OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: [RTL8196]A way to make openwrt build only root filesystem (no kernel)?

The content of this topic has been archived on 7 Apr 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

Hi, all.
It's been a while I've posted here, so straight to business.

I recently got myself a 'EDUP' pocket router from china, mostly for experimenting. Once I got it, I took it apart and found an RTL8196C inside. After digging the internet, with some help from 'sfstudio' (Wive-Ng project) I got the Realtek sdk for this SoC. These were actually the sources for TrendNet TEW-652BRP.
After some adventures, I got rsdk-linux toolchain ready, and built the firmware.
And magically loaded there, turning it into a fully functional TEW-652BRP (but with a battery)

Now, once I got a 2.6.30 kernel ready, with most things in the kernel up and running (only several gpio buttons missing, will try to fix that later) I wanted to hack openwrt there. And there goes the trouble. The SDK from realtek is a hell of a mess, with tons of hacks. The kernel is hardwired with dozens of symlinks into the SDK, won't compile out of the SDK tree, and there's no (easy) way to get it out of it. The only, relatively easy way to get an openwrt rootfs there quickly was to put a precompiled squashfs root with openwrt into a magical place of realtek SDK, so that it will pack it into a firmware image along with the kernel.

However, there goes trouble, after experimenting for a while I couldn't make OpenWRT build only the rootfs, with no kernel. Any ideas if this can be done?
Thanks in advance

If the guys with the right amount of knowledge and understanding would bother more with this

http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/start#developing

maybe in a couple of months we would have more competent people interested in getting involved and helping out. Developers a few and busy.

Hm... Nevermind, looks like I finally got that running, kind of..
Lots of bugs to fix, but nevertheless.
Realteks code is a nightmare... Looks like it's time to write patches.

(Last edited by Necromant on 11 Mar 2011, 07:38)

Did you submit your code to anywhere necromant? I am thinking of mucking around with a RTL8196B based router if I have the chance of joining in :-)

I also want to know the way to build rootfs and kernel separately. Is there any way to do that? Maybe image generator can help?

(Last edited by stone8936 on 7 Apr 2014, 12:02)

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