OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: Cisco Meraki MR12 Ethernet

The content of this topic has been archived between 25 Mar 2018 and 6 May 2018. Unfortunately there are posts – most likely complete pages – missing.

wooyah wrote:

Superb!

The thing we really need to work is how to get this permanently flashed to the meraki unit.  I'm happy to trial layouts once I've got a path back should I do what I did last time.

Sweet, well I just pushed more changes to the Repo. New DL is at https://github.com/riptidewave93/Openwr … -R0.3A.zip

This now includes the TFTP image as well as the kernel/squashfs image if you want to flash it to your unit. Also fixed the WiFi LEDs and Reset button.

At this point, I think all that is really left is testing the internal upgrade process (once someone flashes the system image), as well as getting the 2nd NIC online which I will probably need help with figuring out at this point.

EDIT: Offtopic, but for anyone interested here are some closeups of the chips on the board. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= … sp=sharing

(Last edited by riptide_wave on 8 Oct 2014, 03:43)

Great progress, nice.

Have you been in touch with our OpenWRT overlords as to getting this officially hosted and introduced into the builds yet?

I'm going to stick a seperate post up about memory areas for writing out to the flash, but having a read about this morning there's a helpful guide here (admittedly uses RedBoot as opposed to uBoot) that seems to be a good a starting point as any.

http://blog.coldtobi.de/1_coldtobis_blo … onera.html

wooyah wrote:

Great progress, nice.

Have you been in touch with our OpenWRT overlords as to getting this officially hosted and introduced into the builds yet?

I'm going to stick a seperate post up about memory areas for writing out to the flash, but having a read about this morning there's a helpful guide here (admittedly uses RedBoot as opposed to uBoot) that seems to be a good a starting point as any.

http://blog.coldtobi.de/1_coldtobis_blo … onera.html

I have not yet contacted anyone, but I will make a request with my patches later on the dev site. Hopefully then it will get picked-up and thrown in the nightlies, but before that it would be nice to test flashing the firmware to the device instead of just TFTP booting it.

As for flashing, can't we just use the same u-boot commands that Cisco used? So similar to the following:

tftpboot 0x80010000 kernel.uImage;erase 0x9f680000 +0x200000;cp.b 0x80010000 0x9f680000 0x200000
tftpboot 0x80010000 system.squashfs;erase 0x9f080000 +0x600000;cp.b 0x80010000 0x9f080000 0x600000

Totally agree.  Like I said, I'm happy to test out the above once I've got a bootable device again.

Last few bits should have arrived today, or at latest tomorrow.  Once I've got everything I'll let you know how I got on.

Have also ordered a spare SOIC just in case the old one gets fried on removal/resolder, but fairly confident I can get it off/flashed and reinstalled.

I'll also update the Wiki page with the procedure should it be successful too.  I've stuffed a load of stuff on there already, but it's crying out for an update.

wooyah wrote:

Totally agree.  Like I said, I'm happy to test out the above once I've got a bootable device again.

Last few bits should have arrived today, or at latest tomorrow.  Once I've got everything I'll let you know how I got on.

Have also ordered a spare SOIC just in case the old one gets fried on removal/resolder, but fairly confident I can get it off/flashed and reinstalled.

I'll also update the Wiki page with the procedure should it be successful too.  I've stuffed a load of stuff on there already, but it's crying out for an update.

Sweet, well I will be working on the device tonight for a while. If you want to get in touch, join up #m12 on freenode IRC and we can work together on the flash process.

EDIT: Off for now but will stay in IRC if anyone wants to join. Also did a formal request to get the device brought up in the trunk. https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/18084

(Last edited by riptide_wave on 10 Oct 2014, 04:49)

SOIC and copper wick should be here today, so I'll get cracking over the weekend.  Have also managed to source a spare MR12 to add to my collection too so once the dev box has done it's job I'll have a good one to flash. big_smile

What time zone are you in bud?  I'll try and get on IRC at some point.

Nice one on the feature request submission!

