Hi there,
I am new to OpenWrt and I have been using OpenWrt on a TP-Link Archer C7 and Archer A7, which has been great.
I have recently got my hands on a Netgear Orbi RBR50 and I have been doing some research to see if there is an OpenWrt build that would be able to run on it. It is not listed in the Table of Hardware however I have seen some mentions of the Orbi on this forum so I thought I would ask if anyone has had any luck creating a build that runs on the RBR50?
Thanks!
Hi,
I have one of does as my AP too. Nobody has created a new build for them, sadly. For what is worth, you should know that RBR50s run OpenWrt already. You can access telnet access using its debug.htm webpage or installing Voxel's firmware which enables ssh access.
The OpenWrt version that it runs is heavily modified, but if you are lucky enough to not have RBRv2 version, you will be able to install /overlay in an USB drive using Voxel's firmware and install Entware to customise it to your liking.
Kind regards.
So, I decided to see if I can compile Netgear's sources in my MacOS. It turns out that with some small tweaks to the .mk files can be done. I tried in an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it worked, did not try to install image yet. I will keep you posted.
Thanks for your reply!
I don't have the v2, however I have installed Voxel's firmware and I have installed Entware. I am looking to setup the Orbi in client mode and connect to a WPA2 Enterprise network and I am not sure that I can do this with Entware?
From what I understand I would need to install the wpad package which I am not sure I can do with Entware.
So, I decided to see if I can compile Netgear's sources in my MacOS. It turns out that with some small tweaks to the .mk files can be done. I tried in an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it worked, did not try to install image yet. I will keep you posted.
Wow! Thanks very much for trying this 
Cheers!
Look at this discussion:Netgear Orbi Pro support-booting from MMC
I compiled Flole's tree and it works on my Rbr50. Ethernet runs into problem sometimes. Now that there is native emmc support on openwrt it would be great if some developer can update & merge the code…
Nope, you cannot install wpad from Voxel's Entware repo. Might be possible to compile an .ipk file to install it, I guess.
Thanks for the info. I'll give that ago then on my RBR50.
Thanks for confirming. Hopefully I can avoid going down that route of compiling the .ipk file if possible
I managed to compile Flole's tree and flash my RBR50 with it and so far it all seems good.
I am having trouble installing luci - when I try and install it using opkg install luci. I get an error that the kernel dependency cannot be satisfied, I'm guessing this is because the tree is a bit out dated.
Were you able to install luci?
Too bad it's so outdated now… I actually compiled most of the packages in the buildroot for it to work (because the snapshot repo were updating and incomplete when I set up my router).
By the way, if it's missing some kernel modules, setting up a local repo with your compiled kernel module packages (result of the "build all target specific packages" or "build all kerbel module" option) may solve the problem, or install manually.
I am about to install it this weekend too, just to try it. What about the RBS50 (satellite)?
I don't know; I don't have the sattle. If I remember correctly in Fole's tree there is support for RBS50, and the hardware specifications seem identical, too.
Yeah, nah, I can only find RBR50 references. An easy tweak, as you say devices look almost identical to me.
Update: devices are not identical, so EFI table has to be patched for RBS20.
@amteza @guranga
numero53 has created patches ready for a pull request for rbr50/rbs50 and srr60/srs60: Netgear Orbi Pro support-booting from MMC
I'm not sure but it may require to modify target/linux/ipq40xx/image/Makefile to add rbs50 board ID/profile
If you have RBS50 (or RBR50) available please test so numero53 can send the pull request
Btw it seems rbs50 and rbr50 share the same source, so it's likely their partition layouts are the same for the same firmware version (but differs for different version).
Thank you @zhoushiyi213 for finding this thread.
I forgot to add the entry for RBS50. I added it now to my repository copying the partition layout from RBR50 so it can be pulled and compiled direclty (I force pushed to the same "netgear_srs60" branch)
Could someone please summarize the situation for openwrt on the rbr50? Or other orbi?
What openwrt versions work? What issues are there? How to install?
Thanks!