Hi community.
I have a question about a device that is currently not supported...
As per topic, I have an WND930 from Netgear and because of its limitations I want to use OPENWRT.
I looked for devices with the same hardware on the TOH and found e.g. Ubiquiti Unify AP Pro and Devolo Magic 2 Wifi are similar devices.
Is it possible to build an OWRT image from those images?
What would I need to know to make the image work?
Thanks!
It depends...
How did you determine that they have the same hardware?
If they are indeed very similar, then it wouldn't be terribly difficult to add support, at least in theory. The device would need to have at least 128MB RAM and 16MB flash storage in order to be worth adding.
Each device requires a bespoke firmware image, but new devices that are very similar to existing ones are usually fairly easy to bring up...The process is here:
The TOH shows the hardware and from uboot I can see my device has the same hardware.
128 MB
Top of RAM usable for U-Boot at:
flash size 16MB, sector count = 256
Flash: 16 MB
And the CPU, Switch-, und WIFI-chips I founds as I unscrewed the AP.
So yes, it should be possible to add that device. The article I linked above should guide you through the process. With serial, you should be able to send an initramfs image to RAM and test during the development process.
I found the following in the printenv
lf=tftp 0x80060000 ${dir}rootfs.squashfs&&erase 0x9f2e0000 +0xbf0000&&cp.b $fileaddr 0x9f2e0000 $filesize
If I see it correctly, thats 12Mb for root-OS.and that command just deletes and copies data from and to that section.
It is somewhat safe (if its possible to speak so) to flash the rootfs with with and OWRT image, as I saw these are under 7mb.
I looked into that page, unfortunatly, for a none developer it's kind of hard to read and understand...
No, it's not safe to do that. At least not blindly.
Use an initramfs image which you can load into RAM (this makes it non-resident and leaves your existing firmware alone). This will tell you if the image will boot properly in general and then you can test the subsystems (Ethernet, wifi, etc.).
In the case of the AP-PRO, you can use the "kernel" image.
if I'm not mistaken, bootm is the command to boot from memory, correct?
Yes, once you’ve loaded the file into ram.
Okay, I got it booting succesfully from the Unify Image, eth and wifi radio works fine.
From here, can I install the sysupgrade image?
No, even if I'd boot, wifi and perhaps ethernet will not work.
Well, I can reach LuCI, I can see and connect to wifi.
That works at least.
Okay, so I just installed the sysupgrade file and unfortunately after that, the AP did not booted because of some "bad magic number"
How would it be possible to get the Magic Number for that Unifi image?
Again, it starts successfully from memory, but not from flash...
keep posting, so hopefully someone could possibly help...
I tried finding the right Magic number from the original image, as well as the OWRT images... but unfortunately nothing there that is really readable... 
(I unpacked original and OWRT with binwalk)
Would it be possible building an own image, with the OWRT Image builder? I have the original rootfs image from the WND930...
Would the boot log be helpful? to identify stuff?
I reinstalled the original firmware and found that general linux commands seem to work (at least some) so if that could be helpful, I could look for some specific information.