[Battlemesh] Ligowave DLB devices hardware

Daniel Golle daniel at makrotopia.org
Sun Oct 18 20:54:57 CEST 2015


Hi!

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 03:46:31PM +0200, Jernej Kos wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> We are using our own version of the patch which uses the stock flash
> layout and therefore can be easily flashed without any bootloader
> modifications.

How are you figuring out which firmware partition to use (and split
into kernel + rootfs + rootfs_data) on boot? imho the only way would
be reading the U-Boot environment, which would need to be implemented
in the kernel (or hard-coding for one of the two firmware 'banks')
As device-tree is the new way for firmware to pass-down stuff to the
kernel, supporting legacy pre-device-tree versions of U-Boot in
recent kernels will most likely be rejected upstream.
This is odd since we got exotic PROM parsers for AR7 and alike in the
kernel. Thus *because* these systems used an entirely closed-source
bootloader it was easier to add stuff to support bootloader features
to the kernel because everyone knew we had to live with the
shortcomings of that specific loader.
For U-Boot the rules a different, obviously, because it's under GPL.
Recent versions of U-Boot support device-tree and thus parsing the
u-boot-env inside the kernel would no longer be needed if the sources
of the stock bootloader were public.

Anyway, please share :)

> 
> It also properly updates the bootloader environment on successful boot,
> so that the bootloader doesn't revert to the backup image. And this
> setup still allows to switch between original and backup simply by
> flipping a bootloader environment variable.

Sounds nice, though I don't like the idea to re-write the u-boot-env on
every boot as 
> 
> The solution requiring custom bootloaders is really not very nice.

I agree that we need either a way to properly support the stock loader
or U-Boot built-from-redistributable-source.


Cheers


Daniel

> 
> 
> Jernej
> 
> On 16. 10. 2015 14:24, Daniel Golle wrote:
> > 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
> >>
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> >>
> >>
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> 



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