OpenWrt Support for Asus RT-AC88U

Second try. Link: https://filehorst.de/d/dbwyACwg

That's it! I just opened a bug report about this. For now, I recommend to stick with the swconfig driver which the switch works.

Bug report:
https://bugs.openwrt.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=3827

Hi,

@arinc9 thanks a ton for this port. I got a bit frustrated with the Merlin and installed your OpenWrt for ASUS RT-AC88U from your github releases.

Now I try to compile it myself and wonder if it's possible that you would share your '.config' and the kernel config file 'config-5.4'.
That way all the necessary modules would be included. And I'd like to add the driver for the RealTek switch.

/Thomas

Hey Thomas @patient0
.config and kernel configuration are the default ones for bcm53xx. Just clone my fork. If you want to use LuCI, enable it on menuconfig and you're good to go.

There's no swconfig (or DSA) driver for Realtek rtl8365mb yet. I still have plans of adding support for this switch on an already existing swconfig driver. It will take a while, but it will be done.

Hi @arinc9,

I did read - after I wrote you - in the building wiki that the config.buildinfo in the bcm53xx is the default config file. And it did indeed work excellent. Then I did git cherry-pick your commit into 21.02.0-rc4 and build the firmware.

Works beautiful including full WLAN connection speed, everything I need works (I don't use the USB ports).

Maybe one other question: the WLAN LEDs are not yet included, yes?

Again, thanks a lot for your effort.

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Good job! Can you confirm USB doesn’t work for you too? It won’t work for me.

I couldn’t find the GPIO numbers for WLAN LEDs. They lit up just fine when you enable wireless radios. I believe the wireless firmware controls them.

USB: Won't work for me neither. lsusb shows the USB hubs but no attached devices. Nothing in dmesg and therefore no device(s) in /dev/.

LEDs:
I have a different experience :slight_smile: ... the power leds is the only one that works right out of the box; no matter what version.

  • WLAN LEDs don't come on at all, no matter what I do
  • WAN LED is off per default but I can configure it and then it does work. It's always red, and with Merlin it's only red if there's no connection to the outside and white if there is a internet connection
  • Per default LAN LED blinks depending on net traffic but not LAN but also WAN. Of course I can configure that

That's how I configured LAN & Power LEDs by default. You're all good there.

I could only find red LED for WAN. White one is not configured at the moment.

I remember 2.4 & 5GHz LEDs to be a bit glitchy so that makes sense. Unfortunately, I can't do much about it.

@arinc9 : that's ok. I'm very happy that you made the effort and that I have a working OpenWrt on my trusty RT-AC88U.

Btw: I got the USB ports working! After installing Merlin again and checking the nvram settings, I came across the following: gpio9=usbport1.
After flashing back OpenWrt I set GPIO 9 do high (gpioctl dirout-high 9) and voila: both USB ports seem to work.
Maybe you could give it a try to see if that really works or if it was only luck.

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Hi,

So about the USB topic, I assume it's clear for all you OpenWrt buffs (but if it were not, here it goes):

To be able to configure the USB lights in Luci one has to install luci-app-ledtrig-usbport. As a dependency it will install kmod-usb-ledtrig-usbport.

All that makes it possible to choose usbport as a trigger in the System > LED Configuration.

Right now the luci-app-ledtrig-usbport package has the bug that you can't chose more than one USB port for one trigger. The kernel module does allow that though (so you can do it manually, link to relevant kernel doc).

To fix that the simplest of pull request was submitted (Luci@github PR 5312).

For my RT-AC88U the following USB port config works:

  • usb1-port2 is the USB 2.0 port at the back of the device
  • usb1-port1 and usb4-port1 refers to the USB 3.0 port at the front. usb1-port1 is used when an USB 2.0 device is plugged into the front USB 3.0 port. and usb4-port1 for the faster devices
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This is really useful information, could you let me know how did you figure out usbX-portX for USB 2 & 3?

I wasn't really clever or anything: connect an USB 2.0 device and looking at the dmesg output. After enabling the USB ports of course. Then doing the same with the front faceing USB 3.0 port.

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Thank you for this. Currently:

  • "usb1-port1" "usb1-port2" -> USB 2.0
  • "usb4-port1" -> USB 3.0

I will amend my commit to reflect your findings.

P.S. They might not review your PR on Github. It's mostly Hauke checking the patches at the mailing list. You should send this patch to the mailing list if there's no response in a while.

I'd say you already got the USB ports naming right in the 01-leds file.
Do you see different ports in dmesg on your router?

PR: Ok, I read in the documentation of Luci that both ways are accepted. After a few days I'll check back and do send it to the mailing list if there is no response on github.

I need to change usb1-port1 from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0. The rest fits your description.

@arinc9 : Have you seen "net: dsa: add support for RTL8365MB-VC" on the linux kernel mailing list.

That may help in setting up the rtl8365mb switch.

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No I haven't seen this. That's huge! DSA support for rtl8365mb means a lot now that more and more targets are being switched to DSA on OpenWrt. For now, bcm53xx (target of RT-AC88U) uses swconfig, I think it would be fairly easy to port this DSA driver to swconfig.

Devices can be moved to DSA individually, even if the rest of the target isn't ready yet.

Hey @slh, I'm aware of that but kconfig are for targets, right? If I were to change kconfig to use DSA instead, that would change the settings for the whole target, therefore I can't submit a patch to have this device on the OpenWrt repository, correct?

Precedent would be mvebu and the turris omnia, in OpenWrt this device was (only) merged with DSA support from day 1, even though the rest of the mvebu target was still using swconfig.

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