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Linux Hacked Onto Fry's Cheap Wireless G Router
nerdyH points to this smile-inducing story at LinuxDevices which begins "An inexpensive house-brand 802.11b/g wireless router from Fry's (Outpost.com) has been adopted by a group of Linux hackers that aims to make Fry's 'AirLink' devices 'as capable as name-brand gadgets.' The AirLink101 AR315W is based on a Marvell board that can run Linux or eCos, and has a six-port 10/100 Ethernet switch built in. It's listed for $45 online, but is reportedly on sale for $20 in some Fry's stores."
..That project aims to devise improved Linux firmware for the inexpensive gadgets to make them "as good as name brands wireless products."
Whats wrong with them as they are? Granted, its cool that they were finagle a new OS into the firmware, but what exactly was lacking from these devices that "name brand" (one can only assume Linksys, D-Link, Netgear and Apple) appliances have?
two weeks ago from fry's.
.
still in package. most definetly brings a smile.
However, its just a project that "aims" to devise improved Linux firmware
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
A lot of these devices already run Linux or sometimes BSD as it allows for straightforward debugging and troubleshooting, not to mention easy programming.
I was wondering what OS it currently runs. What if it already runs Linux?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Considering that I can get the LinkSys WRT54G at Amazon.com for $47 and flash it with the great DD-WRT firmware, I really don't see this device as being all that attractive.
I've been working on something similar: last Christmas, I picked up 3 Network Everywhere NWR04B wireless routers on sale -- $18 each! -- and have been trying ever since to duplicate this guy's success in getting uClinux (a version of Linux for CPUs with no MMU) running on the thing.
The guy who got it running originally hasn't responded to my emails, so it's a good thing he made his kernel tree available. Alsoplus, I think he used a JTAG adapter to load the image; since I wanted to make a firmware image that anyone could upload with the web interface, I had to reverse engineer the firmware checksum too. (Luckily it was a pretty simple checksum, or else I don't think I would've been able to do it...I'm really learning all this as I go along.)
In July I finally managed to get a kernel panic, am now trying to get BusyBox working on the thing. I keep getting these errors:
which, from what I have been able to Google, may be because of differing opinions (libc/uClibc vs. the kernel vs. the chip) about whether or not this thing has an FPU. If anyone's got any suggestions, please leave a note -- I need all the help I can get.
It's been an incredible learning experience -- I know more now about how the kernel interacts with CPUs, the filesystems, compilers and the bootloader than I ever had. (Still got tons to learn, mind you.) I'm looking forward to the day I can get a Beowulf cluster of these things going. :-)
Carousel is a lie!
Why? You can usually pick up one of the "name brand" devices for under $40, sometimes $0 (after rebate). Seems like a lot of bother for nothing to me.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
One benefit could be to ensure that there is no backdoor in it like the FCC wants to force on everyone...
Oooh.. these use the same chipset as the Dlink DI-524. I've been looking for an in on that one.
the title says its been hacked onto it, but the article seems to be soliciting people to try to create a linux firmware instead. Plus the article that it links to (http://mhos.free.fr/ar315w/ar315w.htm), just lists specs; nothing about linux.
stop trying to pimp your shitty site. creating a new acct wont help.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
13 posts in and half the posts are of the "why bother" variety. For cryin' out loud -- why not? First off, it's cool someone can do this. More importantly, it frees people from using devices in a manner only approved by the manufacturer. Sure, right now most devices will behave in a manner the user generally wants. But what about in the future when everything is so DRM/spyware infested you can't open your fridge without Coca-Cola's approval or knowledge. The people who are learning how to hack these things are our insurance against what might be a bleak future. Instead of making idiotic "seems pointless to me" comments, how about looking at the big picture. And even if that dark future never arises -- so what -- these guys have skills. They deserve a bit more respect than I'm seeing here. One thing is certain, I sure wish I had their abilities.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
My WRT54G fails in that department
.. you could then customize your Access point / firewall your way, instead of being stuck with a device that goes obsolete in a few years.
Currently, I'm stuck with an Intel Wireless gateway with it's own set of security issues (such as broadcasting the admin username/password combination when 'discovereed' by the 'Wireless Manager' program.
Instant dirt-cheap thin client - USB can handle the networking, keyboard, and mouse, VGA gives you a screen.
