Hi - would appreciate if someone here can lend a hand - I am trying to port OpenWRT to the Netgear WNR854T/WNR834M series.  They are basically arm-softfloat routers with a decent amount of memory (32Mbytes) and flash (8MBytes), which is rather roomy (just like oldschool WRT54GSes).  These are 802.11 draft-n routers running kernel 2.4.27vrs2, with the only substantial difference between the two in the 4 port switch that they are provided with (The 854T uses a Marvel 88E6061 Gigabit Ethernet controller, the 834M uses an 88E5051 FastE controller).  I am very interested in porting the OpenWRT code over, but I am having difficulty building a working toolchain so this can happen...

I followed the instructions as laid out by Woden on the Wiki here:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Har … ar/WNR854T

And was told by Netgear OpenSource support to consult this webpage:

http://frank.harvard.edu/~coldwell/toolchain

And so far I keep running into issues building the precise toolchain.

Can anyone lend a hand and enlighten me as to what exactly is needed by the build process?  If I use crosstool as described on the wiki, the compilation will drop dead right when it begins building glibc.  The Coldwell build shell script completes but does not seem to build anything useful.  Do I need to match the kernel headers to the original 2.4.27 build and then apply the VRS patches, or can this be built using the 2.6.x series kernel headers as alluded to in these webpages? 

Would appreciate either a hand in this, or a tarball with a working toolchain. 

Thanks...

(Last edited by ragefury32 on 29 Nov 2008, 11:21)

any luck?

Im looking for the toolchain too? Any luck ? Would like to try any prebuilt toolchain before building my own. My WNR834M requires a reboot almost daily now.. and with any large download goes belly up..

I got nothing from anyone thus far - however, there is a thread on SlickDeals

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread … p=13524481

discussing the WNR854T.  Supposedly someone on OpenWRT committed some Marvell/ARM code fixes for it - even though I see nothing thus far.  I am still looking though - if OpenWRT works this little bastard can potentially blow away the other Netgear router that I have...which is a WNR834Bv2 running DD-WRT (which is an altogether much nicer piece of work).   I am looking at my old notes to see if I can get a toolchain running on this thing.

(Last edited by ragefury32 on 29 Nov 2008, 14:45)

Yeah, that was my deal thread.  Kaloz of the OpenWRT team and Lennert from Marvell are working on this Marvell Orion platform for OpenWRT.  I believe the same Marvell gigabit switch chip is used in some of Linksys's newer units, thus the keen interest in getting the switch driver working well.  The wireless is a different issue altogether.  Kaloz suggested replacing the Marvell wireless-N PC-card with an Atheros wireless-N PC-card, but since I don't have an Atheros wireless-N PC-card laying around it's not a viable option for me. 

Kaloz recently moved an older WNR854T discussion thread from the White Russian forum to the Kamikaze forum, since Kernel 2.6.x is more suitable for this router.  I've been watching and bumping it every couple of weeks, just to keep it within the front five pages of the Kamikaze forum.

Here's the thread about the Marvell gigabit switch chip.  Most of the firmware/driver update and testing work is being documented there.

I've got two suggestions regarding this router if you're serious about trying to use it:
1) Throw away the flakey Netgear/DVE wall-wart/power supply.  Seriously.  Replace it with any 9VDC or 12VDC 800mA to 1200mA traditional power supply.  This will resolve a multitude of hardware restarts caused by power problems.  Here's a new/surplus Netgear supply at allelectronics.com for $6.75.  (The same power supply problems occur with the WNR834B v1 and v2 refurb units recently sold through Fry's and Geeks.com. Many of these included faulty power supplies.)

2) Install a 25mm (1-inch) 5VDC fan and power it from the console port's GND and Vcc 3.3VDC pins.  Mount it above the top of the circuit board to pull air up from the bottom and over the CPU and wireless.  The heat generated by this Marvell TopDog chipset  is unbelievable. allelectronics.com stocks this fan for $4.35, about half what the R/C car suppliers charge for one.

No, I don't own stock in allelectronics.com I simply use them for most of my cheap surplus needs.

(Last edited by KeithB on 1 Dec 2008, 18:59)

Hm, yeah.  I understand re: the PSU - it seems that the netgear wall warts are pumping too much power to the board and causing it to flip - I remembered bringing one of these with me to a client, and the damned thing reboots every 5 to 10 minutes.  Very frustrating.  As for the overheating...well, I found a stash of video chip/RAM heatsinks just lying around and stuck some on the Orion and the 88E5051 (The FastEthernet Controller).  It works (for some reason) - someone at Netgear should put their fingers on the Orion and feel how warm it really got. 

As for the Wireless card...yeah, for some reason Atheros seems to be one of the more reliable and drama-free Linux wireless cards out there.  It is a challenge to find a good MiniPCI card with 802.11a/b/g/n support at a good price, though.  Most of the cards that I know of are pricey. 

