RE: [SLUG] Embedded Linux for Linksys

From: David R. Meyer (david@davidmeyer.org)
Date: Wed Dec 21 2005 - 16:32:04 EST


Thanks Ian! I was afraid of that answer. I noticed that my particular
device was not supported. It was horribly unreliable as a router, so I
yanked it out and bought a D-Link 2XR (DL-634M) which is has done a
great job. I guess this Linksys piece of garbage is headed for the
trash.

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [SLUG] Embedded Linux for Linksys
> From: "Ian C. Blenke" <icblenke@nks.net>
> Date: Wed, December 21, 2005 4:21 pm
> To: slug@nks.net
>
> David R. Meyer wrote:
>
> >Hello All!
> >
> >I have an older Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless / 4-Port Router. It stinks as
> >a router, but I was hoping to put a clean build of Embedded Linux on it
> >and start to play with that.
> >
> >Can anyone suggest any sources for this? I have googled the heck out of
> >it "enbedded linux linksys bfew11s4" , etc. and came up with very
> >little.
> >
> >
>
> The first place to look:
>
> http://www1.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp
>
> There are at least four different hardware revisions of the BEFW11S4
> (v1, v2, v3, v4), each with a slightly different hardware
> implementation. Linksys is notorious for this: as they sell large
> volumes of these things, shaving a few dollars off of the iterative
> production models with different chips, often horribly limiting the
> memory footprint of any given device.
>
> The problem here is that I really can't find any reference to the
> chipset used by the BEFW11S4, nor can I find any information on the
> various hardware revisions and their flash/ram capacities.
>
> Earlier Orinoco and Apple Airports used an ancient x86 clone CPU and the
> Karlbridge firmware, believe it or not. Newer access points have various
> firmwares from different development platforms for whatever chipset
> designed by whatever manufacturer. Each vendor has various models of
> hardware, and varying revisions of each hardware based on production
> runs and re-engineering for cost savings (or reliability, or
> availability of parts, etc). Each one of those hardware revisions has a
> firmware built for a specific range of hardware revisions for any given
> model of hardware.
>
> Case in point: the latest WRT54G (v5) has half the flash as the previous
> version, and will only run the new VxWorks based firmware:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G
>
> If you want a device to hack, find a WRG54G v4 or earlier, or a WRT54GS
> (v3 or earlier has twice the RAM and Flash as a v4), or fork out the
> cash for a WRT54GL:
>
> http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4729641740.html
> http://www.wrt54gl.com/
> http://www.linksysinfo.org/
>
> It's chaos. Alternatively, you can use one of the OTHER vendor's
> broadcom reference design based systems with the various Linux firmwares
> available from vendors like Asus, Buffalo, Motorola, Microsoft, Siemens,
> etc (there are many)
>
> My personal favorite at the moment is the DD-WRT project, though OpenWRT
> is a close second.
>
> http://dd-wrt.gruftie.com/dd-wrtv2/
> http://openwrt.org/
>
> So, "can I run Linux on a BEFW11S4". From what I can find, the answer at
> the moment is "no", and based on the age of the hardware that pre-dates
> the newer APs from Linksys that used GPL firmware: that is unlikely to
> change.
>
> - Ian C. Blenke <ian@blenke.com> http://ian.blenke.com/
>
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