Flashed to OpenWRT or DD-WRT and realized that it is not the firmware for you and decided to go back to FON official firmware but couldn’t download the required files for flashing? Included are kernel.lzma and rootfs.squashfs for flashing using through RedBoot.

Download: fonera_0.7.1.1.zip
Download: fonera_0.7.1.2.zip

The set I got recent has the code injection exploit patched. Does it mean that I could no longer enable dropbear (for SSH) on the FON? No!

Happily took out my serial cable and attached to the FON to access the console. From there did the normal steps of editing firewall.user and thinclient to prevent FON from retrieving new firmware updates and configuration files. The minimum sharing is 512kb in FON website. Certainly I don’t wish to share out 512kb when it is more than my upload bandwidth and a third of my download bandwidth!

The solution? Toy with the QoS configurations on FON. Yes, FON (running on openwrt) have QoS scripts installed.

Now my current /etc/config/qos reads

config interface hotspot
option classgroup “Default”
option enabled 0
option upload 128
option download 384
option device tun0

Rebooted the device and the new QoS settings kicked in. My downloads (on public WiFi) hovers around 48kB/s instead of 64kB/s.

Went down to collect my free FON from Skydio earlier on after First System Release of CS3214. Being a good boy, I followed Richard’s instruction and printed out the email and went down there to look for Pearline with my IC. But I brought along Serene. Oops. It wasn’t stated that I can’t.

Another FON added to my collection. Using of the word “another” and “collection” sounds rather inappropriate as it sounds like I have many FON lying around at home. Well this set from Skydio is my second set. The first set took plane all the way from the States and it came with the 2 flat pin power plug. While this local/UK set comes with the standard 3 pin power plug we have. The good point? I can hook it up directly to my surge protected power strip and free up one slot on my UPS for other network devices.

Today seems like a bad day to collect FON from Skydio. Due to the upcoming IT Show 2007, they shifted their FON stocks over to the exhibition hall! The result? One poor guy and girl waiting for FON and employees calling each other in the office. The good thing? They apologized for the delay even though I am not a paying customer.

Got to hook up the FON after a good sleep. Been coding furiously on EJB 3.0 for the past few nights. Guess I will leave the FON virgin. I will continue to toy with the one from the States.

Just in case you don’t know. You can get FON from the local distributor during IT Show 2007 or get it from the website at www.fon.sg

Met up with Richneo (hardwarezone) and Liangtam (hardwarezone) earlier on at Westmall to recover Liangtam’s bricked FON. Liangtam’s set was bricked because of the RedBoot’s configuration were corrupted (probably due to bad RedBoot configuration writing). Upon connecting to the FON through hyperterminal, the RedBoot complained of initialization error and prompted me to run “fconfig -i”. Ran the command and inputted the settings manually, check out the trackbacks on the configuration for RedBoot.

As I didn’t have FON default firmware ready, flashed Liangtam’s set to dd-wrt for atheros device. The flashing went fine and was glad that his FON is working after much exploring. Anybody need a guide for recovering a bricked fon?

Next was flashing Richneo’s FON with OpenWRT kamikaze with x-wrt webif. Everything went well again. The flashing process was terribly slow but then it’s worth it when it is running the new software! Phew!

Chatted with them during the process. Both of them are knowledgable! Richneo is like so busy and both of them knows quite a lot of people in hardwarezone! Don’t know most of the people they mentioned. Hopefully I will receive my second FON for sharing my internet connect as part of the FON campaign. What about my current set? Continue playing by flashing 3rd party firmwares on it!

Just in case you RedBoot configuration settings are messed up (RedBoot prompts you to perform “fconfig -i”). The settings are as followed:

RedBoot> fconfig -l
Run script at boot: true
Boot script:
.. fis load -l vmlinux.bin.l7
.. exec

Boot script timeout (1000ms resolution): 10
Use BOOTP for network configuration: false
Gateway IP address: 0.0.0.0
Local IP address: 192.168.1.254
Local IP address mask: 255.255.255.0
Default server IP address: 0.0.0.0
Console baud rate: 9600
GDB connection port: 9000
Force console for special debug messages: false
Network debug at boot time: false

This step is similar to the 8 commands below (initial step for enabling RedBoot on ethernet)

root@OpenWrt: ~# cd /tmp
root@OpenWrt: ~# wget http://fonera.info/camicia/openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma
root@OpenWrt: ~# mtd -e vmlinux.bin.l7 write openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma vmlinux.bin.l7
root@OpenWrt: ~# reboot

root@OpenWrt: ~# cd /tmp
root@OpenWrt: ~# wget http://fonera.info/camicia/out.hex
root@OpenWrt: ~# mtd -e “RedBoot config” write out.hex “RedBoot config”
root@OpenWrt: ~# reboot

Decided to toy with OpenWRT kamikaze on the FON. Noticed that there is x-wrt for for it! So swapped out my dd-wrt on FON and put in the latest build of OpenWRT kamikaze!

First thing to do after placing the OpenWRT in? SSH back into the device and start editing the necessary configuration files.

root@OpenWrt: ~# vi /etc/config/firewall

add in the following 2 entries at the end of the file

accept:proto=tcp dport=22
accept:dport=80

Then edit the configuration file for network setting

root@OpenWrt: ~# vi /etc/config/network

mine looks like this

# Copyright (C) 2006 OpenWrt.org

config interface loopback
option ifname lo
option proto static
option ipaddr 127.0.0.1
option netmask 255.0.0.0

config interface lan
option type bridge
option ifname eth0
option proto dhcp
option hostname Fonera

save the file and then reboot the device!

This time hook it up to your main router so that it connects with the internet.

Now SSH into the router after it has rebooted (through the dhcp-ed address) and then issue the command

root@OpenWrt: ~# ipkg install http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/kamikaze/atheros-2.6/webif_latest.ipk

On the next reboot, you will have webif! Have fun with OpenWRT on FON.

Regularly check out if there are newer builds of x-wrt. You can force install it by

root@OpenWrt: ~# ipkg install http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/kamikaze/atheros-2.6/webif_latest.ipk -force-reinstall