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."

Comments

So what is it running now?

[ReformedExCon]

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?

Good for them!

[Saint Aardvark]

Congratulations to these guys -- this is very cool. As TFA sez, a $20 embedded Linux box is Just A Good Thing; the flexibility that'll come with getting Linux (or NetBSD or whatever) working on these things will be amazing. I'm also glad to see that these guys are active -- the HRI people, who have a very similar project, seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. (Where are you guys?)

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:

Unhandled fault: external abort on linefetch (D4) at 0x00000001
fault-common.c(97): start_code=0x740040, start_stack=0x71ffbc)

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. :-)

Re:Good for them!

[Saint Aardvark]

A Pentium is loud -- doubly so for any hard drive that's in there (I've learned to hate that high-pitched whine), or for any hard drive its BIOS will recognize. (Good luck trying to find a BIOS upgrade for a 10-year old mobo.)

It's bigger, bulkier and draws more power.

Depending on the mobo, you may also have problems finding an ISA network card that still works, and you may run into problems getting two or more to work together (though I might be misremembering what it was like...it's been a while.)

The wireless card alone will cost you more than $20 (and that's Canuckistan pesos, keep in mind). Good luck trying to find one that's ISA, and good luck trying to find one that works with a non-PCI 2.0 (2.2?) mobo. (Someone leave a link and prove me wrong.)

But let's assume you have a wireless card already. Even an old Pentium, or (if you do have one around) whatever parts it's missing, could well end up costing more than $20. (Not much more than $20, I admit -- but still.)

You might not be up to the challenge of getting Linux to work on a random wiress router -- and hey, that's cool. But these people are. And that's cool: there's a ton of stuff to learn when you start getting your hands dirty like that. (Like I mentioned in my post, I'm very lucky that so much work has been done for me already -- otherwise I wouldn't have got nearly as far as I have. But it's still the hardest thing I've had to do with Linux, and I think it's taught me the most about how everything fits together.)

hacking the DI-524

[sshore]

Oooh.. these use the same chipset as the Dlink DI-524. I've been looking for an in on that one.

Re:"AirLink" products

[The Spoonman]

For example, HyperWRT has managed to find the setting on a WRT54G to double the output power. You can also modify the hardware to add an LCD display, two serial ports (to use as console, our you could connect a modem and setup a backup PPP dial-up connection in case of broadband outage) and a smart card slot. For $69 I got a small Linux box to play with, with working wireless, and a 200Mhz processor.

I want an under-$40 linux device with VGA and USB

[davidwr]

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.

Difference in firmware versions

[Espectr0]

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.

Re:jeez --- why NOT

[anagama]

It's these hardware hackers who make it possible to not only run linux on various hardware, but to run various bits of hardware with linux systems. For example, without hardware hackers, I could never have uploaded songs to my Creative Nomad II or used my Handspring from my linux system. We should be happy that there are people who have the ability to make linux run on random stuff, or who can get random stuff to work with linux. It makes my life better and I have a lot of respect and appreciation for those who can do this. These guys deserve our praise, not sneers.

Or maybe the sneers come from the windows slashdotters. Could be wrong, but I'd think most linux users would see the value and appreciate the skills and experience that these hackers are building.

Fry's

[DavidD_CA]

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.

Re:"AirLink" products

[wramsdel]

Be careful with increasing the output power, it may be self-defeating. In 802.11g mode, many of these products are power-constrained by a spec known as error vector magnitude (EVM). It's a figure of merit for the quality of the RF waveform. As you increase the ouput power, the signal distorts and this may actually increase the receive bit-error rate. 802.11b isn't quite as bad, typically the output power here is constrained by the level of adjacent channel interference. Increasing the output power in 802.11b mode will just piss off adjacent channel users while gaining you some range, though EVM may be a concern once you really start bumping up the power. Although most of these products are padded somewhat to allow for production margin, it's almost never 3 dB worth (double the power) and mucking with the power in most cases isn't wise.

Firmware?

[mogalpha]

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?

LTSP extension possibilities?

[Mostly a lurker]

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.

Why don't they let you in to the OS more often

[team99parody]

Seems LinkSys would have an even huger following if they actively encouraged people to ssh to the box and allow people to customize it.

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?

Re:"AirLink" products

[WebCrapper]

I've gotta agree with this...

I did it once because I didn't fully plug my laptop all the way into a docking station and the link failed even though my laptop was 1 foot from the router. Luckily I was able to plug the laptop into the dock and redo the upgrade and it worked without bricking.

My problem is there are 5 other idiots in my (government) stairwell, all using wireless. No matter which channel I pick, one of them has to "explore" the wifi spectrum to see if they get better throughput and signal. (In fact, the neighbor on the other side of the wall from me is giving me a 62% signal from his unsecured network on the channel that had no interference 2 weeks ago - arg!) And every one of them is unsecured. Because of this, I have to use 2 wireless G routers with after market firmware and a 9db antenna (2 floors down) in order to get my network to talk to my freeBSD boxes downstairs. Without the antenna, I could get the system to work for about 3 minutes before it would fade out. Now, with the power output I've bumped the routers up to and the antenna, I'm technically violating a European law. Oddly enough, with the setup I've got, I should be able to provide connectivity to half the neighborhood I live in... It sucks, but when you're a programmer surrounded by wannabe geeks, you have to take extreme measures.

Moral of the story - no matter how smart you think you are, there is always someone dumb enough to ruin it for you.