OpenWGT

Introduction

What is OpenWGT? OpenWGT is a Linux distribution designed to run on Netgear's WGT634U Wireless Media Routers. OpenWGT intents to be compatible to OpenWRT (a distribution for the Linksys WRT54G(S) broadband router).

This OpenWRT compatibility will be reached by compatibility in:

• Init process layout
• NVRAM layout
• ipkg management
• flash partition layout

Advantages

Why don't use the distributed Linux system?

• booting needs lots of time (> 2 minutes)
• it's hard to install own programs
• bad fallback strategy (if modifications fail)

Overview

OpenWGT consists of two parts:

1. Linux kernel (2.4 or 2.6)
2. Root file system

Installation

WARNING: The installation of OpenWGT is heavily under construction. So we recommend to continue the following steps only if you have a serial console for your Netgear WGT634U.

There are 2 possibilities to install the OpenWGT Linux distribution:

1. self-compile from sources (using the standarized development environment - WRTSDE)
2. use the OpenWGT web installer (alpha stadium) - You will need an online connection during the whole installation process!

Compiling OpenWGT from sources

NOTE: Instead of compile OpenWGT for your own or using the web-installer, you can download the binaries we are using for our Netgear routers. You can get it from: http://sar.informatik.hu-berlin.de/research/roofnet/openwgt/binary/ See below how to install the binaries.

For self-compilation you will need:

1. a toolchain for cross-compiling, since the Netgear WGT634U contains a Mipsel CPU.
2. the SAR OpenWGT sources (these are an old snapshot from the OpenWRT project)
3. sources of the Linux kernel from netgear

You can also download a complete OpenWGT construction kit from http://sar.informatik.hu-berlin.de/.../

OpenWGT web-installer

We provide a web-installer to install then OpenWGT distribution, but note that the installer is under construction yet (alpha stadium).

1. To use it for installing OpenWGT you first need a backup image for infecting the original Netgear firmware with the SAR-installer. You can get the file from http://sar.informatik.hu-berlin.de/research/roofnet/openwgt/netgear-sar-openwgt-installer.cfg.
2. Login to your router's web-frontend (default at 192.168.1.1).
3. Select Backup Settings.
4. Enter the location of the downloaded file at Restore Saved Setting from a File.
5. Click Restore to commit the changes.
6. After reboot, connect the Netgear router with you Internet connection (You need to config)

web-installer TODO list:

• split the installer script (to show intermediate results)

Booting OpenWGT

TODO: Description of:

• boot from flash
• boot via network (TFTP/NFS)