that is solid amber (should be white and blinking when active)
  • Internet LED that is blinking amber.

Based on this I don't know if there is a problem or if the LED configuration on the build is simply flaky, or if there is a real problem that I need to address. Can someone please let me know how I can determine this, and if there is LED configuration required to bring it to Netgear specification, please let me know.

2

Have you checked System -> LED Configuration to see which LEDs you can reconfigure yourself?

3

Yes, I have. The LED’s in question are not configurable through LuCI or UCI.

4

Afaik you should be able to add UCI configuration to operate all leds even if they were not configured in default settings, as long as you know the actual name of the led as used in the system.

But still, leds used to define system status are defined elsewhere, and afaik they should mimic stock firmware configuration, if they don't then it should be fixed.

This file in the LEDE/OpenWRT source defines most leds https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/blob/master/target/linux/ipq806x/base-files/etc/board.d/01_leds (your device seems to be grouped with the 7800 and 7500 v1)

Given the names you find in there and in the device tree file there are some other definitions https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/blob/master/target/linux/ipq806x/files-4.9/arch/arm/boot/dts/qcom-ipq8064-r7500v2.dts (look in the "gpio-leds {" text block)

From the files above this is the situation that should happen:
A led called "r7500v2:white:power" is turned on and stays on on boot
A led called "r7500v2:white:wan" will show network activity over the wan port.
Leds for USB and esata ports show activity on their ports.

Plus there seems to be some logic to operate the status led depending on boot status (blinking when booting and then stays on when it's booted and it's all good), which is amber r7500v2:amber:status.

It seems some of the amber or white leds as described in that link are not defined, missing?

You can try operating all defined leds manually to identify and check that they are actually lighting the correct led on your device by connecting over SSH (remote terminal) and do what is described in the documentation here to see them and try them out: https://lede-project.org/docs/user-guide/led_configuration#how_to_add_leds_to_this_section

If a led was not defined in the device tree file it will not be available, so that will be a "missing" led.

You can also configure them using uci as explained in that article. But if default leds are set wrong or there are missing ones this should be at least reported in the bug tracker https://bugs.openwrt.org/

5

Thanks @bobafetthotmail. I will look at these options as I'm able. A bit tied up right now, but will review and report back.

6

Hi @bobafetthotmail, I have looked at the two github links you identified and I had already found the same information contained in them by exploring my system (ssh). The odd thing is that I cannot find anything that defines the switch led's, but they appear to be working and active (albiet the one amber light), so it seems that there is some configuration for this buried somewhere - perhaps a compiled file for all I know. There are also LED names available in LuCI for which I can't find a UCI or code reference.

On the other hand, there are Led's for 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi (in addition to the Wifi led) that are never lit and I cannot find any reference to them either.

I don't want to open a bug just yet because it appears that I'm missing something. I just don't know where to look.

Regards...Greg

7

Can you post them?
Luci should read UCI config files, it's just a uci frontend afaik.

the files I linked are the source code where leds are defined (for kernel and then how should the system use them). But those are for LEDs wired to the device's GPIO pins (= controlled by CPU).

The switch LEDs might be wired to the switch controller so they are either controlled by the switch driver or by the default configuration of the switch controller.

Same for the wifi leds, on some devices they are wired to the wifi chip, so it must be done with the wifi driver (if there is information about how to do so, on some devices the wifi leds stay dead because there is no information about that in the GPL sources released by the manufacturer)

The commits that added support for this device don't mention anything useful, and I don't know how the driver code works (for both wifi and the switch) so I can't help much more than this.

You can either open a bug report or post in the mailing list to get a developer to look into this.