OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: OpenWRT and 2.4 vs 2.6 kernel confusion

The content of this topic has been archived on 24 Apr 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

Post #1
valentt
25 Aug 2011, 08:16

I have older Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 and I had previously instaled Tomato firmware and decided to move to OpenWRT.

Using WIKI http://wiki.openwrt.org/oldwiki/openwrt … stallation is quite straigt forward, but still few things confuse me as first time OpenWRT user.

Two things confused me. First is that nvram options aren’t explained on the wiki, what they do and why is that step necessary. Second is that there are no download links so for first time OpenWRT user this is quite confusing.

How do I know where 2.4 kernel based images are located and where are 2.6 kernel images located?!? I was not sure if I was flashing the wrong one and maybe bricking my device.

Now even after I used latest backfire 10.03.1-rc5 brcm-2.4 I have 2.4 based kernel image. Where from do I get 2.6 kernel openwrt firmware from? Or I just need to do an update?

First impressions of OpenWRT are awesome.

I also posted this on my blog:
http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/index … om-tomato/

Post #2
valentt
25 Aug 2011, 09:20

Found this forum post that explains is a bit:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=24549

brcm-2.4 : kernel 2.4, wl (or wl-mimo) proprietary driver, nas authentificator, wlc control utility
brcm47xx : kernel 2.6, b43 open source (but less stable) driver, wpad (hostapd + wpa_supplicant), standard linux utilites (iw, iwconfig, etc.)

There are two totally different drivers that support Broadcom Wireless used in OpenWRT:
a) proprietary driver by Broadcom – wl. It is compatible only with 2.4 kernels and included in brcm-2.4 builds.
b) an open source b43 driver. It is included in brcm47xx builds.

The wl driver has still a bit better performance and is claimed to deliver better stability. However, it cannot be linked with 2.6 kernel.

So should I stick with 2.4 kernel?

Post #3
towolf
8 Sep 2011, 17:03

You can use wl in the 2.6 kernel, too. A binary module has been available for a while.

You just need to have kmod-brcm-wl and wlc installed.

Post #4
sup
7 May 2012, 16:30
towolf wrote:

You can use wl in the 2.6 kernel, too. A binary module has been available for a while.

You just need to have kmod-brcm-wl and wlc installed.

As far as I know, there are no precompiled images that can do this, but you can build them yourself with  http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/obtai … e.generate and

make image PROFILE=Broadcom-wl

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