OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: Update on Linksys WRT1900AC support

The content of this topic has been archived between 16 Sep 2014 and 7 May 2018. Unfortunately there are posts – most likely complete pages – missing.

@Inkblobadmirer @davidc502
Ansuel hath already pushed a later version of cryptodev-linux to openwrt/packages = no patch needed!

lifehacksback wrote:

@Inkblobadmirer @davidc502
Ansuel hath already pushed a later version of cryptodev-linux to openwrt/packages = no patch needed!

do you know if this also went to lede?

@davidc502

Just built cryptodev-linux on lede. It was pulled when using "$ ./scripts/feeds update -a && ./scripts/feeds install -a" since lede still used openwrt/packages as their feeds

(Last edited by lifehacksback on 27 Feb 2017, 16:24)

I've been looking at routers, trying to see what would work with OpenWRT. It seems like I keep finding little notes and gotchas when digging into the details.

Is the v1 of the WRT1900AC worth getting? I notice the V2 uses a different platform. Is the support much different?

@lightman

All the WRT1x00 / WRT3200 series are well supported under OpenWRT.

nitroshift

nitroshift wrote:

@lightman
All the WRT1x00 / WRT3200 series are well supported under OpenWRT.
nitroshift

Thank you! Then the version doesn't matter, I guess.

lightman wrote:
nitroshift wrote:

@lightman
All the WRT1x00 / WRT3200 series are well supported under OpenWRT.
nitroshift

Thank you! Then the version doesn't matter, I guess.

The WRT3200 is supported under OpenWRT, but currently the closed source wifi driver has some stability problems, especially with the 5 Ghz band.
Marvell is currently working on new drivers, so hopefully this will be solved soon. smile

Hello everyone! I am having wifi problems with my WRT1200AC v2. On 5ghz the wifi is okay, not good but it's decent, but 2.4ghz is terrible, sometimes I can't even get data to transfer at all and it hardly works. On ethernet the internet works perfectly and at full speed. Also when I connect to my wifi network as a client it gets the inbound connection (on 5ghz) perfectly as well. Maybe it's a driver problem or a firmware problem?

-I am using kaloz build for the v2.
-I have mwlwifi driver 10.3.2.0-20161011.
-On Designated Driver when you disable the wifi the 2.4ghz breaks and it turns into a  wifi generic controller.
-On LEDE 17.01 the ethernet ports don't give an I.P address.
-Didn't bother with Chaos Calmer since the wifi drivers are even older.
-DD-WRT doesn't have the wireless repeater function for this router, and any other configurations causes me to have no internet or WAN I.P address.

I would honestly go back to Linksys firmware for the time being but on the wireless repeater function you can't specify what network to connect to (only selects by SSID but not mac address) and I need this for load balancing purposes with my useless xfinitywifi hotspot.

I didn't try arokh's build since this wasn't updated since April 2016, and davidc502's build was terrible, the wifi speed was much worse. And the Linksys firmware works fine overall. I seem to be stuck in a hard place here, any ideas on how to fix this (honestly mediocre) wifi? My single band WNR1000V2'S wifi on 2.4ghz actually performs better than on this thing.

Sizeable Swiss wrote:

Hello everyone! I am having wifi problems with my WRT1200AC v2. On 5ghz the wifi is okay, not good but it's decent, but 2.4ghz is terrible, sometimes I can't even get data to transfer at all and it hardly works. On ethernet the internet works perfectly and at full speed. Also when I connect to my wifi network as a client it gets the inbound connection (on 5ghz) perfectly as well. Maybe it's a driver problem or a firmware problem?

-I am using kaloz build for the v2.
-I have mwlwifi driver 10.3.2.0-20161011.
-On Designated Driver when you disable the wifi the 2.4ghz breaks and it turns into a  wifi generic controller.
-On LEDE 17.01 the ethernet ports don't give an I.P address.
-Didn't bother with Chaos Calmer since the wifi drivers are even older.
-DD-WRT doesn't have the wireless repeater function for this router, and any other configurations causes me to have no internet or WAN I.P address.

I would honestly go back to Linksys firmware for the time being but on the wireless repeater function you can't specify what network to connect to (only selects by SSID but not mac address) and I need this for load balancing purposes with my useless xfinitywifi hotspot.

I didn't try arokh's build since this wasn't updated since April 2016, and davidc502's build was terrible, the wifi speed was much worse. And the Linksys firmware works fine overall. I seem to be stuck in a hard place here, any ideas on how to fix this (honestly mediocre) wifi? My single band WNR1000V2'S wifi on 2.4ghz actually performs better than on this thing.

