I have a Netgear WAX214 (the ipq-based version - not the v2 with MT7621!).
I would like to install OpenWRT on it. There is already a corresponding image in the snapshots. I just don't know how to install it.
I've already tried tftp and nmrpflash but I haven't made any progress so far. Everything I've been able to find that's relevant relates to the WAX214 v2.
Can someone explain to me how I can install OpenWRT on the WAX214 v1?
Ah ok - so I have to use the serial interface. That's ok (I've done it before).
That helps me a lot - thank you!
The information from the commit helped me to install OpenWRT on my WAX214. So many thanks to Dirk Buchwalder!
I have turned it into a slightly more detailed guide so that perhaps more people can install OpenWRT on their WAX214:
Opening the device is easy: loosen the 4 screws and simply lift off the back plate.
The UART connection with the board designation J9 is located in one corner. The assignment in my case was from left to right: VCC, GND, TX, RX
The biggest problem for me was connecting the pins correctly.
The socket on the board is a DF13A-4P-1.25H. I couldn't find any plugs for it.
So I found another solution: I therefore bent the VCC pin slightly to the side and used a 3-way JST GH 1.25 connector and quite a bit of force to make the connection to the 3 relevant pins GND,TX,RX.
If you have the confidence to solder the small pins or have completely different methods, you can of course also do this.
Then I wired the connection between the board and the UART adapter as follows (classic): GND-->GND, TX-->RX, RX-->TX
Connection settings: Determine the COM port of the UART adapter on the PC and establish a Telnet connection (under Windows e.g. with Putty) with the following settings: 115200 baud, 8N1
Now switch on the power connection of the WAX214 if a serial connection is available.
A console output should now appear on the PC.
Press 4 as soon as the selection appears - this interrupts the boot process.
The WAX214 has 2 root partitions (see cat /proc/mtd). I have set the first of these active (this is relevant for which partition is to be written to later).
To do this:
setenv active_fw 0
saveenv
The WAX214 and the PC must now be connected via the network.
To do this, connect a network cable between the two and assign the fixed IP address 192.168.1.66 to the adapter on the PC.
Set the addresses in the WAX214 as follows:
setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.1
setenv serverip 192.168.1.66
saveenv
Set up and start a TFTP server (Linux: tftpd-hpa or dnsmasq, Windows: TFTPD64) and configure it so that it listens on the 192.168.1.66 interface.
Place the file openwrt-*-initramfs-fit-uImage.itb in the delivery folder.
We now need to boot into a temporary OpenWRT system in RAM.
We get the image for this as follows (adapt the file name accordingly).
It took me >1h to transfer the image:
tftpboot openwrt-qualcommax-ipq60xx-netgear_wax214-initramfs-fit-uImage.itb
bootm
The router should now reboot and start OpenWRT.
Now we have to write OpenWRT permanently to the root partition.
To do this, the image must first be copied to the router. This can be done with scp, for example (wget also works the other way round, or WinSCP for Windows etc.):
scp openwrt-qualcommax-ipq60xx-netgear_wax214-squashfs-factory.ubi root@192.168.1.1:/tmp/
The image can then be written to the root partition. Since we have setenv active_fw to 0, we must write to mtd11:
ubiformat /dev/mtd11 -f /tmp/openwrt-*.ubi -y
reboot
After a reboot, OpenWRT should now be installed correctly.
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