OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: Add support for Linksys E1000 v1 (and brcm4716)

The content of this topic has been archived between 8 Feb 2018 and 2 Apr 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

wvdakker wrote:

Build 36475 is the last one (http://buildbot.openwrt.org:8010/builders/brcm47xx)
So have to wait for a day or so.....

Fix is included in 36476.

Found out that it says the revision inside the rootfs, so extracted the squashfs from the trx (going by the trx layout map here, and using unsquashfs from the mksquashfs tools).

Thanks, I did not know about the OpenWrt "buildbot" web pages!

(Last edited by hhm1 on 29 Apr 2013, 12:49)

Can confirm the 36486 build from april 30 the Wifi is working.
I have not been able to get a connection more then 1 Mbps.

Also N-mode does not seem to work.

        option type     mac80211
        option channel  7
        option hwmode   '11ng'
        #list   ht_mode 'SHORT-GI-40'
        #list   ht_capab 'HT40+'
        option path     'bcma0:0'
        option txpower  '22'
        option country  'US'

comes with:

Configuration file: /var/run/hostapd-phy0.conf
Could not set channel for kernel driver
Interface initialization failed
wlan0: Unable to setup interface.
ELOOP: remaining socket: sock=12 eloop_data=0xc78bd8 user_data=(nil) handler=0x41b1b8
Failed to start hostapd for phy0

After changing to  option hwmode   '11g' it does work.

(Last edited by wvdakker on 30 Apr 2013, 18:40)

Added a "alpha testing" forum page. If anyone can help out, that would be awesome.

(Last edited by hhm1 on 7 May 2013, 12:14)

I am currently using r36828, since the wired networking is not currently operating in the current revisions of trunk at time of writing this.

Here is the ticket for this. Update: fixed

Also, failsafe does not listen to the network nodes, even though it is activated (only tested on r36828, though); here's the ticket. Update: fixed :-)


And a more general status update follows (updated from this post)...

This router is currently working with OpenWrt, with an "alpha" quality (in other words, most, *but not all*, features are operating (correctly)).

For now you can use the snapshot images, or if you want to leave enough space for the Luci web-interface, a custom build or an image from the Image Generator (and it seems that you should choose something similar to Broadcom-bgmac-b43. The only customizing needed is  setting (the profile) to include only the "bgmac" wired network support, since that is the only one this device requires. (This also frees up more space, currently, by not including wireless drivers for older devices which do not use the bgmac drivers (b43legacy)).

To start off: Here are some issues found so far (testing on E1000)...
  - On current trunk snapshots, Luci cannot be installed (using "luci" package), since there is not enough free space on the router.
Possible solutions: Select "bgmac" ethernet driver profile in image builder or source build; Compile a custom image with unneeded code removed; Install only Luci dependencies which are absolutely required; add code to "trunk" to generate a custom image profile for the device(s) with any unneeded items removed
  - Possible issues with wired networking when wireless is enabled -- this should be fixed now (with this fix), but I may have seen this problem in more recent builds) Update: fixed!
Possible solutions: compile with older revision from soon after GPIO fix was applied
  - The ".bin"  image for the E1000 is rejected by the stock web-interface on older images. This may be fixed by now though!
Possible solutions: fix the BIN file generated; it seems this might be fixed by editing this file.
  - Multiple (simultaneous) SSIDs in AP mode are not working for me, when I enable one of them, then both don't work. I am sure that the hardware can support this ("software interface modes (can always be added):\n\t* AP/VLAN)", though I do not know for a fact; with DD-WRT I was able to have an AP and client simultaneously. (See also this.) Here is the relevant output from "iw list":

    Supported interface modes:
         * IBSS
         * managed
         * AP
         * AP/VLAN
         * WDS
         * monitor
         * mesh point
    software interface modes (can always be added):
         * AP/VLAN
         * monitor
    interface combinations are not supported

(Last edited by hhm1 on 1 Sep 2013, 08:21)

Long time no update :-).

The wiki has been updated. Basically things are working (I have been running OpenWrt on 2 devices for months now), besides...

1) Luci, which needs more room to run when using the generic TRX (however it works with the bgmac profile when making a custom build).
2) The BIN image needs testing (it did not work last time I tested it, a few months ago).


Besides those issues, this router is more or less working, thank G-d!

(Last edited by hhm1 on 1 Sep 2013, 08:22)

Just took a leap of faith and used the BIN image which is currently BARRIER BREAKER (Bleeding Edge, r38259).

The factory upgrade process took the image without complaint. I am posting this through my new openwrt E1000! Still getting used to the lack of LUCI and as such need to configure wireless but it still beats the stock firmware.

Thanks for all the hard work!

beege wrote:

Just took a leap of faith and used the BIN image which is currently BARRIER BREAKER (Bleeding Edge, r38259).

The factory upgrade process took the image without complaint. I am posting this through my new openwrt E1000! Still getting used to the lack of LUCI and as such need to configure wireless but it still beats the stock firmware.

Thanks for all the hard work!

Awesome! Hope it is still working OK :-)

Update...
Thank G-d, builds have been running quite nicely on the routers.