I had no issues building the firmware - but I can't seem to flash it in using the standard craptastic Netgear web interface - keeps telling me the flash img file is bad.  Would I need a serial cable to flash it?  Already tried to force it using tftp...doesn't seem to work.

(Last edited by ragefury32 on 12 Jan 2009, 13:35)

I've been searching for the firmware for the Netgear WNR854T and this is the closest information I've found so far. Anyone knows of a ready to upload img file for it? Thanks

Actually, there is an image in the snapshot directory (orion) but the wireless doesn't work and the flashing option in the web interface to flash back is disabled so, you should wait

I'll wait in that case, and thanks for the pointer to the directory. I'll keep an eye on it.

Anyone tried with WNR854T? Is the wireless working now? Thanks

Bump..    I have a WNR834M  I am willing to perform any and all required tests on to aid this effort.  Is it now even possible to flash this unit with the Marvel wireless?

Is there any news about Marvell Orion based routers ?

Sorry to bump this thread, but I felt like this might help other owners of this router.
After considering the '854T for a long time (since you can get a refurb unit for so cheap now) I found your post on google and  decided to buy it and try your suggestions. I made a guide on my blog for others who want to try as well.

The router's been running for two days straight now in a semi-enclosed space and when I opened it up this morning there was no source of significant heat anywhere in the router. I think it will last me a lot longer than owners of the stock product.

Hi, sorry, I tried to avoid questions. But I'm afraid to destroy the router.
I found that with original firmware this router could not be used as bridge o WiFi range extender so I'm looking
for the way to fix it. As I got OpenWRT allows it ?
I've found some built images in this location http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/openwrt/unstable/. 
First question is how much unstable those images ?
I got that jffs2 and squashfs are different file systems but which one I should choose ? The better for me or there are firm rules ?
What is 128k and 64k ? I've read the FAQ but got no from there.
And what is the difference between -webupgrade and usual img ?
Is there a FAQ with answers to those questions ?

openwrt-wnr854t-jffs2-64k-webupgrade.img    03-May-2009 18:51    3.9M
openwrt-wnr854t-jffs2-64k.img    03-May-2009 18:51    3.9M
openwrt-wnr854t-jffs2-128k-webupgrade.img    03-May-2009 18:51    5.3M
openwrt-wnr854t-jffs2-128k.img    03-May-2009 18:51    5.3M
openwrt-wnr854t-squashfs-webupgrade.img    03-May-2009 18:51    4.6M
openwrt-wnr854t-squashfs.img    03-May-2009 18:51    4.6M
openwrt-wnr854t-uImage    03-May-2009 18:51    1.3M

Hello,

Its seems to have somebody working on this router because some built image are updated on this address :
http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/orion/

So I would be interested to know if these image worked and which one I should use :
openwrt-wnr854t-squashfs-webupgrade.img or
openwrt-wnr854t-squashfs.img

Thanks

I understand that webupgrade suffix means that this firmware could be loaded to router through it's original web interface without complicated processes.
I'm really interesting how risky is this build and does it supports bridge and other modes

I'm agree with you for the images.
Now it could be nice if the persons who works on the WNR854 can tell us if it's ok or not.

Hey, if it works for any of you, I'll also give it a go. Almost there!!!

I will glad to test it just need to know if it's ready to be tested.

I said screw it and uploaded the firmware, it works!

No problems except that the wireless doesn't seem to work at all. Any fixes for this?

Last week-end I uploaded the firmware (openwrt-wnr854t-squashfs-webupgrade.img) from web interface and it works fine for me.

I add the Webif interface for management because the installation of Luci doesn't work.
I don't regret the use of Webif, it's a powerful and great interface.

For wireless I didn't try it, Webif say that no driver is installed for wireless.

I flashed with the last build of OpenWRT, the boot log is there :
http://openwrt.pastebin.com/m58d3ef72

There is a bug with the MAC address of interfaces

root@OpenWrt:/# ifconfig
br-lan    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:51:81
          inet addr:192.168.1.1  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:61 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:31206 (30.4 KiB)  TX bytes:403 (403.0 B)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:51:81
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:61 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:32548 (31.7 KiB)  TX bytes:407 (407.0 B)
          Interrupt:21

lan1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:51:81
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:61 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:31206 (30.4 KiB)  TX bytes:403 (403.0 B)

lan2      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:51:81
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lan3      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:51:81
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lan4      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:51:81
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wan       Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:51:81
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

supermattt, does the wireless work for you?

Looks like there are new images (8/10) - any word on the wireless and MAC addressing fixes?  I have the WNR-854T and really want to try to get this working up to its potential - and the factory firmware doesn't come close. I appreciate the efforts done here - I'm willing to try/experiment a bit with mine (I have a WRT-54Gv3.1 with Hyperwrt-Thibor as a nice backup router) if that would be of any help. Wish I knew Linux/firmware coding to be of more help. Thanks!

This is great news.  Can anyone confirm that the wireless is working on the latest build?