Hi,
a lot happened but let me sum up for you:
The instructions on the wiki to install OpenWrt on EA4500 without using serial cable (1) do not work with the Fiona Claudio's based build (2).
I managed to get it working after a lot of investigating, some courage and a lot of luck I guess.
I'm going to put a copy of the instructions that do not work (1) here for future reference in case they are updated and invalidate my comments.
INSTRUCTIONS
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Prepare:
get the right Image for Your device from Candyhouse Projekt (3)
build an initramfs image from openwrts buildroot or download mine from Here (4)
download openwrt-kirkwood-ea4500-rootfs.ubi and openwrt-kirkwood-ea4500-uImage from Here (5)
format an usb pendrive with ext3 (no idea if fat is working? fatload available in uboot?) and mount it. (if it wont work, use ext2)
Put uImage, openwrt-kirkwood-ea4500-rootfs.ubi and openwrt-kirkwood-ea4500-uImage on that usb stick. Cleanly unmount it !!!
The flashing process:
Flash Your ea4500 wit the candyhouse image.
after reboot candyhouses openwrt will be up, login using telnet/ssh
plugin the prepared pen drive and run the following commands:
fw_setenv bootcmd 'run owrt_usb; run nandboot'
fw_setenv owrt_usb 'usb start; sleep 5;ext2load usb 0:1 ${loadaddr} /uImage; setenv bootargs $(console) $(mtdparts) root=/dev/ram rw; bootm ${loadaddr}'
mkdir /sda1 && mount /dev/sda1 /sda1 (no mistake it does not boot without it)
reboot
After a few, openwrt initramfs will be boot from this pen drive. Login using telnet/ssh and rum Commands:
mkdir /sda1 && mount /dev/sda1 /sda1 && cd /sda1
ubiformat /dev/mtd3 && ubiformat /dev/mtd3 -f openwrt-kirkwood-ea4500-rootfs.ubi
Only if ubiformat and mount didn't produce any errors continue with: (otherwise youre fucked!!)
mtd erase kernel
mtd write openwrt-kirkwood-ea4500-uImage kernel
fw_setenv bootcmd 'run owrt_usb; run owrt_boot'
fw_setenv owrt_usb 'usb start; sleep 5;ext2load usb 0:1 ${loadaddr} /uImage; setenv bootargs $(console) root=/dev/ram rw; bootm ${loadaddr}'
fw_setenv owrt_boot 'nand read.e ${loadaddr} 0x200000 0x200000; setenv bootargs $(console) ubi.mtd=3 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs rw; bootm ${loadaddr}'
fw_setenv auto_recovery no
reboot
Now you are done. With the usb stick connected and uImage on it, the router will boot this image. otherwise it boots from nand.
Have fun!
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COMMENTS
based on my experience:
first issue was when mounting the usb pen, it gave me the error :
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda1': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?
I search a lot about this but most issues were about trying to mount NTFS and not Ext. I tried Ext2, Ext3. even tried Fat and Fat32.
At some point I found that I could mount it using -t ext2 parameter.
I proceeded for the reboot (after the 2 fw_setenv commands and the mount)
after the reboot the same banner and OpenWrt version appeared and I thought this can't be right but there was no way to tell, no intructions on how to verify, nothing..(afterwards I knew it was wrong).
The next block of commands started with the mount (again had to put -t ext2) and then a format command which when i ran it produced the following:
ubiformat: mtd3 (nand), size 27262976 bytes (26.0 MiB), 208 eraseblocks of 131072 bytes (128.0 KiB), min. I/O size 2048 bytes
libscan: scanning eraseblock 207 -- 100 % complete
ubiformat: 43 eraseblocks are supposedly empty
ubiformat: warning!: 165 of 208 eraseblocks contain non-UBI data
ubiformat: continue? (y/N) N
And as you can see i did not go ahead since i was not sure if this was expected or not.
After investigating without finding any clear explanation I decided to go ahead because there was a statement somewhere that this might be expected (the warning).
There were some more warnings and I proceeded with the next format (did not use the one liner &&, just ran it separetly).
