[Battlemesh] Ligowave DLB devices hardware

[Daniel Golle]

Nice one!

The problem preventing us from publishing and making this upstream is
still the bootloader:

The device comes with a dual-image bootloader. This is hard to support
in OpenWrt, thus we were given a "simple" bootloader which boots a
single image just like the usual Atheros U-Boot found on almost all
other ar71xx-based devices.

Now the problem is that:
 * LigoWave only distributes this "simple" bootloader "on demand"
 * They gave us only the binary, which is a GPL violation and cannot
   be *re-distributed* without the source code (which we do not
   have), otherwise who ever is re-distributing it risks being sued.

Thus the device cannot be supported in OpenWrt unless we either
 * get the full sourcecode of the "simple" loader and distribute
   in along with OpenWrt.
 * actually support the original stock dual-boot loader
   (ie. lots of work for a feature we don't want -- if anything,
   I'd rather have a "rescue" vs. "production" firmware, but not the
   "classic" flash-split-into-halfs flip-flop dual-boot.


Can you, Musti or anyone with contact to LigoWave, ask for the U-Boot
sourcecode?
A temporary (and still ugly) solution might also be that they could
offer the simple bootloader *binary* for download on their homepage.
However, as U-Boot is under GPLv2, this is also at least grey-zone'ish.

PS: Find the patches on top of OpenWrt attached. Be aware that you'll
already need the "simple" bootloader and matching LigoWave stock
firmware installed on the device *before* installing OpenWrt, which is
why it doesn't make sense to publish this yet...


Cheers


Daniel



On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 10:23:42AM +0200, Ufo wrote:
> finally we were able to flash openwrt (trunk) on one testdevice (LigoDLB
> 5-15), and its now running inside our wifi mesh in leipzig for some
> outdoortests.. (against Nanostation-M.. and CPE510)
> 
> https://twitter.com/Freifunk_L/status/654812243662471168
> https://twitter.com/Freifunk_L/status/631948934504648704
> 
> On 12.07.2015 10:03, Musti wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >I am happy to share great news, Ligowave company has supported the event
> >with a number of their newest Atheros based outdoor 5GHz devices:
> >http://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV8#Hardware Their team will attend the
> >event as well so asking any questions will be simple.
> >
> >We will do our best to as many links to the venue and in the area with
> >them before the event, such that we can really put them through the
> >paces. OpenWRT support exists but is not yet integrated in the main
> >release, anyone wishing to help out with that is very welcome to do so,
> >please get in touch even before the event if possible.
> >
> >Very much looking forward to seeing you all in Maribor.
> >
> >Kind regards,
> >Musti
> >_______________________________________________
> >Battlemesh mailing list
> >Battlemesh at ml.ninux.org
> >http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Battlemesh mailing list
> Battlemesh at ml.ninux.org
> http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh
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