Netgear X10 (R9000)

Ironalchemy · 2021-12-03T16:15:31.348Z

Following your post, I did a fresh pull on the openwrt tree and rebuilt the R9000 branch. I have been monitoring and do not see any 5GHz dropped connections on my test system set up as a test gateway to a subnet off my home network. Only compiled in modules that I am using are lucid, samba and openvpn. I am happy to test if you have specific configs you would like to look at. I am just building familiarity with openwrt before swapping an R9000 for my main gateway to my ISP.

egorenar · 2021-12-03T16:58:22.367Z

thanks for testing, i can‘t reproduce it anymore with recent builds.

update1:

5ghz wlan went down again today.

another issue is that my wps button is actually assigned to rfkill, and the wlan button is assigned to reset. can somebody confirm whether this is true for R9000 as well.

update2:

It turns out nobody tested WIFI, WPS and RESET buttons
Fixed it and tested on R9000. Works.

For GPIO ids, see R9000_V1.0.5.24_gpl_src/git_home/linux.git/drivers/gpio/gpio-dni.c

piperov · 2021-12-03T17:59:48.353Z

Another newbie question (please - bear with me for a little longer, I'll get better really soon):
At the end of the build process I am left with the boot image (openwrt-alpine-generic-netgear_r9000-squashfs-factory.img) in
./bin/targets/alpine/generic/

and a number of packages (e.g.: iptables_1.8.7-1_arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4.ipk under bin/targets/alpine/generic/packages/

What do I do with those? Copy them to the router after I boot it (and possibly add more local storage in the form of a USB stick)?

In case these question are answered elsewhere - please, point me in that direction.
Thanks!

Ironalchemy · 2021-12-03T18:58:59.967Z

It sounds as if you are just trying to get a firmware build in place and on your device. If you just build the R9000 branch with only the defaults for the configuration, opkg is installed with the correct configuration to download any packages you need. At least it did for me. The packages directory is only needed if you are trying to build packages specifically modified for your system which, I think, you are not. If you want to use your own package repository, egorenar explained that early in this long thread when he was first trying to get the system up and going on the R9000. You can see how to do it also from (yes) the wiki, https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/additional-software/opkg.

If you have not read the previous 402 postings in this thread, I think you would find it educational and give you a whole other appreciation for the skill and time that went into this branch for the R9000.

egorenar · 2021-12-03T19:14:09.227Z

This is the way i usually build my firmware:

make menuconfig
select all packages i want permanently installed on my router by marking them with a *
select all packages i might install on my router via opkg later on by marking them with M
make V=s -j$(($(nproc)+1))
Then i flash my router with the newly built sysupgrade image
After that i create a package repository on a USB drive assuming your USB drive is mounted on your PC under /mnt

rm -rf /mnt/packages

cp -a bin/packages/arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4 /mnt/packages
cp -a bin/targets/alpine/generic/packages /mnt/packages/alpine

Then unmount the USB drive and insert it into your router
Mount it e.g. under /mnt/sda1
Add this to /etc/opkg/customfeeds.conf

src/gz egorenar_alpine file:///mnt/sda1/packages/alpine
src/gz egorenar_base file:///mnt/sda1/packages/base
src/gz egorenar_luci file:///mnt/sda1/packages/luci
src/gz egorenar_packages file:///mnt/sda1/packages/packages
src/gz egorenar_telephony file:///mnt/sda1/packages/telephony
src/gz egorenar_routing file:///mnt/sda1/routing

And finally opkg update
Now you can install your compiled packages

I suggest you consult OpenWRT wiki. Everything is decsribed there.. Doesn't make sense to repeat everything again and again.

egorenar · 2021-12-03T19:29:57.025Z

I added yt-dlp package to https://github.com/egorenar/openwrt-packages-custom in case somebody is interested. It's a replacement for youtube-dl. I tested it on my router, seems to work very well.

egorenar · 2021-12-03T19:54:41.836Z

This is my config in case somebody is interested:

Pastebin

OpenWRT R9000/XR700 config - Pastebin.com

Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.

The config was created after all menuconfig confguration with:

./scripts/diffconfig.sh > ~/config-rel-5.10

You can reuse such configs and avoid re-configuring everything again after a clean clone.

cp ~/config-rel-5.10 .config
make defconfig

tapper · 2021-12-04T10:51:01.848Z

Can any one give me a quick rundown on how this router is with mane line OpenWrt. Can I just build master and flash? I have a r7800 but, the 8 port switch would be nice.

egorenar · 2021-12-04T11:12:33.096Z

Works very well with recent master branch. Tested on R9000 and XR700. But you have to use my netgear-r9000 branch which sits on top of the current OpenWRT master.

piperov · 2021-12-04T22:27:00.612Z

Thank you, Alexander! Very useful!
May I just ask you to include links to the corresponding wiki pages whenever you refer to them? Otherwise it is not guaranteed we will be reading the same docs.