That went well, no warnings, so now it was the critical point before the erase kernel (mentioned on the instructions with a warm "your f'ed" if there's errors before...I had only warnings so..).
I decided to go ahead with the kernel erase:
root@OpenWrt:/sda1# mtd erase kernel
Could not open mtd device: kernel
Could not open mtd device: kernel
after some investigation about mtd I ran a command to list the mtd "partitions"
root@OpenWrt:/sda1# cat /proc/mtd
dev: size erasesize name
mtd0: 00080000 00020000 "u-boot"
mtd1: 00020000 00020000 "u_env"
mtd2: 00020000 00020000 "s_env"
mtd3: 01a00000 00020000 "kernel1"
mtd4: 01760000 00020000 "rootfs1"
mtd5: 01a00000 00020000 "kernel2"
mtd6: 01760000 00020000 "ubi"
mtd7: 04a00000 00020000 "syscfg"
At this point I looked at the flash layout on the instructions page and on both of them (stock and openWRT recommended) and on both the kernel mtd match the same address as kernel1 on my mtd list.
I decided to go ahead and use "kernel1" without noticing that I already had formated mtd3 on the previous commands (what an idiot!).
Everything went well for the remaning commands.
I unmounted the pen and removed it just before the reboot.
This is where it went wrong because the router never came up again. Lights ok on the ethernet connection , the cisco bright with logo on top , dead as door nail...
At this point I thought to my self well...I can still try to boot the pen as mentioned in the instructions.
Turned power off, inserted pen, power on.....voila' it booted...but now I got what I should have got with the first pen boot...the Designated driver build from uImage file.
I immeadiatly proceed to check mtd (because I noticed the double mtd3 burn I performed) and showed:
dev: size erasesize name
mtd0: 00080000 00020000 "u-boot"
mtd1: 00020000 00020000 "u-boot environment"
mtd2: 00200000 00020000 "kernel"
mtd3: 01c00000 00020000 "root"
So now this made sense , since kernel is now alone (no 1 or 2) and mtd3 is root.
This is the layout that is expected when you boot from the usb pen that should happened before and didn't.
I reformatted mtd3 again (and wrote the ubi image), removed the pen and rebooted.
It came back to designated driver again but now from NAND (since I removed the pen before reboot).
There was no Luci (web console), I tried changing the password and reboot , but it came back again and the password change did not stick.
I tried to set an IP address for my local network (I worked always with direct cable from my pc until now) and disabled DHCP using VI and config files (/etc/config/network and /etc/config/dhcp).
After reboot nothing was sticking, no IP , no password , SSH keys being generated anew with SSH complaining..
I noticed that running df only showed tmpfs file system listed twice for mount points /tmp and /dev
After some reboots with same outcome I decided to do a power OFF.
After power ON I could not login to SSH because it was not accepting any password. Telnet was not available.
I decided to try via http and to my surprise Chaos Calmer came in (designated driver version was gone)and Luci was available.
Luci was stating that there was no password set, so i set it, rebooted and now i could login with SSH.
From now on I changed the IP, moved to my local network and everything is sticking after Chaos Calmer appeared.
Checked with df and had rootfs and ubi0:rootfs and also the 2 tmpfs.
(1) link that I sent you before about wiki instructions: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/linksys/ea4500
(2) link that you sent me before with Fiona's build: https://mega.nz/#!bNAhDI6S!PZQTb8X4XxOf … tSSk6za9uc
Fiona's Claudio's based build shows: CHAOS CALMER (Bleeding Edge, unknown)
(3) Project deprecated, old repo, no ready to flash imgs: http://www.wolfteck.com/projects/candyhouse/openwrt/
(4) uImage http://cloud.directupload.net/1AhK
uImage booting from Usb shows : DESIGNATED DRIVER (Bleeding Edge, r47048)
(5) Chaos Calmer on OpenWrt builds : https://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_cal … d/generic/
Chaos calmer after sucessfully installed shows: CHAOS CALMER (15.05, r46767)
(Last edited by joni on 1 Nov 2015, 22:14)
