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Linux Hackers Reclaim the WRT54G
An anonymous reader writes "The world's most ubiquitous wireless access point is free to run Linux again, thanks to a brilliant hack by db90h, aka Jeremy Collake. No soldering is required, as Collake's 'VxWorks Killer' nixes the WRT54G's VxWorks bootloader and installs a normal Broadcom one, allowing Linux to be installed easily. One distribution small enough for the series five WRT54G's 2MB of Flash and 8MB of RAM is the free DD-WRT project's "micro" edition. It lacks some of the fancier Linux router packages, such as nocat and IPv6, but does support PPPoE, and could be more stable than the VxWorks firmware, which seems to have generated mixed reviews." Update: 06/26 22:52 GMT by T : Note that the project's name is DD-WRT, not (as it was mistakenly rendered) WR-DDT. Check out the DD-WRT project's site.
power failure during the two second installation process could permanently incapacitate or "brick" the device.
Reminds me of a Windows 98 installation I once did.
It's the dd-wrt project, not WR-DDT. Great package though, I run it on my v4 WRT54G.
Other manufacturers (nvidia, are you reading this) - this applies for you too. If you support the software I use most (Linux) I will support your hardware.
I ran for the longest time various 3rd party firmwares, bouncing from one to the other when one would get updated when it had features that I was looking for. But they all seem to introduce their own set of nasty bugs/gotchas even though they claim to fix bugs in the linksys version. Finally I got fed up with it all and went back to the normal linksys firmware that just works without all the added bloat that these 3rd party ones slap on top. I got tired of futzing with the router more than I was just letting it do its job.
They aren't fighting them. In fact, they have released WRT54GL with linux, specifically for this purpose. They just didn't want people bricking their routers and returning them under warranty.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
What's the real point. Sure, the VXWorks version of the WRT54G is a little bit cheaper but, it has less memory, which limits its capabilities. The old Linux capable WRT54G is still available in the form of the WRT54GL so, why would anyone choose this route?
As I think about it, this development may actually hurt the WRT54G Linux crowd. If price is the motivating factor and everyone opts for the slightly cheaper VXWorks version, Cisco will likely discontinue the WRT54GL due to lack of sales leaving the LInux crowd with a less featureful option.
Reminds me of when I upgraded my Version 1.1 WRT54G using the official firmware! Brick City.
Bought a Version 5 WRT54G and the thing turned into a brick all on its own during a normal reboot, after not even owning it for a day.
Bought a wireless print server. Wouldn't connect to my access point and didn't offer WPA as an option. Linksys removed WPA completely from the latest firmware and it apparently never worked in the older firmware. Doesn't keep them from advertising it on the box and their website though. Blatant false advertising.
I also bought a Linksys wirless range extender. A complete failure.
NetGear's business class products on the other hand... w00t.
Can this router be used as a client so that I can connect to the access point of my wireless internet service provider and distribute the connection over cat5 to my computers.
This is fabulous news. I own an early WRT54G which I use as a bridged PPPoE connection, and also as a router (both wireless and wired), and with custom firmware it performs a blindingly good job. As of right now, it has an uptime of just over a month, and I believe that was because of a powerout.
The original firmware was by no means pitiful, but it lacked a huge number of features that coders have 'rereleased', such as QoS, more advanced scripting abilities, better performance with BT and so on.
When I heard that they had moved to VxWorks, with no backwards compatibility with the custom firmware, I thought it was a stupid move. The firmware has improved immensely from the countless iterations created by outside coders, why not let that process continue?
I had lightening somehow take out my cable modem (which I rent) last weekend... it also fried the WAN port on my V2.2 WRT54G that was completely stock.
Needing a WAN port I went and bought another WRT54G (a new one at Best Buy that happens to be a V5)...
I knew that the WRT54G was hackable though, so I figured I would try to make some use out of the one with the dead WAN port. I nabbed the DD-WRT firmware and loaded it up... and on the first try it worked beautifully (well... I mean the firmware worked... I still didn't have a purpose for it yet).
I started looking at what the firmware could do and noticed the "client-bridge" wireless mode... meaning it could bridge two wired networks with a wireless link. I tried it out and sure enough it connected to my new V5 WRT54G without problem. Looking around my apartment I noticed a long ethernet cable running around the baseboards from where my cable modem and router sit (in my TV nook... where my ReplayTV is plugged into them) to where my server and desktop are.... and the thought came to me that I could use the "broken" WRT54G to bridge that gap instead (and make my wife happier... with less cords).
I hooked it up... and it's been working beautifully for a week... a very nice solution.
With how satisfied I was I thought it would be great to be able to hack my new one at some point in the future too... and when I found out that the V5 was difficult/impossible (at that time) to hack... and instead Linksys made a WRT54GL model that still ran linux and was hackable... I ordered one of those up (for about $10 more) and am planning on taking the V5 back to Best Buy as soon as the new one arrives from Amazon (later this week).