On my wrt1200 v1 adding a network such as guest wifi or repeater to a radio messes up the settings in /etc/config/wireless, so you might check your configs if you haven't already.

@Sizeable Swiss  Is your WiFi channel on Auto?  If so, try manually setting the channel (1, 6, 11 generally work the best in the US for 2.4, anything over 151 on 5.7).

Antenna positioning matters, as does router placement and what appliances are in between the client and the router (if router's electromagnetic waves must pass through a room with appliances [fridge, microwave, anything with 220v+, etc.] in order to reach the client, the signal will be severely degraded, even if it's only a short span of ~15ft).

I actually changed the channel to 1 and set the width to 20mhz instead of 40mhz, this made it better (does this somehow interfere with the 5ghz band?) don't get me wrong it still kinda sucks but not as bad, guess 40mhz channels for 2.4g is a big no-no

@Sizeable Swiss

After big flash (OpenWRT -> LEDE you neeed to reset your xfinity hotspot because of mac address, I would also recommend turning the hotspot into a gateway by putting it into bridge mode because then you'd be double nat-ting plus if you connect LAN to LAN on wrt you get a degraded speed)

(Last edited by lifehacksback on 3 Mar 2017, 06:32)

Sizeable Swiss wrote:

I actually changed the channel to 1 and set the width to 20mhz instead of 40mhz, this made it better (does this somehow interfere with the 5ghz band?) don't get me wrong it still kinda sucks but not as bad, guess 40mhz channels for 2.4g is a big no-no

yes, 40MHz channels on 2.4GHz is unlikely to work well. There are only three channels worth of space overall and if you try to use two of them anyone in the area using either one will clobber you.

look at what other stations are in your area and try to pick a channel that's not being clobbered too badly. wifi analyzer on android is a good app to get a quick view of things.

I found another LEDE image that worked better with newer wifi drivers, but the wifi still isn't up to par

lifehacksback wrote:

@davidc502

Just built cryptodev-linux on lede. It was pulled when using "$ ./scripts/feeds update -a && ./scripts/feeds install -a" since lede still used openwrt/packages as their feeds

I made i pull request to upgrade it to last commit

@davidc502  When you have time, could you please combine all your sha256sums into a single sha256sum file that can be linked to on the wiki. 

  • Listing each individual sha256sum file under each model is fine, but for the wiki, linking to a single sha256sum would be preferred.

  • When you build images, each image's sha256sum will be auto added to the master sha256sum file in the buildroot bin folder.

(Last edited by JW0914 on 4 Mar 2017, 02:19)

I'm aware that the WRT1900AC has 2 boot partition. When a sysupgrade is performed, the new firmware will be flashed on the alternate partition, leaving the current one as failsafe.

Is it possible to override this action by forcing the sysupgrade to flash on the current boot partition? I have a stable OpenWRT on the other partition that I'll like to keep intact, while I test a couple of new LEDE builds on the current one.

phuque99 wrote:

I'm aware that the WRT1900AC has 2 boot partition. When a sysupgrade is performed, the new firmware will be flashed on the alternate partition, leaving the current one as failsafe.

Is it possible to override this action by forcing the sysupgrade to flash on the current boot partition? I have a stable OpenWRT on the other partition that I'll like to keep intact, while I test a couple of new LEDE builds on the current one.

One very easy solution is to first switch the router to boot from the other partition, then boot from that so that the sysupgrade overwrites the one you currently use.

I use the following script to switch boot partitions (modified from https://git.lede-project.org/?p=source. … sh;hb=HEAD ):

#!/bin/sh
#
# This script changes the router to boot from the alternative kernel/partition.

cur_boot_part=`/usr/sbin/fw_printenv -n boot_part`
if [ "$cur_boot_part" = "1" ]
then
    echo "Switching to kernel/partition 2"
    fw_setenv boot_part 2
    fw_setenv bootcmd "run altnandboot"
elif [ "$cur_boot_part" = "2" ]
then
    echo "Switching to kernel/partition 1"
    fw_setenv boot_part 1
    fw_setenv bootcmd "run nandboot"
else
    echo "Error: unexpected value: boot_part=$cur_boot_part"
fi

# auto_recovery should have been set to 'yes' by /etc/init.d/97linksys_recovery
# the same script has also reseted the boot-counter used by u-boot.

fw_printenv auto_recovery

You can naturally use the same script to jump between the partitions while testing various firmwares.