(Last edited by wooyah on 10 Oct 2014, 10:33)

wooyah wrote:

SOIC and copper wick should be here today, so I'll get cracking over the weekend.  Have also managed to source a spare MR12 to add to my collection too so once the dev box has done it's job I'll have a good one to flash. big_smile

What time zone are you in bud?  I'll try and get on IRC at some point.

Nice one on the feature request submission!

Nice! And I am in CST -6, but I will be in and out this weekend. Got some life things to take care of.

6 hours difference, not too bad.

Postman was a disappointment today, but remaining hopeful for tomorrow!

wooyah wrote:

6 hours difference, not too bad.

Postman was a disappointment today, but remaining hopeful for tomorrow!

Sweet. I will be on IRC again for the next 6-8ish hours. Working on that 2nd NIC still.

EDIT: No luck with that damn 2nd NIC, so working on the flashing process. Will document my findings for the wiki.

EDIT2: Working flashable commands as follows, note to only use this with the latest release (0.4 Alpha) on my github https://github.com/riptidewave93/Openwrt-MR12

tftpboot 0x80010000 openwrt-ar71xx-generic-mr12-kernel.bin;erase 0x9f680000 +0x200000;cp.b 0x80010000 0x9f680000 0x200000
tftpboot 0x80010000 openwrt-ar71xx-generic-mr12-rootfs-squashfs.bin;erase 0x9f080000 +0x600000;cp.b 0x80010000 0x9f080000 0x600000
setenv bootcmd bootm 0x9f680000
saveenv
boot

This will flash the system and squashfs system images, set the new bootcmd, and save the u-boot settings. And away you go! smile Also updated the request ticket with the updated patch file and whatnot.

(Last edited by riptide_wave on 13 Oct 2014, 02:11)

Excellent, I've updated the wiki with kudos to your good self. smile

Second MR12 arrived today, so with a bit of luck I'll have some time tonight to get that flashed and tested too.

All coming together nicely! 

-

Also when I get some time I'll do a step by step guide to flashing a stock MR12 with your image too.

edit - Aaaaalso just want to thank you for your efforts, I'd totally stagnated with this and you've picked it up and run on with it where I left off.  Sure I speak for a lot of people when I say there will be some very happy MR12 owners out there. big_smile

(Last edited by wooyah on 13 Oct 2014, 16:38)

This is just gonna bring a lot of joy.
I will dust mine as well and see how can I give a hand.

http://10.128.128.128/configure/raw_upgrade.html is not available on newer firmwares.
I will try to find another way if there is any.
As I recall they didn't have u-boot option like urescue is.

Shogo wrote:

This is just gonna bring a lot of joy.
I will dust mine as well and see how can I give a hand.

http://10.128.128.128/configure/raw_upgrade.html is not available on newer firmwares.
I will try to find another way if there is any.
As I recall they didn't have u-boot option like urescue is.

Right now to flash the device you need to hookup to the UART pinout to get into the u-boot menu, and you also need to have a TFTP server setup with the openwrt images for installation. If wooyah doesn't have time to document how to do this, I can do it later this weekend.

Also signed up for the Meraki Webinar as I heard they now handing out the MR18. If that's the case, I have one of those on the way now so I can try to work on that next.

(Last edited by riptide_wave on 15 Oct 2014, 15:47)

Ah, that's going to be even funnier, as it has a third radio.
Oh the meshing/monitoring possibilities!

Yes, going to crack one open shortly.

(Last edited by Shogo on 15 Oct 2014, 15:52)

I messed about with the raw_upgrade page for ages before consigning myself to the fact that was a lame duck.  Mine persisted an upgrade, but again was useless.  I presume Cisco sign the firmware images in some way to allow them to work.

As riptide rightly says the only way to make progress is via a serial hookup and a TFTP load of the image.  I ended up grabbing a cheap serial -> USB adapter from eBay to make this happen.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-CP2102-USB … 0685792376

Riptide - I've got an MR18 at home too after attending another webinar, so once the MR12s are flashed up and that's documented I'll turn my attention that model with you too.  smile 

I'll have some time later this week/end hopefully to get cracking on it, seems like ages since I've had a moment to myself!