This news doesn't really change my mind about this... the WRT54GL is inherently a more hackable system (more memory and such) and should remain a good workhorse into the future.
The moral of all of these ramblings is that Linux is great! How did I come to that conclusion? Well... it's nothing except the open-sourceness of my old router's firmware that allowed me to still get utility out of it after part of it had failed. If it was some proprietary BS (like VxWorks) then it would have just been a plastic brick....
Friedmud
Even with this hack, the WRT54G v5 doesn't have the resources. We should be telling users to buy one of the equivelent routers from another vendor, such as the Asus or the Buffalo.
For starters, we need a new name to identify this platform (vs. calling it the WRT54G). The WRT54G/S is just one product utilizing the Broadcom platform.
Also, what about similar platforms from other wireless vendors? Their is a similar Linux platform from Conexant (Prism), but that's hard to get now. How about a Linux Atheros platform? After all, isn't Broadcom supposed to be the least open source friendly of the wireless chipset companies?
All that is a thing of the past. In fact, here's what my router says now:
-SuperTux
We over at the DD-WRT forum have been following this for a while.
As with any other fine F/OSS project, please donate if you find the project useful.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Linux Fanoy: "Don Jeremy, Cisco want's me to pay $20 extra for a Linux version of their router. What can I do?"
Don Jeremy: "You could act like a man!" [slap]
The next morning in John Chamber's bedroom...
[John discovers bloody penguin head in bed.]
John: AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaagghh!
Cisco/Linksys lobotimized the WRT54G by halving the flash and ram from the previous version, not to mention locking down access by puting a locked up vxworks on it. It's also quite retarded by having only two real ethernet ports, one attached to a built in six port switch with vlans. Makes some kind of routing impossible, and is less secure as firewall routing rules don't apply to packets that never get seen by the kernel.
The WRTSL54GS on the other hand has 32MB ram and 8MB flash, perfect for installing lots more software, and all the ports are true ports, making it fully routable/usable and more secure.
Cisco/Linksys:
When are you going to release a Linux Wireless Router that handles 802.11a/5.4GHz?
Why doesn't Compusa and Best Buy carry the units that can be Linuxatized/made useful?
How about a Linux router without wireless?
I know that if this last product existed, tens of thousands of these could be sold, and that's just to the company I work for.
Difference between WRT54G and WAP54G = $20 and a little work. I wanted to set up MythTv for my home. My internet access is in the back room but I watch myth in the front room. Naturally I went with wireless since the wife didn't want the ugly cables. I went to my local electronics store and bought a 54G not thinking it couldn't be a client. I set it up and home and found out I bought the wrong product rather quickly. Knowing that hacks like this exist for anything with a chip I did a little research and found the SVEASoft firmware. Downloaded it from another site (it's open source, thank you Linksys). I upgraded my firmware and on reboot got a blinking red light. That's when I found out about the term brick. After my heart started beating again, I did another search and found a quick tutorial on how to un-brick your system and first step is to try the Linksys exe (worked like a charm, again thanks Linksys). I then found DD-WRT, installed and worked like a charm. I was a little confused that I had to set my clients name as the same as the wireless server to enable the bridge, but after getting that straight everything worked like a charm. Overall, the potential heart attack was not worth $20, but the satisfaction of buying something, finding out it doesn't work and turning to the open source community for the answer, Priceless.
does it run Windows?
So when can I turn my WRT54G into a PSP? Now that would be a hack!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Yes. And when OS X runs on a Linksys WRT54G we'll call that slick too.
If not now, when?
Amazed, am I, at Linksys's continuing to miss the opportunity to sell a fully featured WRT54G themselves. They could have a knockout product out of the box in that price range that would leave the competition scrambling, but persist in sticking to a basic, no frills configuration.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The WRT54GS switched to VxWorks as well. Not sure if the hack mentioned in the post works for it too. However, the WRTSL54GS was released a few months ago. This version of the router has a USB port on it, which opens up a whole bunch of new uses when you replace the default firmware. (The Linksys firmware only allows the USB port to be used for networked storage. Third-Party firmware such as DD-WRT adds support for USB printers, and possibly other fun stuff.)
It's $20 extra and it has more ram. $20. Why should they bother giving everyone more expensive hardware when only 0.0001% of the consumers will even use the extra ram?
I work for a small WISP and I've dealt with more than my fair share of WRT54G routers. We began with the WRT54Gv4 router and they were spectacular. They were solid, stable, and only had problems when they were struck by lightning (don't ask...). We distributed many dozens of these routers. To my knowledge, every one of them is still in use today.
