OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: Linksys WRT1200AC v2 / WRT1900ACS v2 support

The content of this topic has been archived between 19 Apr 2018 and 3 May 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

Would someone be so kind and share a checksum (sha256, or md5 works for me too) for kaloz' "Mildly Customized Chaos Calmer [CC] Build (Released October 13, 2016) Based on kernel version 3.18.36" image? There is sadly no checksum listed for this image on the wiki page. I just want to make sure that I don't try to flash a potentially broken file. Thanks!


Follow-up Question: It looks like the kaloz image is the only image for my shiny new WRT1200AC v2. I don't really care for WiFi atm., would the standard stable image for "V1 (caiman)" do the job too? And perhaps even be the better choice  in this situation?

(Last edited by tokai on 16 Feb 2017, 17:52)

tokai,

if you don't need wireless 15.05.1 is fine and depending on your needs it might be the best choice as it's widely supported by 3rd parties and has a complete binary package repository. If you run into an issue feel free to ask here.

sera wrote:

if you don't need wireless 15.05.1 is fine and depending on your needs it might be the best choice as it's widely supported by 3rd parties and has a complete binary package repository. If you run into an issue feel free to ask here.

I'll go for the stable version then. My needs are rather simple for now. I just want to get my network back working (all cables) and then slowly experiment with the additional offering OpenWRT offers (the default firmware looked shiny, but made a bad impression to me for a bunch of reasons.)

Thanks for quick reply and offer for help (I'll probably will need it at some point. smile )

Time to flash the beast…

Hi gents,

my 1900ACS (v2) baby just arrived today. Was a little bit disappointed in the beginning with the 5ghz signal strength ->  I am using a H960 pro plus android tv box, tried to get more mb/s via 5ghz compared to my old router (TP-Link Archer C2 AC750 stock firmware). But well, 5ghz just does not get through walls, right? smile

Anyway, I am still sitting with the original firmware, and it`s a pitty to keep a WRT device... with other then an opensource firmware. I know that 1900ACS is supported out of the box with openWRT (chaos) but I read here that it`s best to jump to Kaloz (better/new wi-fi drivers) and this is what I am gonna do.

My question is, can I/should I expect better wi-fi bandwith (5ghz) and signal with the OpenWRT? Of course, there ain`t no magic, right? Also ... when I flash it, it will be flashed on the 2nd partition of my router right? So when I just want to go back to OEM, just flash OEM back from Kaloz and then reload my settings for OEM.

I read also about Kong (DD-WRT) release, but I guess ... this is no better then Kaloz, so I am going ahead and flashing Kaloz guys. Hope will get better wi-fi too.

velqn,

the closed source and open source driver perform roughly the same from what I read. All open source firmwares use the same driver. The question is just whether the driver is recent enough or not.

You can go back to OEM as you described. The configuration should have been preserved as Linksys uses the "syscfg" partition for that purpose. OpenWrt doesn't use that partition at all. Still always better to have a backup around.

Hello Sera,

thanks for your input. Yep, this is what I get based on tests. Flashed open wrt kaloz mod of CC. Well what can I say, just for having dozens of packages/apps is great enough.

I am though using my NAS as sshd (for tunelling) and for torrenting transmission, but still there are tons of other stuff the router can do now.

What are your favourite ipk`s? Or the ones best working for WRT1900AC/S?

Btw - I read now -> Free space: 100% (20.73 MB)  - is this as much as I can get to install 3rd party apps?

Yep, seems like this... well, still will be enough.

(Last edited by velqn on 16 Feb 2017, 22:14)

velqn,

If the remaining space isn't enough check the wiki for setting up an extroot which would allow you to install everything there is.

What packages you install depends on what you want to do with your device. Our use cases surely differ so what packages we need to meet our needs should as well. So I can't sensibly recommend any packages like this.

Thanks Sera!

Another thing came up. I was powering off and on the router (testing some power adapters cause the router is from the UK, and I need EU) so... surprise when the router booted... it was back to the OEM linksys firmware with all my settings, damn it, openWRT gone.

I guess something might have collapsed when I did power it on/off via the hardware button. Or because i tried to shut it down with a command kill -USR1 1 sad

Not sure what killed it... is there a way to bring it back or have I to flash it again?!

velqn wrote:

Thanks Sera!