Can you say ThinStation? I knew you could.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
one at the office (sitting behind a pix and used only as a wap) one at the house (sitting behind a smoothie and used as a wap) one sitting right here in my laptop bag for those hotels that put the ethernet port at the damned opposite end of the room (far from the bed)... 17.99 each and i managed to get a beta firmware from one of their engineers a while ago.. (latest release is like .23 and i have .26 P)
anyway... nice little cheap router/wap...
sig goes here!
a beowulf cluster of these?
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
"An inexpensive house-brand bending robot (gotfuturama.com) has been adopted by a group of Linux hackers that aims to make Fry's robot devices 'as capable as Mom's-brand gadgets.' The Bending Unit 22 is based on an Atari board that can run Linux or PC-DOS, and has six beer ports built in. It's listed for $45 online, but is reportedly on sale for $20 in some stores."
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Can anyone list and compare the most popular firmware bundles available for the linksys routers? There are so many of them, some Free, some closed source, which provide a different set of features. My wireless linksys router is working perfectly in my home, but i would like to have ssh and such.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Judging from the the responses other commenters have posted, I'll assume this is NOT a refurb device they contracted in bulk.
u rceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=u tf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:offici alo mpeting-with-wal-mart/ (do a search on mold, soz not in the mood for html submissions tonight.)
HOWEVER, Fry's is known for it's refurb love, similar to how Walmart loves 3rd rate produce.
The message:
BEWARE OF FRY's
http://www.google.com/search?q=fry+refurbished&so
http://www.procata.com/blog/archives/2004/06/05/c
How soon before someone uses the DMCA to try to stop it?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
"You really don't understand the hacker mentality, do you? It's not about saving money, it's about taking on challenges and getting Linux to run on things that were never intended to run it."
I'm still waiting for some hacker to get Linux running on either a vibrator, or a breast pump.
The ethernet switch as eth0-eth5?
;-)
That'd be pretty neat, only have an eth4 in my linux box.
I think the biggest thing that most of us are going 'huh?' about is... well, what does doing this actually give you? What is the point? The site doesn't help anything, it doesn't explain things well either...
The question is: What will doing this give me that the $20 pice of kit won't out of the box?
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I didn't see any real selling point. There are many cheap Wireless AP's around. Nothing special per say about this.
If it had things like SNMP support, then I may be interested, as that would be a decent bargain.
Before everyone rushes out to Fry's with their $20.... I feel compelled to share my best friend's Fry's story.
He went there to purchase a hard drive and was sold a brand new drive in original packaging with at a new price.
When he got it home, he installed it ready to format, and lo-and-behold it booted up into Windows!
After some mild snooping, he found Quickbooks files and other documents from the former owner. Being a good person, he found the guy's phone number (among other things) and learned that the guy bought the hard drive about three weeks prior and returned it because it had some bad sectors on it. They assured him that they would destroy it.
-David
...that I can get a wireless router with wired ports as well for $20, but a simple wireless access point costs nearer to $100?
I bought this router a few weeks ago, and it runs really well actually; no DNS discon. error that everyone else seems to be getting. One thing that bugs me though, I'm pretty sure some other routers have signal strength controls in the admin. panel, not just wifi radio: on/off. Does anyone know for certain which other firmwares work with this router, and if any of them are better in any regard?
It's called a SunRay, and they're even available with built-in 1280x1024 displays.
So far as I know, there's no Linux port, but you can boot its regular firmware from a Linux server using these directions if you aren't lucky enough to have a Solaris machine.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I had a similar experience at Best Buy. This was back in like 94 when single-spin CDRom drives were still fairly pricey. I bought one and didn't know the shrink-wrap job wasn't the same since it was the last one. When I got home, it had a floppy drive with newspaper packing. When I took it back they had to get the manager, they probably thought I was trying to pull something on them.
It occurs to me that, with some hardware hacking, this could become an interesting thin client. The price and form factor are very attractive and a 200 MHz (or so) CPU would be adequate. Need to check on RAM -- 128MB would be ample.
Radio Shack has the D-Link DI-524 for $20 after rebate this week which suspeciously uses the same chipset as the Fry router.