qdore · 2021-12-05T04:38:00.939Z

Dose anyone have "kmod-fuse" or "kmod-exfat" for the image? Now it can't mount exfat disk, I will be very appreciated if your share these packages.

egorenar · 2021-12-05T08:02:54.131Z

You always need a matching kernel for that, you can't mix kmods from a different kernel. That means you need the whole package: kernel and kmods from the same built.

qdore · 2021-12-05T10:23:07.598Z

Thank you for your reply, the image (openwrt-alpine-generic-netgear_r9000-squashfs-factory.img) I used is posted by NotANewNick , do I need to compile and rebuild ?

egorenar · 2021-12-05T10:56:02.103Z

That's what i would do, you can enable whatever packages you want.

piperov · 2021-12-06T22:32:04.334Z

Trying to build the firmware with your posted config file results in error:

rstrip.sh: /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/build_dir/target-arm_cortex-a15+neon-vfpv4_musl_eabi/gcc-7.4.0/ipkg-arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4/gcc/usr/bin/arm-openwrt-linux-muslgnueabi-g++: executable
(cd /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/build_dir/target-arm_cortex-a15+neon-vfpv4_musl_eabi/gcc-7.4.0/ipkg-arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4/gcc/CONTROL; ( echo "$CONTROL"; printf "Description: "; echo "$DESCRIPTION" | sed -e 's,^[1]*, ,g'; ) > control; chmod 644 control; ( echo "#!/bin/sh"; echo "[ "${IPKG_NO_SCRIPT}" = "1" ] && exit 0"; echo "[ -s "${IPKG_INSTROOT}/lib/functions.sh" ] || exit 0"; echo ". ${IPKG_INSTROOT}/lib/functions.sh"; echo "default_postinst $0 $@"; ) > postinst; ( echo "#!/bin/sh"; echo "[ -s "${IPKG_INSTROOT}/lib/functions.sh" ] || exit 0"; echo ". ${IPKG_INSTROOT}/lib/functions.sh"; echo "default_prerm $0 $@"; ) > prerm; chmod 0755 postinst prerm; echo "$V_Package_gcc_postinst" > postinst-pkg; chmod 0755 postinst-pkg; echo "$V_Package_gcc_postrm" > postrm; chmod 0755 postrm; )
install -d -m0755 /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/bin/packages/arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4/packages
/home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/staging_dir/host/bin/fakeroot /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/scripts/ipkg-build -m "" /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/build_dir/target-arm_cortex-a15+neon-vfpv4_musl_eabi/gcc-7.4.0/ipkg-arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4/gcc /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/bin/packages/arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4/packages
Packaged contents of /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/build_dir/target-arm_cortex-a15+neon-vfpv4_musl_eabi/gcc-7.4.0/ipkg-arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4/gcc into /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/bin/packages/arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4/packages/gcc_7.4.0-7_arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4.ipk
make[3]: Leaving directory '/home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/feeds/packages/devel/gcc'
time: package/feeds/packages/gcc/compile#1522.31#785.69#2738.61
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt'
make[1]: *** [package/Makefile:110: /home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/staging_dir/target-arm_cortex-a15+neon-vfpv4_musl_eabi/stamp/.package_compile] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt'
make: *** [/home/osboxes/OpenWRT-R9000/openwrt/include/toplevel.mk:230: world] Error 2

Making sure that the problem is not on my side I re-installed my development environment according to the official instructions but ended up with the exact same error. I tried make -j1 ... too - no difference.

Is it possible that your development environment differs from the standard one in some ways?
I would very much want to establish a 'standard' firmware build process, which re-creates a known-good firmware every time.

[:space:] ↩︎

Ironalchemy · 2021-12-07T14:15:19.310Z

While I am not sure that it is related, I have noticed that the Channel Analysis function and Scan function do not work anymore for me on 5GHz. I do not see any of the other 5GHz access points in the house. Those functions still work fine on 2.4GHz.

egorenar · 2021-12-07T15:26:51.149Z

hmm, works for me. how old is your build ? i‘m using a build based on 2-3 days old master.

Ironalchemy · 2021-12-07T16:01:43.850Z

Thanks for the feedback. Mine is a 2 day old pull from master as well. I'll do a clean install and not use the existing configuration. I also have a second R9000 to try just in case this is some odd hardware issue.

piperov · 2021-12-07T18:05:53.478Z

OK, Alexander, apparently if I first do a full build with the generic, plain .config (from your original instructions), and only after that I use your modified config (from Pastebin), then I get a successful build, with a 1.1GB bin/ directory full of over 1000 .ipk files

Just wanted to post this for posteriority. It does work.
Thank you!

egorenar · 2021-12-07T18:49:51.641Z

Hmm, it seems like gcc build failed. I haven't seen this problem on my machine.