Another thing came up. I was powering off and on the router (testing some power adapters cause the router is from the UK, and I need EU) so... surprise when the router booted... it was back to the OEM linksys firmware with all my settings, damn it, openWRT gone.

I guess something might have collapsed when I did power it on/off via the hardware button. Or because i tried to shut it down with a command kill -USR1 1 sad

Not sure what killed it... is there a way to bring it back or have I to flash it again?!

Power on and off the router 3 times in a row right when the Ethernet LED starts to flash. This should cause the router to load the alternate location firmware.

These routers have two firmware locations which is a good thing in some cases.

Jesus, thanks for that!

I knew that you could have both firmware... but was not sure how to switch between them. Cause, let`s say, I go somewhere, switch back to original, then my wife can do some management via the linksys app for iOS/Android.

I go back, switch on the real thing. Is there a way to do this via CLI?

what are the new features on v2?

@velqn, here

@jayaalathara, just FCC stuff for the masses, nothing of interest

(Last edited by Villeneuve on 17 Feb 2017, 18:36)

Thank you, so no biggies.

I have been playing with OpenWRT to try set it up best suited for my needs. Noticed today I do not have mount points tab in Luci, no etc/fstab either, could be the case. I hooked up an USB drive for testing. What am I missing?

update: used block detect > /etc/config/fstab and now all fine.

smile

(Last edited by velqn on 19 Feb 2017, 21:13)

Hello gents,

now I am stuck in another issue: Cannot mount (FAT32) USB stick. I have all the 3 NLS modules installed:

kmod-nls-base - 3.18.36-1
kmod-nls-cp1250 - 3.18.36-1
kmod-nls-cp437 - 3.18.36-1

But:

root@OpenWrt:/home/velqn# dmesg | tail -n 1
[ 3493.925620] FAT-fs (sda1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found

But when I try to install this particular NLS, I got this:

opkg install kmod-nls-iso8859-1
Installing kmod-nls-iso8859-1 (3.18.23-1) to root...
Downloading
* satisfy_dependencies_for: Cannot satisfy the following dependencies for kmod-nls-iso8859-1:
*      kernel (= 3.18.23-1-81be0e40bf30c51dba2c46c84dd50f29) *
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package kmod-nls-iso8859-1.

It seems that the newer kernel and probaly NLS base should have it already pre-included, but I only assume that.

I am not able to find kmod-nls-iso8859-1 for 3.18.36 which I run. (kaloz build). Any ideas, what am I missing?


root@OpenWrt:/home/velqn# mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb
mount: mounting /dev/sda1 on /mnt/usb failed: Invalid argument


uname -a
Linux OpenWrt 3.18.36 #8 SMP Thu Oct 13 11:43:34 CEST 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux

velqn wrote:

Installing kmod-nls-iso8859-1 (3.18.23-1) to root...
Downloading
* satisfy_dependencies_for: Cannot satisfy the following dependencies for kmod-nls-iso8859-1:
*      kernel (= 3.18.23-1-81be0e40bf30c51dba2c46c84dd50f29) *

I am not able to find kmod-nls-iso8859-1 for 3.18.36 which I run. (kaloz build). Any ideas, what am I missing?

You are trying to install old kernel modules from the release repo to a newer private build.
That is not supported. There is strict kernel version/options checksum for the dependency.

But NLS tables should be so simple that you can possibly succeed by overriding the dependency check.

  opkg install --force-depends kmod-nls-iso8859-1

There is a slight risk that the router bricks, but with NLS tables the risk is likely not that big.

Thanks hnyman,

that`s also what I thought... since I am running kaloz modded CC. So it means if I want to get USB FAT mounting I need to force the nls iso8859 mod install, is there no other way?

If no - I will try, thank you.

Update: tried it, it`s getting even more interesting:

root@OpenWrt:/mnt/usb# opkg list-installed kmod-nls*
kmod-nls-base - 3.18.36-1
kmod-nls-cp1250 - 3.18.36-1
kmod-nls-cp437 - 3.18.36-1
kmod-nls-iso8859-1 - 3.18.23-1 - IT IS INSTALLED but

root@OpenWrt:/mnt/usb# mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb
mount: mounting /dev/sda1 on /mnt/usb failed: Invalid argument

root@OpenWrt:/mnt/usb# dmesg | tail -n 1
[ 5189.591027] FAT-fs (sda1): IO charset iso8859-1

Daamn, strange.