(Last edited by wooyah on 15 Oct 2014, 15:53)

OK so this is weird...

Just connected the serial pins on my second MR12 with no power and the unit booted drawing power from the serial connection.  Straight into a shell on the Meraki FW!

I've gotta get a dump of this before I flash it with OpenWRT.  Could hold some interesting secrets!

wooyah wrote:

OK so this is weird...

Just connected the serial pins on my second MR12 with no power and the unit booted drawing power from the serial connection.  Straight into a shell on the Meraki FW!

I've gotta get a dump of this before I flash it with OpenWRT.  Could hold some interesting secrets!

You probably just hooked up the 5v lead to UART.

IMO, never use the 3.3v or 5v on UART as its un-needed. Just to TX, RX, and GND to prevent damage to the device.

My point being though the shell was locked down with an unknown PW the last time I tried this.

Have you got to this point then?  If so, any point in me saving what I've got or just ploughing on with the install?

I'm running on J1 with just RX/TX/GND and the unit's PSU, back in shell now with root access.

wooyah wrote:

My point being though the shell was locked down with an unknown PW the last time I tried this.

Have you got to this point then?  If so, any point in me saving what I've got or just ploughing on with the install?

I'm running on J1 with just RX/TX/GND and the unit's PSU, back in shell now with root access.

Yeah, normally booting with UART will give you a root busybox shell on the stock firmware. No need to save the boot output as thats normal.

Ah OK, damn.  Thought I'd stumbled on something there, hey ho.

Right, I'll get on to flashing and getting that step-by-step written.  Then it's on to MR18 territory.

I'm most interested to know how these devices will work with roaming between APs. smile

wooyah wrote:

Ah OK, damn.  Thought I'd stumbled on something there, hey ho.

Right, I'll get on to flashing and getting that step-by-step written.  Then it's on to MR18 territory.

I'm most interested to know how these devices will work with roaming between APs. smile

Probably the same as any OpenWRT router, so not that well tongue

Working on trying to fix the sysupgrade part and the 2nd NIC if I have time after. seems that it may be an actual missing chunk of code upstream in the eth driver.

Ha, great.  I look forward to wrestling with that then.  big_smile

Oh, so it's not the switch style config that you thought it was on the second NIC then?

wooyah wrote:

Ha, great.  I look forward to wrestling with that then.  big_smile

Oh, so it's not the switch style config that you thought it was on the second NIC then?

Its hard to say. Looking at the stock driver at http://pastebin.com/QuD94xaN, each defined port on the driver seems to be on the same phyBase of 0, which I am assuming is the MDIO interface. Now with that knowledge, we know the current GB port is on PHY 4, so that would map it to the "port 5" in the driver. Thing is, nothing shows up on any of the other PHY interfaces on MDIO 0. I tested this in u-boot using the "mii info" command.

I know other devices had similar issues, ex. D-Link DIR-632-A1, and they seemed to think there was a 2nd MDIO interface on the SOC as per http://patchwork.openwrt.org/patch/3641/, but I guess that is not the case.

So ya, this is where I am stuck at this point.

Ah, damn.  Still you've made great progress so far. big_smile

Have done a first pass at a step by step, wiki has been updated.  Will fine tune once I've completed a build with your patch/changes and update as needed.

Had a weird error on building the toolchain section, so this is the second pass at it.  Might have been a misnomer, but we'll see.

wooyah wrote:

Ah, damn.  Still you've made great progress so far. big_smile

Have done a first pass at a step by step, wiki has been updated.  Will fine tune once I've completed a build with your patch/changes and update as needed.

Had a weird error on building the toolchain section, so this is the second pass at it.  Might have been a misnomer, but we'll see.

Well let me know if you have any issues. The 2nd port may be on a switch, similar to the wzr-hp-g300nh2 so I may mess around with that 2nd NIC again later today.

It seems to have passed the uClibc section where it fell over earlier, so looking good. smile 

Host is slow to build though, so I think I'm gonna go eat cookies until it's built.