Then Linksys released their version 5 of the router. We deployed dozens more of these. We've had two main problems with them: the WAN port loses its ability to communicate with a static IP address (it thinks it's been assigned 0.0.0.0--very helpful); or the WLAN connection permanently ceases to work properly (it still puts out radiation at 2.4GHz but it's just noise). Out of the dozens of these v5 routers we've installed for customers, approximately 25% have been returned to Linksys.
We no longer use Linksys routers for our customers. We sell D-Link WBR-1310 routers instead. It took me a while to get over my initial snobbish elitism (I'd used D-Link's products in the past and they were less than stellar) but now I'm a believer. The WBR-1310 is fantastic. We've put a couple dozen of these in the field and so far there hasn't been one issue among them. D-Link has really cleaned up their act. It also helps that these basic routers are dirt cheap. Even Office Depot sells them for $40-60 so you can imagine what wholesale prices are like...
At home, I'd had different problems with my WRT54Gv5. Basically, any time I tried to use BitTorrent, the router would play hide-and-seek with my network. It didn't matter whether it was LAN or WLAN, the connection would cut out every two minutes. Only a power cycle would bring it back. I've since replaced it with the aforementioned D-Link WBR-1310 and I'm pleased as punch. BitTorrent works faster than ever and I've not yet had to power cycle the thing after two months of punishing use.
So... Mixed reviews? Hardly. The WRT54Gv5 is the least reliable router I've ever used, and I've used a LOT in that price range. It's a bloody shame, too, because Linksys really had something going with the v4 of the same router. If they sold them again, we'd buy a hundred in an instant, with orders for hundreds more down the road. But somehow, I doubt Linksys will ever go back to the v4.
Here's hoping that this new DD-WRT release will ease the pain of so many unfortunate buyers of the WRT54Gv5.
I was hoping that they could get Linux on my little WRT54GC as the firmware on the 54GC is okay- miles better than the old D-Link 802.11b unit I had that bricked, but still could use some more stability and speed.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Why can't someone hack something useful like a cheap gigabit 16 port router? The wrt54g is certainly promising for hacking some private vpn wireless connections but other than that it only has 4 ports.
I dream of a powerful 16/24 port gigabit swiich I could load linux on. I could then get IPv6, broadcast, anycast, multicast, and all the other new IPv6 protocols I'd love to play with and customize it to my hearts content. No more proprietary BS.
I'd settle for an 8 port gigabit switch and a 16 10/100 for appliences.
I need all those ports because eventually everything will be hooked into it, routers, phones, stereo, if it's possible I'm going to do it. It's disgusting how all the home user venders are ignoring a feature they could hype.
The last time I looked, the best info seemed to be the seattlewireless.net page. Are there any pages with more info? I haven't had the time or need (so far) to alter it, but eventually...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
59.99 for the WRT-54G at Fry's on sale a few months ago and 20.00 that i donated to the funky haired guy who coded the firmware... the syslog and vpn endpoint components are great and the thing has been up for weeks now without a hiccup...
sig goes here!
Mostly you just need to push the reset button in while connecting the power - the power light will flash slowly on and off - tftp mode, simply upload a new firmware and away they go again. I've not (yet) had one that was impossible to unbrick.
does it run HURD?
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
I have just receieved the go ahead to create a proof of concept mesh network with WRT54G routers for a small city. The initial phase will provide coverage for a .5KM radius in a downtown core. I am looking at using the DD-WRT firmware with WRT54GL units.
If we can provide seamless roaming across this entire space, then we will try to expand and provide free roaming wifi VOIP.
What I am asking the slashdot community is what sort of management tools have you used to monitor things like node bandwidth utilization, link integrity, rogue access point detection, signal to noise ratio, uptime, etc.
I am looking at WIFI Manager from Manage Engine:
a nager/index.html?tb/
http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/wifi-m
Has anybody used this or other tools to monitor a larger scale deployment?
For those of us who don't want to drop cash just to install some turbo-charged firmware, check out HyperWRT Thibor. It's a branch of the original GPL source released by LinkSys that has had many features added to it by a long line of developers. It doesn't quite have all the bling that dd-wrt has, but it runs great on my v1.1 with no CPU overload.
BTW, the symptoms of this problem are the wrt54g web interface not responding (or taking forever), DNS timeouts, and all internet access either slowing to a crawl or timing out completely. When the web interface finally responds, the system load average shows as *way* over 1.0.
Kudos to the developers of both projects!
The only complaint I have about dd-wrt is that it doesn't have a comprehensive firewall rules GUI. You can do port mapping all day long, but something simple like denying all LAN traffic outbound except for a select proxy box is simply not possible. UNLESS of course you use FWBuilder and send your script to iptables. But then you're blind and can't administer it through the dd-wrt GUI. Even the most basic firewall box has this ability. Is there something I'm missing besides the command-line grandeur of iptables?