The negative aspect of this approach may be settings, as you take the settings from the sysupgrade source partition along with you. So you might need to sysupgrade without saving settings.

I think that you could also use the same script to trick sysupgrade to flash the current partition (without rebooting in between from the other one), but I have not tested that. Sysupgrade simply reads and toggles the boot_part value, so toggling it first by yourself should do the trick and cause sysupgrade to flash the current partition. But like said, I haven't tested that.

Platform sysupgrade functions:
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/blob … linksys.sh
https://git.lede-project.org/?p=source. … sh;hb=HEAD

hnyman wrote:

I think that you could also use the same script to trick sysupgrade to flash the current partition (without rebooting in between from the other one), but I have not tested that. Sysupgrade simply reads and toggles the boot_part value, so toggling it first by yourself should do the trick and cause sysupgrade to flash the current partition. But like said, I haven't tested that.

Platform sysupgrade functions:
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/blob … linksys.sh
https://git.lede-project.org/?p=source. … sh;hb=HEAD

Thanks for that suggestion, I'll try using fw_setenv to see if that works. The "normal" way is cumbersome because I need to save the LEDE configuration tarball, boot into the OpenWRT partition, then flash LEDE firmware with the LEDE config tarball.

JW0914 wrote:

@davidc502  When you have time, could you please combine all your sha256sums into a single sha256sum file that can be linked to on the wiki. 

  • Listing each individual sha256sum file under each model is fine, but for the wiki, linking to a single sha256sum would be preferred.

  • When you build images, each image's sha256sum will be auto added to the master sha256sum file in the buildroot bin folder.

Will do.

Thanks

*EDIT*

Copied over to build root.

(Last edited by davidc502 on 4 Mar 2017, 17:40)

@davidc502  Thanks a bunch, I really appreciate it.  BTW, your website looks awesome smile

EDIT
Could you verify a few things:

  • Is this the correct link for the LEDE sha256sums

  • I couldn't find the link for the OpenWrt sha256sums, could you reply back with that please

I've updated your section in the wiki, adding a placeholder for the master OpenWrt sha256sums file.  I've also added a link to your warning text file for the Rango to all 3200ACM sections.

(Last edited by JW0914 on 2 Apr 2017, 23:30)

lifehacksback wrote:

@davidc502

Just built cryptodev-linux on lede. It was pulled when using "$ ./scripts/feeds update -a && ./scripts/feeds install -a" since lede still used openwrt/packages as their feeds

How can I just add cryptodev-linux package only?

I tried:

./scripts/feeds install cryptodev-linux

and get following message.

WARNING: No feed for package 'cryptodev-linux' found, maybe it's already part of the standard packages?

Thanks.

JW0914 wrote:

@davidc502  Thanks a bunch, I really appreciate it.  BTW, you're website looks awesome smile

EDIT
Could you verify a few things:

  • Is this the correct link for the LEDE sha256sums

  • I couldn't find the link for the OpenWrt sha256sums, could you reply back with that please

I've updated your section in the wiki, adding a placeholder for the master OpenWrt sha256sums file.  I've also added a link to your warning text file for the Rango to all 3200ACM sections.

Thanks... Yes, the LEDE sha256sum is correct, and I'll be sure to leave a copy there moving forward.  As for OpenWrt, I haven't done a build since September of last year, and actually didn't realize that I don't have any packages available for that build on the site... Unless you knew the absolute path one couldn't find it. I'm thinking about just pulling it, but feel awkward about doing so since Openwrt is the "daddy".

Appreciate the warning being put out there. Hopefully the issue will be fixed before long.

LogicoZone wrote:
lifehacksback wrote:

@davidc502

Just built cryptodev-linux on lede. It was pulled when using "$ ./scripts/feeds update -a && ./scripts/feeds install -a" since lede still used openwrt/packages as their feeds

How can I just add cryptodev-linux package only?

I tried:

./scripts/feeds install cryptodev-linux

and get following message.

WARNING: No feed for package 'cryptodev-linux' found, maybe it's already part of the standard packages?

Thanks.

In make menuconfig, under kernel modules > Kryptographic API Modules > make sure that kmod-cryptodev is included in the build. It's the last one in the list.

davidc502 wrote:

In make menuconfig, under kernel modules > Kryptographic API Modules > make sure that kmod-cryptodev is included in the build. It's the last one in the list.

Pardon me for the questions.

1. Once I have this enabled, do I have to modify openssl lib Makefile to utilize the cryptodev?
2. Do I need to have patch for mv-cesa installed and enabled?

Thanks.