Jasager/karma On Openwrt Backfire (10.03)

[captainklunk]

I have been playing around with the latest OpenWRT backfire release on a Open-Mesh mini-router trying to get Karma or Jasager working but am not having much luck. Has anyone else tried using Jasager or Karma with the later versions of OpenWRT? Here is what I have tried/learned so far:

From what I can tell there is a karma package included with the standard OpenWRT backfire package tree ... but it doesn't work (I am guessing because there is no madwifi karma patch ... since iwpriv karma is not an option). It appears that the karma patch included in OpenWRT was removed a couple years ago (https://dev.openwrt.org/changeset/9404/trunk/package/madwifi/patches). I tried re-adding the patch and rebuilding madwifi ... but no dice (patch errors). I was able to find 3 possible patches online ... (1) the old OpenWRT karma patch ... (2) the madwifi-patch included with the karma-20060124.tar.gz tarball on the karma homepage ... (3) and the madwifi-hal-digininja-karma-updated_1.patch I found on some random site after some googling. None of these patches patched cleanly, and I am not currently familiar enough with the source code to try to fix them. Also, I was not able to find the full Jasager source code to try rebuilding the packages for backfire ...

Now, I have tried forcing the latest Jasager packages to load using opkg, but am having no luck there as well. When loading the Jasager packager I get: pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for jasager found, but incompatible with the architectures configured ... and when trying the Jasager-madwifi package I get: kmod-madwifi (2.6.30.10+r3314-4) installed in root is up to date. I have tried forcing the packages to load with the --force-downgrade, but that has not worked.

I already use Backfire on some other routers for wireless testing and research, and am interested in keeping the same OpenWRT release on all of them ... Any thoughts or ideas on making this work???

[digininja]

I haven't patched a madwifi-ng set of drivers for quite a while now and don't have any plans to since I migrated the Karma code to hostapd. That is still in beta but I suppose either myself or someone will port the changes to openwrt.

I didn't know my patches ever made it into openwrt build tree so would never have thought about supporting them. Wish someone had told me!

[captainklunk]

Digininja ... thanks for the reply,

I apologize if this is already posted somewhere ... but is there somewhere I can download the source code for the two ipk packages for Jasager and try compiling them for Backfire? From what I can tell Kamikaze from release 8.09 onward has all been built on madwifi release 3314 (I don't have a kamikaze build environment set-up any more, so I am just going by the package names) ... So is it possible that the patched madwifi and jasager package could just be rebuilt in a Backfire build environment and work?

Thanks for you help ... and for all your work on these tools!

[digininja]

I'll see if I can dig the madwifi patch and the Jasager package file out for you.

[captainklunk]

That would be awesome ... thanks!

[TheRocK]

I'd also like the packages for 10.03, that would be sweet. When trying to install the patched drivers it says that they are up to date (kmod-madwifi) and it won't install the jasager.ipk

Don't wanna go back to the old version, since there are lots of new features and packages on the new OpenWRT.

[f1guref0ur]

Hi DigiNinja, I feel like i'm pretty late to the party in many respects, but would love to get Jasager or your patched version of hostapd working with Backfire and the OM1.

I've been reading around the forum and your own website over the last week, and also trying to get my head around building packages for Openwrt. Still not quite there though! I wondered if you could point me in the right direction for getting the patched karma hostapd working with Backfire? Good articles where I can go get the info i'll need to set things up.

Much appreciated, and thanks for all your good work :)

Cheers

Chris

[digininja]

You would have to get the package build system setup first, see the OpenWrt site for full instructions on that. Then modify the hostapd patch so that it patches the OpenWrt version of hostapd and then build the package using the package system.

[indefinite]

Actually, uninstalling default backfire kmod-madwifi and replacing it with patched drivers from Digininja's site doesn't seem to break wifi, regardless whether that's appropriate or not.

However, I'm not able to install the package itself.

Collected errors:
 * pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for jasager found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
 * opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package jasager.

Just in case anyone would be wondering, I installed OpenWRT based on their wiki and downloaded updated images based on links there.

On the other hand, when I install karma after replacing drivers and try to run it with what seems like any default configuration, I get this:

init_pcap: pcap_open_offline: bad dump file format

That leads me to believe, I have something messed up with my libpcap, which is at 1.0.0-2. All this with a Fonera+.

I bet I'm missing something blatantly obvious, but I'm not able to figure it out when being exhausted.

[digininja]

All I can think of is that they've changed the name of the architecture for some reason. The ipk files are just tarballs. Open an ipk that does install and check the control file, that should tell you what architecture it is offering, open mine and see what I've put, if they don't match then update mine, re-tar it all up and then try installing that.

As for libpcap, that could be that my drivers are built against an older version of it so that they look like they install but then don't actually work.

[valent]

I believe from reading openwrt bugzilla and forums that karma should work on openwrt routers that use madwifi atheros drivers, but please check to be sure. I'll be testing this in few weeks time.