Pineapples = Frustration

[loftrat]

Ok, so here's the deal:

Got my Fonera+ 2101C a couple of weeks back, I've been wating until I had a spare hour or so to have a go at flashing the little fellow and putting Jasager on him.

I've been trying to follow this blog post here:

http://excid3.betaserver.org/projects/open...n-the-fon-plus/

Unfortunately I didn't get very far :(

I've tried to use Freifunk to install the firmware, but I keep getting the following error:

stderr: Telnet for RedBoot not enabled.

I know what it means, I just haven't got a clue how to fix it - I've done a search here but can't find anything (if I've missed something obvious I apologise) and a search of Google doesn't throw up much that seems to help either.

I'd be grateful if anybody could offer any suggestions.

Thanks.

[Jason]

I am not sure if there is a big difference in the instructions, but I used the ones here to get mine going without any problems:

http://hak5.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=10565

I went ahead and upgraded to jasager 2.0 and had to modify the autostart for Karma in a different spot, but other than that (and typical memory issues) it went fairly smooth...

[chunky]

I would say it can't access redboot if you have linux then try running digininja's redboot script and see if that works

[digininja]

If you get really stuck you can make a cable and enable redboot through that. The instructions are on my site.

[loftrat]

Ok, I'm fairly sure there's something bizarre going on.

The Fonera+ that I have has an IP address on the LAN side (black port) of 192.168.10.1

Visiting that page redirects me to: htto://192.168.10.1/cgi-bin/status.sh

This page tells me that I have a 'Firmware Version' of 3.0.2 r1.

I can't access the 'Advanced' page as the default usernames and passwords that I can find on the web for this model don't seem to work.

Request 1: If anybody has any ideas on default usernames/passwords please let me know - thanks.

'nmap -vv -sT 192.168.10.1' gives me three open ports (53, 80, 8080).

I've tried the various methods for getting into it that I can find here, and nothing seems to be working - I haven't managed to try the redboot.pl script yet because I can't seem to find instructions for it.

Request 2: Please could someone link me to the instuctions for the redboot.pl script (and a copy of the script if possible) I'm obviously having a dumb night.

I think I'm going to have to try building a cable and going down that route if the .pl script doesn't work. I'm assuming there's a tutorial out there somewhere for actually using the cable?

Thanks for all the help.

[chunky]

yes I do username is admin and password is the wpa key on the label on the back of the fon the bad news you well need a cable like digininja has made as you have same model and firmware as i had

Digininja's serial cable Guide

[loftrat]

Thanks for that, I'm in now.

Once I've made a cable up what does that get me? I take it I make the connection from USB to Fonera.....but then what?

I'm guessing this gives me terminal access (bypassing Telnet/SSH probably?) can I just ftp the images in from there and install manually somehow?

Thanks :)

[chunky]

well digininja sorted me out by enable redboot access via earthnet cable so he's the best to ask

[digininja]

The serial cable gives you a terminal directly into the machine, you just plug it in and run something like putty. It is as though you've ssh'ed in but you don't need username/password or a network connection.

You can get the redboot script from www.digininja.org/files/redboot.pl but as chunky says, if you have the same version as him it probably won't work as by default redboot starts up but listens on 0.0.0.0 so you can't actually connect to it.

[loftrat]

Hmmm, dissapointing - fair enough though, thanks guys.

Guess I'd better go buy myself a soldering iron this weekend :D

[loftrat]

Ok, we're making progress.

Finally managed to get a USB > Serial cable working and connecting to the Fon.

When I connect using HyperTerminal I get the following:

+Ethernet eth0: MAC address 00:18:84:40:01:ec
IP: 0.0.0.0/255.255.255.0, Gateway: 0.0.0.0
Default server: 0.0.0.0

RedBoot(tm) bootstrap and debug environment [ROMRAM]
OpenWrt certified release, version 1.1 - built 22:32:28, May  7 2007

Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Red Hat, Inc.

Board: FON 2201
RAM: 0x80000000-0x81000000, [0x80040290-0x80fe1000] available
FLASH: 0xa8000000 - 0xa87f0000, 128 blocks of 0x00010000 bytes each.
== Executing boot script in 2.000 seconds - enter ^C to abort
RedBoot> fis load -b 0x80100000 loader
RedBoot> go 0x80100000
Failsafe loader v0.2

Looking for board config data... found at offset 0xa87f0000
Reset button GPIO: 6
Reading flash from 0xa8040000 to 0xa8278f5c... Uncompressing Linux... Ok, bootin
g the kernel.
[sighandler]: No more events to be processed, quitting.
[cleanup]: Waiting for children.
[cleanup]: All children terminated.
Unlocking rootfs ...
Could not open mtd device: rootfs
switching to jffs2
init started:  BusyBox v1.4.1 (2008-04-03 09:16:35 UTC) multi-call binary
: ifconfig: SIOCSIFADDR: No such device

: ifconfig: SIOCSIFADDR: No such device

: Interface doesn't accept private ioctl...

: ff (8BE0): Invalid argument

: udhcpc (v1.4.1) started

: Interface doesn't accept private ioctl...

: ff (8BE0): Invalid argument

: Sending discover...

: route: fscanf

: Sending discover...

: Sending discover...

: Sending discover...

And so on, and so on......

This is the only type of access I've been able to gain to the Fon (as per my posts above) I can't get the GUI to work for flashing because I'm still getting the same errors.

I'd be grateful if someone could give me a pointer as to the next step.