(Last edited by velqn on 20 Feb 2017, 10:34)

Still no idea, tried all, all the time:

root@OpenWrt:/mnt/usb# dmesg | tail -n 1
[ 5189.591027] FAT-fs (sda1): IO charset iso8859-1

Start to think that kaloz CC version does not properly support iso8859 NLS and thus no mounting for vfat is possible.

So far I'm quite happy with my new WRT1200AC v2. It is rock stable so far and after I flashed it I didn't even rebooted it once since then (just restarted some services as necessary.)

root@sapphire:~# uptime
 19:01:16 up 3 days, 23:49,  load average: 0.02, 0.02, 0.04

There's still a bunch of smaller issues to solve, of course. I got a whole to-do list. smile  Most of the annoying ones seem to be related to IPv6, e.g. the internal NTP time server only seems to listen/serve IPv6 and all my IPv4-only systems can't make use of it. Also ssh'ing to the router has some huge connection delay during the DNS resolving stage (either I must use the IP or specify 'AddressFamily inet' for the host in my ~/.ssh/config to workaround this). Some of those issues are probably aggravated by my spectacular lack of knowledge about anything IPv6 related and the way OS X handles it. I'll get there some day, hopefully. big_smile

Anyway...
just a short question. At the moment I run the device w/o the antennas attached, since I don't need wireless networking for now. Can this cause any kind of problems (extra interference or something) since there are now just those connector stumbles at the back of the device? Not that there seems to be a lot of shielding in this device anyway.

tokai,

just don't shorten the antenna contacts / header and it should be fine. Even if wireless is disabled I'd still have them mounted even if only  to not have to search for them should I one day decide to enable it.

sera wrote:

just don't shorten the antenna contacts / header and it should be fine. Even if wireless is disabled I'd still have them mounted even if only  to not have to search for them should I one day decide to enable it.

Yep, I attached them. Better be safe, than sorry. I wanted to test the reboot/ shutdown procedure anyway to see if some potential problems would pop up, so there was a chance to attach those ugly and space-wasting antennas. smile


This was a good idea since I spotted a small issue after the restart. The interface for DSL modem access was back up, even it was intended to stay disabled by default. Seems just disabling wasn't enough, but that "bring up on boot" option had to be enabled too. smile

I also noticed that the initial time update is somewhat slow in my case (rather long delay of about 1 minute until the time was properly set). I guess the WRT1200AC doesn't sport a hardware clock either and OpenWRT reads the initial time from some last-modification timestamp on disk (initial time was off by only 16.85 hours)?

@tokai

You are right: the WRT series doesn't have a RTC.

nitroshift

nitroshift,

There is a RTC on the SOC but without a backing battery it's rather useless.

Hello

I am thinking about buying Linksys WRT1900ACS v2
1. Does WiFi 2.4G and 5G works with OpenWrt?
2. Does all ETH ports work with full bandwidth?
3. Which open firmware should I flash CC, DD, LEDE, Kaloz, something different?

lukaszdh,

1. CC has a too old wireless driver, not really usable with any devices of the series. Kaloz images work well for wifi and otherwise, the main issue is they don't have an own package repo, so no additional kernel modules than what comes with the image. Other packages from CC can be used just fine. LEDE has the newest driver but some report worse performance with that one, like lower coverage and sporadic drops.

2. The hardware is easily capable if gigabit Ethernet (NAT at 20% cpu load) but needs a 4.10 kernel or backports. 4.12 is the first to fully support WRT1900ACS (v1 & v2) without extra patches. Without all backports you only get about 750Mbit. DD && McDebian && LEDE should be fine.

3. LEDE tends to break sysupgrade, so unless familiar with the console not a good idea.

My order of preference:
custom DD (works very well for me on the ACS) >> DD > Gargoyle > Kaloz > McDebian > DD-WRT >> LEDE > CC

Thanks for answer!

The discussion might have continued from here.