Sunday, July 05, 2009

One Step forward, two steps back ...

... now we're cha-cha-ing (Chris Knight - Real Genius). Anyway, in my constant quest for updated routing software and IPV6 I swapped out my WRT54G for a Netgear WGT624 (it's temporary, until I get the WRT upgraded and reconfigured). The WGT624 was picked up cheap for just this purpose. I attempted to put OpenWRT Kamikaze on the WRT only to find that it doesn't include wireless support because it's too unstable so it was removed. They could have done a better job of posting that info. Maybe in a readme in the same directory? So then my attempt to fall back to OpenWRT White Russian failed because Kamikaze wouldn't recognize it even though the MD5 checksum matched the file on the OpenWRT site. So I used DD-WRT v24-SP1 (standard generic) instead. Kamikaze recognized that and it loaded. So now I now have wireless and IPV6. The information on the web said that IPV6 didn't work but I tried it anyway. I had to configure enable IPV6 forwarding on all interfaces and RADVD. Hmm, looks like there will be no IPV6 tunnel as there isn't enough room for all the necessary utilities (the appropriate IPV6 modules). The good news is that the DD-WRT software gives me the ability to track my bandwidth usage so it's still a useful router. At the moment my other WRT is missing so I can't take advantage of it (in a wireless bridge for instance). I may have given it to one of my friends but for the life of me I can't remember who. I'm also locked out of my Netgear WGT634U because I can't remember the root password (ARGH!). Looks like I have some soldering work ahead of me making JTAG and serial port interfaces for these boxes.

Update: Well I managed to recall my WGT634U's password (gotta be more careful with letter case). So I now have 5 routers, 1 old Linksys 11b router, 1 WRT54G running DD-WRT, 1 WRT54GL running OpenWRT (probably White Russian) that I can't find, my WGT634U running OpenWRT (Kamikaze R3032) and a WGT624 v3. I really need to organize my stuff much better. :-/ I'm hoping to get the WGT634U upgraded to the latest version of Kamikaze (8.09.2). Then I can use the WRTs for other things such as to permit roaming.

Meanwhile on the BuildRoot front I'm having a lot of problems. I had a good config for the kernel and it was mostly working but that was accidentally overwritten (ARGH!). So I attempted to recreate my work. So far nothing has worked. After GRUB presents the menu, it boots the kernel and just prints 'Starting' and hangs (well does nothing visible). I'm at a bit of a loss and very confused as to what the problem is. I've compiled the kernel with debugging turned on but it still remains silent. I'll continue to work on it. Eventually I'll get a working kernel and then I can progress onto getting the rest of my tools working. I have to get this working as my plans for distributing the processing to a lot of smaller boxes requires an embedded distribution.

3 Comments:

At 7/23/2009 5:44 AM, Anonymous Jan Klokocka said...

Hi. I know this is not 100% related to your blogpost, but I am looking for some solution that would allow me to read status of PIR sensors from Linux (to have a log what happened in my house).

There is a company from my country which is going to sell a solution which allows you to monitor 8 analog inputs (and drive outputs) using HTTP (XML files) or SNMP ( http://www.homatix.com/faq/networking-snmp ). Unfortunately the product is not yet available - http://www.homatix.com/netio

Are you aware of any similar product? I would prefer not to use any proprietary protocols. Price is quite important for me...

 
At 8/02/2009 11:53 AM, Blogger Neil Cherry said...

Jan, at the moment I can't recall any (sorry my mind is on my finals). There are some out there but I am uncertain of the price. I'm going to recommend that you check with the folks over on the Domotica Forum Europe. I think they'll be able to help a bit. I've made the assumption that you are from Europe (I could be wrong).

 
At 8/02/2009 12:13 PM, Blogger Neil Cherry said...

A further update, I ordered two serial to USB interface cables to use on my NSLU2 and my Netgear WGT624. This will allow me console access and allow me to upgrade the firmware when things really get messed up. The cables are USB to the host computer not RS232 so I can't use my terminal server. :-/ Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade the WGT624 within the next month. Oddly enough the IPV6 works better than the IPV4 network in my home. But I don't have the tunnels built yet so there's still more to do.

 

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