The DI-524 has WPA encryption, transmit power control, mac filter list, time-of-day limiting. etc Not bad at all for $20.
I think this is great! But I would like to see some developers adding mesh topologies and software to these nodes. That would make low cost cheap mesh networks. POE, Low cost off the shelf equipment that meshes would be just awesome.
Regarding the fear of customer support issues, all they'd really need is a ROM of a stable release and a reset-switch that would re-load the flash from the fixed ROM.
I'd definately buy a wireless router that gives me more flexibility of routing & firewalling than the default GUIs offer.
Any reason why LinkSys (and airlink, and Tivo, etc) don't just openly publish their APIs and how to connect?
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which he was born.
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The headline implies they already managed to get linux booting on it. If you follow the links, you'll find they haven't even started hacking them yet.
Worth looking at is the project where they managed to get Linux running och the Microsoft Mn-700 router, normally running Windows CE. Apparently the original CE firmware was unstable, lacking some features and was considered problematic on its good days.
0 5/
http://wireless.hackaday.com/entry/12340000170466
This has been taken into account.
It has been shown there is plenty of headroom to play in before you get to the point of distortion.
Linux Hacked Onto Fry's Cheap Wireless G Router... and by router, I mean Bender.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
A major chain that's actually aware of Lynx?! And apologizes for using frames? This is one of the signs of the Apocalypse, isn't it? OK, so it was probably just the work of one dedicated geek in the IT department, but it's still impressive.
This is like the third article to call people "linux hackers" and in every case the article vaguely references linux, and has absolutely nothing to do with hacking. GGWTF?
OMG SOEMOEN SI H4X0RING MAI B0X3N!1!
Go through life pointing out reasons why NOT, and your whole life will be a great big reason why NOT.
Look at the why for a minute:
* You _CAN_
* Some people WANT TO
* It's cheap entertainment for people who think a hack like that is entertaining (and it obviously is - even to people who think NOT)
* The thing in question doesn't come with linux
* They are absurdly inexpensive
* It's cooler because it's DIY
* Adding anything beyond the basic firmware-enabled functionality is an improvement.
Just say "I'm not impressed," and move along to the Jerk-O-Meter article..
Six ports and wireless in one Linux box? Sounds like the perfect place to run IPCop.
The challenge is to split the six switch ports into red, green, and orange (different subnets with different firewalling, for those who don't know IPCop).
Go here to learn more about IPCop.
To a politician, one email equals one voter.
So basically what this is saying is "We have these routers and we think it'd be cool if we got linux on them. We didn't do it, or anything, but we think it'd be cool if we did".
Is there really THAT little news that we're reporting on things that haven't even been done?
The Fry's in my local area has the same model (I believe so, given the picture) for only $16.99.
This was advertised in the NC Times paper today. The limits I see are that the days are for Aug 12-16th and that you can only 2 per customer.
Good luck Slashdotters.
Oh yeah, that's San Marcos, CA.
CAPS LOCK: ITS LIKE THE CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME
I find it humorous that one of the main features that is being discussed here is the "6 ethernet ports". Yo dummy, follow the link in TFA for the real product description. Airlink AR315W 54Mbps Wireless-G Cable/DSL Broadband Router Wireless-G: Outpost #: 4056592 Compatible with all 802.11g and 802.11b devices Wireless data rate up to 54Mbps Built-in 4-port switch Share internet access Built-in firewall
It would appear that you can put linux on just about everything now days, from a flash rom to xbox to computer.
I cant believe noone has mentioned it.
Forget paying for XBOX Live, when you can play online for free.
Works for other consoles too... But works best on xbox, because the client runs in XBMC.
Works quite well.
$349 is way too expensive.
I can use a $199 Linux PC and boot ThinStation and get the same results, minus the smart-card. Granted, it will take up more space, but for $150 savings....
No, what I want is a minimal-cost, dirt-cheap thin client, one that ONLY contains a "just fast enough" processor and graphics chip and "just enough" i/o to get the job done.
Surely such a thing can be made to retail for under $40 each if produced in the millions, not counting monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Add $5 if it's integrated into a cheap keyboard.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As of 17:15 GMT 2005-08-12. I just ordered one. S&H was $8.13 to Colorado (Ouch, I'm spoiled by newegg's subsidised S&H)