Thanks :)

[excid3]

So there are separate models of the Fon+? All of the ones I have seen are Fon+ 2201...not 2101C. That also comes with a completely different default firmware. You should still be able to do everything you need to with serial cables though. I wonder if any of the hardware is different as well?

[digininja]

There are definitely different firmware versions on the uk models of the standard fon. The one I helped Chunky out with had redboot enabled but the ip it was listening on was 0.0.0.0 which is pretty useless.

[loftrat]

Thanks guys, I'm sure you're both spot on (you normally are) - either of you got any ideas where I go from here though?

Thanks.

[digininja]

From what I saw on Chunkys the only way to access it was through a cable. Unless you can somehow get an interface to transmit on 0.0.0.0

[loftrat]

Ok, I get that.

From what I can see though the tutorials all specify access over ssh via an ethernet connection to be able to get the firmware flashed, I obviously can't do that and I can't find any instructions for what I need to do to be able to flash it over serial.

I can Control+C to get the boot sequence to stop, but I don't know where to go from there.

Is it possible to reconfigure the device from serial so that I can go down the normal flashing root, or is it possible to do it all from my newly working serial connection?

Having gotten to this point I'd really rather avoid bricking it if I can ;)

[digininja]

Everything can be done from serial, when it starts you hit ctrl-c to get redboot or just let it boot as normal, once it has booted you hit enter and get a shell without a login.

[loftrat]

And I was making so much progress.....

Ok, everything seemed to be going ok - I've managed to get the serial connection working fine, got the firmware flashed, and I can now SSH into the Fon. I can also see the Webif control panel on 192.168.1.1.

However.....

When I try to do this:

ipkg install jasager_2.1.ipk

I get the following error:

ipkg: fork failed: Cannot allocate memory

Anybody got any thoughts/ideas on how to solve this?

Just had a look at the tarball and can't see how to build it, ./configure doesn't seem to work so I'm guessing I'm misssing a step somewhere?

[loftrat]

There seem to be copies of /etc /bin and others, do I just copy those over the top of the existing ones and then reboot?

[loftrat]

Ok, steps to resolve the issue above:

cd /usr/lib/ipkg/

mv status status_out

ipkg install -nodeps /tmp/jasager_2.1.ipk

[loftrat]

Right, I'm on the cusp of getting this sorted.

I think everything's working ok, the little thing seems to be picking up the requests from my laptop and adding SSIDs to suit, then the laptop connects and gets an IP address. I can run the port scanner and it gets the results I'm expecting so things would appear to be going well.

I've got a couple of little things to work through:

1. I'm getting some really weird SSIDs appearing in the wireless networks list within Windows when the Fon is up and running. Here's a picture that shows what I mean.

2. When the Fon boots it doesn't seem to be bringing up the wireless device/karma properly - I think I've found instructions on how to do that though so I'll give them a go and see how I get on.

Once everything's squared away and working properly I'll write up full instructions on everything I've done to get this model working.

I think some of the problems I've had have been caused by the fact that this newer model seems to be quite light on memory, I'm wondering if the Fon guys are starting to cut corners and go for cheaper hardware?

[excid3]

Right, I'm on the cusp of getting this sorted.

I think everything's working ok, the little thing seems to be picking up the requests from my laptop and adding SSIDs to suit, then the laptop connects and gets an IP address. I can run the port scanner and it gets the results I'm expecting so things would appear to be going well.

I've got a couple of little things to work through:

1. I'm getting some really weird SSIDs appearing in the wireless networks list within Windows when the Fon is up and running. Here's a picture that shows what I mean.

2. When the Fon boots it doesn't seem to be bringing up the wireless device/karma properly - I think I've found instructions on how to do that though so I'll give them a go and see how I get on.

Once everything's squared away and working properly I'll write up full instructions on everything I've done to get this model working.

I think some of the problems I've had have been caused by the fact that this newer model seems to be quite light on memory, I'm wondering if the Fon guys are starting to cut corners and go for cheaper hardware?

My router was broadcasting those networks, and i think what caused it was i setup the network configuration manually with UCI and didn't do it right. I reflashed with another firmware before i fixed the issue though...

[digininja]

Right, I'm on the cusp of getting this sorted.

I think everything's working ok, the little thing seems to be picking up the requests from my laptop and adding SSIDs to suit, then the laptop connects and gets an IP address. I can run the port scanner and it gets the results I'm expecting so things would appear to be going well.

I've got a couple of little things to work through:

1. I'm getting some really weird SSIDs appearing in the wireless networks list within Windows when the Fon is up and running. Here's a picture that shows what I mean.

2. When the Fon boots it doesn't seem to be bringing up the wireless device/karma properly - I think I've found instructions on how to do that though so I'll give them a go and see how I get on.

Once everything's squared away and working properly I'll write up full instructions on everything I've done to get this model working.

I think some of the problems I've had have been caused by the fact that this newer model seems to be quite light on memory, I'm wondering if the Fon guys are starting to cut corners and go for cheaper hardware?

1: The fon shouldn't be broadcasting any ssid's. It keeps quiet and lets things come to it.

2: It shouldn't start the AP by default. My reason for that is if you plug it in you don't want to automatically be open to the world, it should be a concious effort to turn it on. I think all security should run this way.

[loftrat]

I've not done any manual setup of the networks, with UCI or otherwise. What firnware did you flash it with that fixed it?

All I know is that when I turn the Fon on those APs all appear in the wireless networks list on my laptop. It's possible that there's a device asking for them somewhere locally, but I'd doubt it very much. Even if there were it doesn't explain the strange character set that the SSIDs appear to be listed in.