Openwrt for pi

[thefisherman]

Good da'

I've been trying to turn my Pi into a component for a pineapple wifi the first step for this is deploying an img of Openwrt onto an SDcard. and guess what i'm already having issues.

Perhaps one of you have already been threw this and can give me an insight. I'll be using a Alfa NHA atheros chipped wireless card and so have picked the following .img:
http://downloads.openwrt.org/attitude_a ... t4_224.img

First off is this the correct one or should I be using something different?

Assuming that is correct after dd'ing the img to my sdcard and powering on the Pi i'm getting nothing the PWR led is on but the ACT light doesn't flash. Just a very faint green light.
To verify parts are working I deployed an img of KaliPi which worked fine.

Anything else I might check or Openwrt specific things I need to think about.
I am by no means a genius at this stuff, So answers from captain obvious may well solve my problem!

thanks
the fisherman

[J_Rey]

Haven't tried OpenWrt although curious to someday but here's some ideas:

[*]It seems like you have the right image but does your RPi have 256 or 512MB RAM? If 256 then you probably need the 128 or 192 image instead.
[*]Did you verify the SD card looked like it should after imaging it with dd & before inserting into the RPi? Might have been a bad write.
[*]Instead of using a binary build you could try the latest from source since the Raspberry Pi is listed as "work in progress" for level of implemented support.

Otherwise I'd check the "booting issues" sticky thread in the Troubleshooting subforum here for more ideas & then with OpenWrt support if all those don't help, unless someone else has better answer(s).

[thefisherman]

Thanks for the help...

Am I missing something?
I've tried all the images on http://downloads.openwrt.org/attitude_a ... 8/generic/ none seem to work. Is there a different set of img's I should be using.

Could it be if i have the 512mb ram model i need to compile my own img to run and be compatible with the pi?

[J_Rey]

Well nevermind on building your own image yet since there's more to it than I thought although it may be what's needed.

Please answer on if you verified the image copied over correctly before trying it in the RPi. Another site says "Note that you should make a dd over the main block device mmcblk0, not to existing partitions like mmcblk0p1" when creating it. I'm suspecting that mostly so far unless there's an incompatibility with your board revision.

You really haven't mentioned much on what of the things I mentioned that you've tried either....

See also the OpenWrt wiki page for the Raspberry Pi.

[thefisherman]

Ok in a bit more detail. I had read the same article as you with regards to 'mmcblck0'. To be sure of this I have been wiping the sdcard in gparted each time then attaching to my kali VM for DD'ing. kali sees the sdcard as /dev/sdb and so that's where I instruct DD to send the image.

To test the Pi wasnt bricked, I re-tried a different .img specifically using the kalipi image, which had worked in the past, This lead to a successful boot. So I know the Pi is working fine.

In terms of verifying the img:
1: through all the reading i have done the attitude adjustment 12.09 brcm2407 release of openwrt is the one I need. DD reports the correct amount of data is transferred.
2:Then i check it in gparted to find to partitions have been created, one is ext4 the other I can't remember (at work right now )
3: i tried each of the variants listed on the openwrt ftp server linked below.
4: I have not tried your final suggestion of building my own from source. this would be my first attempt at such a thing, so I'm avoiding opening that can of worms unless I absolutely have to!

[J_Rey]

Okay well I guess I wasn't specific enough since I meant to not just look & see if the partitions are there but actually look inside them with another Linux distro to see if the actual files & folders look fine instead of just empty partitions.

You could have GParted 'Check and repair' the filesystems afterwards to make sure aren't any errors. I've had to do that with Linux after formatting with Windows for it to be usable.

If the above don't work then it might be that OpenWrt is just too buggy for your level of expertise though so you could consider other RPi compatible distros to do this with or borrow from their setups.

[elinstech]

I prefer openwrt.
My E-lins router uses openwrt sys.
so good！

[gscott2112]

Did you every figure this out? I'm having the same problem.

[BenGman]

That is the correct image you are using. There is a bug in OpenWRT for RPi.

You need to overwrite the following files sourced from the latest Raspbian Wheezy image to your OpenWRT root:
bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, network and start.elf.

I still get some delays stating that the RPi has to wait for SD Card write operation events to complete when OpenWRT is booting AND running, but it works for now. I am using an 8GB MicroSD but I think a 128MB Card can do the job on OpenWRT (reports only 80MB is used).

Reference: http://fu11circ1e.so/install-openwrt-raspberry-pi/.