Notes:

  1. Multiple SSIDs in Master mode does not seem to work (as far as I know it is supported by the hardware and therefore is probably fixable) (see #15073)

  2. There is a mac address collision for wifi devices for 00:90:4c:05:00:2a; a workaroud for this issue for now is to use set different UCI 'macaddr' options in the 'wifi-iface' sections where multiple interfaces/devices are used (ultimately this is a bug which should be fixed) (this may be one cause for the multiple SSID issue, but setting different mac addresses for the two APs still does not fix that) (see #15074)

  3. There still may not be enough room to install (aka opkg)  LuCI on images which do not come with LuCI in their BIN/TRX (aka squashfs); I have heard LuCI2 can handle Luci being outside the router which would help this issue (currently I have been building images using the profile with only the "bgmac" ethernet driver (with b43 and bgmac), and not the rest of the (unnecessary) drivers, so have not tried the default snapshot builds lately) (see #15083)

(Last edited by hhm1 on 25 Feb 2014, 04:23)

hhm1 wrote:

Multiple SSIDs in Master mode does not seem to work (as far as I know it is supported by the hardware and therefore is probably fixable) (see #15073)

Please post your wireless config (multi SSID), and the output of the following commands:

    ifconfig -a
    wlc ifname=wl0 cap
    wlc ifname=wl0 bssmax

If the output for "bssmax" is greater than 1, it should be supported as is.  If not, look for an "mbssN" value in the output of the "cap" command (wlc currently only looks for mbss4 and mbss16).

(Last edited by nlh on 25 Feb 2014, 09:01)

Hi all. Just wanna know what about this model, the Barrier Breaker is out. Is it supported now fully or not?

Thank you for bringing OpenWrt to E1000! Just set up my Linksys E1000 v1 using r42625. Both wired and wireless work. But I cannot get 11n working. Wifi always fails to start if I add

option htmode 'HT20'

in /etc/config/wireless.

11g mode works fine, though. 11n worked in DD-Wrt before switching to OpenWrt.

(Last edited by hellotiger on 13 Oct 2014, 04:36)

gugo wrote:

Is it supported now fully or not?

Depends on "fully" definition. I guess for some we will never support it "fully".

hellotiger wrote:

Thank you for bringing OpenWrt to E1000! Just set up my Linksys E1000 v1 using r42625. Both wired and wireless work. But I cannot get 11n working.

I suggest checking our wiki:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/hardware/so … fi.drivers

Zajec wrote:
gugo wrote:

Is it supported now fully or not?

Depends on "fully" definition. I guess for some we will never support it "fully".

hellotiger wrote:

Thank you for bringing OpenWrt to E1000! Just set up my Linksys E1000 v1 using r42625. Both wired and wireless work. But I cannot get 11n working.

I suggest checking our wiki:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/hardware/so … fi.drivers

Thank you. I am new to OpenWrt. I used b43 driver and realized that 11n was not supported yet.

Then I tried the proprietary broadcom-wl driver. It seems it supports 11n although I cannot get my download speed more than 15Mbps still (using speedtest), not much different with b43 driver (using type mac80211). Output from iwconfig:

wl0       IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"LMZ"  
          Mode:Master  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:90:4C:05:00:2A   
          Bit Rate=16 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=5/5  Signal level=0 dBm  Noise level=-92 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:5  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:1228  Invalid misc:1   Missed beacon:0

/etc/config/wireless

config wifi-device 'wl0'
    option type 'broadcom'
    option channel '6'
    option hwmode '11ng'
    option htmode 'HT20'
    option txantenna '3'
    option rxantenna '3'
    option country 'US'
    option disabled '0'

config wifi-iface
    option device 'wl0'
    option network 'lan'
    option mode 'ap'
    option ssid 'myid'
    option encryption 'psk2+aes'
    option key    'password'
Zajec wrote:
gugo wrote:

Is it supported now fully or not?

Depends on "fully" definition. I guess for some we will never support it "fully".

Cause it supported, it will be much better if you add support for basic functions like Wifi N, Repeater Mode, Multiwan etc. Mine actually is WRT160n v3 (the same hard as E1000), but I dont wanna to open seperate topic for it!

(Last edited by gugo on 14 Oct 2014, 08:41)

gugo wrote:
Zajec wrote:
gugo wrote:

Is it supported now fully or not?

Depends on "fully" definition. I guess for some we will never support it "fully".

Cause it supported, it will be much better if you add support for basic functions like Wifi N, Repeater Mode, Multiwan etc. Mine actually is WRT160n v3 (the same hard as E1000), but I dont wanna to open seperate topic for it!

I heard that Broadcom is reluctant to release the full source code or specification of its chips because of certain legal consideration. This make it very hard for open source drivers to fully support the features. I would avoid Broadcom chips when I buy a new router.

hellotiger wrote:

I heard that Broadcom is reluctant to release the full source code or specification of its chips because of certain legal consideration. This make it very hard for open source drivers to fully support the features. I would avoid Broadcom chips when I buy a new router.

OK I understand, but there are also proprietary drivers that Broadcom provides and as much as I understand DD-WRT is using them (Edit me if I am wrong), it works much faster just because provides Wifi N

Sorry if I missed it, I did try searching.  I have a WRT160N v3, and I just flashed openwrt-15.05-brcm47xx-mips74k-linksys-wrt160n-v3-squashfs.bin  (from Tomato) and it still only seems to support g, not n speeds.  Is it still not possible, or can someone point me to either an alternate image or instructions for how to do it?  I'd rather not compile my own image, although it's certainly an option.

Thanks for any pointers.

All the documentation for the E1000v2 says you need to use the serial connection, but I was able to use the oob firmware update utility to install dd-wrt (dd-wrt.v24-16758_NEWD-2_K2.6_mini_e1000v2.bin).  After that, I was able to flash the firmware with the latest openwrt without using the serial connection.

The discussion might have continued from here.