Flameman/routerstation-pro

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The RouterStation Pro is an Atheros AR7161 MIPS.v2-based board. Geared towards networking applications, it has all of the usual features as well as three type IIIA mini-PCI slots and an on-board 3-port 10/100/1000 Ethernet switch, in addition to the 10/100/1000 Ethernet WAN port which supports Power-over-Ethernet.

Hardware Info Architecture: MIPS.v2, BigEndian Vendor: Atheros Bootloader: RedBoot System-On-Chip: Atheros MIPS 24K CPU Speed: 680 Mhz Flash-Chip: Flash size: 16 MiB RAM: 64 MiB DDR Wireless: 3x 32-bit Mini-PCI slots (None included) Switch: Ethernet Phy switch, ADMTEK "Infineon" ADM6996FC Ethernet ports: 3x 10/100 BASE-TX (Cat. 5, RJ-45) Ethernet Interface with PoE on WAN USB: Yes v2.0 Serial: Yes JTAG: Yes

Boot Process
The RouterStation uses RedBoot as its boot loader. In the default configuration (shipping as of December 2008), a basic Linux kernel and BusyBox userspace is loaded from flash. The RedBoot boot sequence can be interrupted and a kernel loaded via TFTP instead.

RedBoot uses the WAN port for its network interface.

Once the system is booted, login with username/password ubnt to access the shell.

memory layout
Board: Ubiquiti RouterStation PRO Arch: ar7100pro RAM: 0x80000000-0x88000000, [0x8003bf00-0x87fe1000] available Flash: 0xbf000000-0xc0000000, in 256 blocks of 0x00010000 bytes each

redboot
flameman/redboot

do not use this load -r -b 0x80040000 -h 192.168.1.14 gentoo-ubiquiti

put a kernel.elf in the /tftpboot folder and just type

load kernel.elf

Just a quick note
more to myself than anyone else, but I wasn't able to easily find this information online, trolling through the OpenWRT and Ubiquiti forums.

I wanted to try booting different kernels on the device before committing to flashing, so that all I had to do was reboot the board and everything would come back up as normal. It seems obvious that this should be possible, and with a bit of digging around in RedBoot docs, trial and error, and a few lucky guesses I was able to figure out the incantation to make RedBoot load an uncompressed linux kernel (ELF) and boot it:

load -m tftp -h 192.168.1.1 openwrt-ar71xx-generic-vmlinux.elf exec -c "board=UBNT-RSPRO panic=1"

Note that this does not change the root filesystem, so if your modules aren't compatible, this won't work, but I suspect if you use an embedded initrd you can run the system entirely out of RAM without touching flash.

linux kernel
expected lzma compressed kernel ( -d means decompress )

RedBoot> cache off RedBoot> fis load -d -e kernel RedBoot> go

i am integrating 2.6.32.27 to mips-v2 ar71xx, a lot of patches to be committed

doc
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/routerstation.pro

http://www.ubnt.com/forum/

redboot manual
http://ecos.sourceware.org/docs-latest/redboot/redboot-guide.html

Setup instructions
You will need the following:


 * A serial cable - female to female (or female to male + gender changer). The cable must be straight through, *not* a null modem cable.
 * USB flash drive or hard disk that is able to be powered from the board's USB port.
 * tftp server installed on your workstation.

Preparation
The following instructions assume that /dev/sdb corresponds to the USB disk when it is plugged into your workstation. If this is not the case in your setup, please be careful to substitute the correct device name in all commands where appropriate.

Build an image using "routerstationpro" as the MACHINE. For example, you can build core-image-minimal. Partition the USB drive so that primary partition 1 is type Linux (83). Minimum size depends on your root image size - core-image-minimal probably only needs 8-16MB, while other images will need more.# fdisk /dev/sdb Command (m for help): pDisk /dev/sdb: 4011 MB, 4011491328 bytes 124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1019 cylinders, total 7834944 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0009e87dDevice Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 62 1952751 976345 83 Linux Format partition 1 on the USB as ext3# mke2fs -j /dev/sdb1 Mount partition 1 and then extract the contents of tmp/deploy/images/core-image-XXXX.tar.bz2 into it (preserving permissions).# mount /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 # cd /media/sdb1 # tar -xvjpf tmp/deploy/images/core-image-XXXX.tar.bz2 Unmount the USB drive and then plug it into the board's USB port Connect the board's serial port to your workstation and then start up your favourite serial terminal so that you will be able to interact with the serial console. If you don't have a favourite, picocom is suggested:$ picocom /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200 Connect the network into eth0 (the one that is NOT the 3 port switch). If you are using power-over-ethernet then the board will power up at this point. Start up the board, watch the serial console. Hit Ctrl+C to abort the autostart if the board is configured that way (it is by default). The bootloader's fconfig command can be used to disable autostart and configure the IP settings if you need to change them (default IP is 192.168.1.20). Make the kernel (tmp/deploy/images/vmlinux-routerstationpro.bin) available on the tftp server. If you are going to write the kernel to flash, remove the current kernel and rootfs flash partitions. You can list the partitions using the following bootloader command:RedBoot> fis list You can delete the existing kernel and rootfs with these commands:RedBoot> fis delete kernel RedBoot> fis delete rootfs

Booting a Kernel Directly
Load the kernel using the following bootloader command:

RedBoot> load -m tftp kernel-ubiquiti.bin

You should see a message on it being successfully loaded.

Execute the kernel:

RedBoot> exec -c "console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sda1 rw rootdelay=2 board=UBNT-RSPRO"

NOTE: Specifying the command line with -c is important as linux-yocto does not provide a default command line.

NOTE: you MUST declare board=UBNT-RSPRO, case the kernel needs this information to enable specific hw initialization, if you do not provide board=UBNT-RSPRO the kernel will consider "generic" profile (no usb, no ethernet, etc)

Writing a Kernel to Flash
Go to your tftp server and gzip the kernel you want in flash. It should halve the size.

Load the kernel using the following bootloader command:

RedBoot> load -r -b 0x80600000 -m tftp -h kernel-ubiquiti.bin.gz

This command should output something similar to the following:Raw file loaded 0x80600000-0x8087c537, assumed entry at 0x80600000

Calculate the length by subtracting the first number from the second number and then rounding the result up to the nearest 0x1000.

Using the length calculated above, create a flash partition for the kernel

RedBoot> fis create -b 0x80600000 -l 0x240000 kernel

NOTE: Change 0x240000 to your rounded length and change "kernel" to whatever you want to name your kernel

Booting a Kernel from Flash
To boot the flashed kernel perform the following steps.

At the bootloader prompt, load the kernel

RedBoot> fis load -d -e kernel

NOTE: Change the name "kernel" above if you chose something different earlier. Also, -e means 'elf' and -d means 'decompress'.

Execute the kernel using the exec command as above.

Automating the Boot Process
After writing the kernel to flash and testing the load and exec commands manually, you can automate the boot process with a boot script.

RedBoot> fconfig

NOTE: Answer the questions not specified here as they pertain to your environment.

Run script at boot: trueBoot script: .. fis load -d -e kernel .. exec Enter script, terminate with empty line>> fis load -d -e kernel >> exec -c "console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sda1 rw rootdelay=2 board=UBNT-RSPRO" >>

Answer the remaining questions and write the changes to flash:

Update RedBoot non-volatile configuration - continue (y/n)? y ... Erase from 0xbfff0000-0xc0000000:. ... Program from 0x87ff0000-0x88000000 at 0xbfff0000:. Power cycle the board.

openwrt (linux)
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/build

freebsd/mips ???
http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/mips/UBNT-RouterStation