Hi,
I have a few questions about tje WGT634U.
- Did anybody noticed that there was a Gearguy account in the shadow and passwd files? I have not check wether or not this account can log in but I find it "disturbing". This account gets a "special" bering menu when logging in through telnet with a few more options.
- Do you know if it's possible withtout the CFE access to make the router first ask for a kernel image through tftp or if I have to use a serial console in order to do this?
- Do I need to be connected on the WAN port in order to do the tftp boot or can I be connected to another port?

Thank you
JEff

hi jeff,
- Have not checked for that user since i do not run the netgear image anymore.
- The only way to access the CFE is with a serial-console, but you should be able to modify the settings for the STARTUP specified before in this thread by accessing the device where the parameters are stored. (have not done this since i already have a serial-console)
- Correct, the only port that you can use to download a kernel with is the WAN port.

Hello,
I wanted to know if someone successfully installed a vpn server on the wgt634U without the use of the serial cable?

Thx.

So I was messing around trying to set up the router as a small web server using the USB drive as the page source.  I've configured shorewall to allow the ports, and can run a second instance of boa with a new config file and have been able to display a small test page - problem is, it still asks for my router username/password as if I'm logging in to the configuration utility.  Anyone know where that setting is??  I looked through the boa source code a bit and see it generating the authorization failed message, but I didn't immediately see anything to indicate boa was doing this on its own.  Any ideas?

Hello,
I've sucessfully gained telnet access to the router with the ftp hack and the /tmp/telnetenable file. Then I've made some changes to the /etc/samba/smb.conf file (for some more user-friendly share names)  and this is made persistent because smb.conf is entered in the /config/config.list file.

Next things I want to do is to enable WDS on the router. This should be possible via some iwconfig and iwpriv commands. Has anyone already made some experience with changing the wireless config besides the built in web interface? What iwconfig, iwpriv commands would be necessary to turn on WDS (set the router in repeater mode and tell it the MAC address of the other access point, e.g. iwconfig mode Repeater and iwconfig ap MAC)? What is kept in the /etc/wireless.conf file? Is WDS supported by the driver? What about changing the transmission power via iwconfig txpower?

Another interesting thing woult be to have a print server running on the device (for USB printer). The samba server could be configured for that (via smb.conf [printer]). But what about a printer spooler deamon (form the /etc/services files it looks like it is)? Is a USB printer class device supported by the usb configuration (seems to be some printer stuff in the /etc/hotplug/usb/* files)?

After all a discussion would be nice on how to change settings with the netgear firmware and how to make this persistent. This is for those, who do not have the time to build their own firmware but want to use the router as a router and improve a couple of things from the netgear build.

:-) Tom

All, I'm trying to use my WGT634U as a web server, I'm limited on my linux know-how but I can get my way out of a bind. I tried using BOA (the one that is installed on the router) by creating a second instance. First thing I was hit with was the user/password prompt. I did some reading on BOA's web site and I figured out that I needed to change the user name and group as well as the port number in the /etc/boa/boa.conf in order to prevent the server to ask for a username and password. So I Changed the user name to nobody and the group to nogroup in the config file then execute BOA again. I see the server start up ok, however when I go to IE and try to access the server I receive the following error and the server kills the instance of BOa that I'm trying to access... Can anyone help with this?

#  User: The name or UID the server should run as.
# Group: The group name or GID the server should run as.

User nobody
Group nogroup

NICOSOFT: -root-
# /usr/sbin/boa

NICOSOFT: -root-
# [01/Jan/2000:00:15:10 +0000] boa: server version Boa/0.94.11
[01/Jan/2000:00:15:10 +0000] boa: server built Sep 10 2004 at 20:27:09.
[01/Jan/2000:00:15:10 +0000] boa: starting server pid=6659, port 81
[01/Jan/2000:00:15:50 +0000] caught SIGSEGV, dumping core in /tmp

NICOSOFT: -root-
#

I ended up grabbing a copy of thttpd from the openwrt for another router (cant remember the model..), it uses the same processor so it's already compiled.  I put that on the USB drive, then after trying various things decided to set it up to run on port 8081.  In the /etc/shorewall/rules, I set up a redirect from external port 80 to 8081.  You also have to modify /etc/shorewall/start, it explicitly drops external port 80.  It worked fine, just a couple downsides:

- I can't get thttpd to auto-run, even after saving the files.  probably need to add it to another script, just adding to the rcx.d doesn't seem to work
- You have to access the webpages locally on port 8081 (since boa is still running for the router config)
- If you change the remote admin setting (and likely the forwarding settings), the router will take out the REDIRECT field in the rules file

Has anybody managed to get one of these things running in AP client mode?

once you have compiled your own MADWifi driver you can run it in any mode supported by the driver. Also the netgear driver supports many modes as well. Once you have the console type "iwconfig ath0 mode" append which mode you want.

Have fun. Have got my access point working with the following so far. Thanks guys:
2.6 kernel
MAD wifi
wireless tools 27
module init tools 3.0-pre1
busybox 1.0
tinylogin 1.4
sysvinit 2.86 <-- used because busybox did not like my startup scrypts

Trying to get boa going but having trouble i might use the other httpd mention previously.

This is symptomatic of not having proper entries in /dev. In particular, you have no console. What you need is something like this in /dev:

crw-------    1 root     root       5,   1 Jan  1  2000 console
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           13 Jan  1  1970 fd -> /proc/self/fd
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       1,   3 Jan  1  1970 null
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       5,   2 Jul 12 07:20 ptmx
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            0 Jan  1  2000 pts
crw-r--r--    1 root     root       1,   8 Jan  1  1970 random
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            4 Jan  1  1970 stderr -> fd/2
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            4 Jan  1  1970 stdin -> fd/0
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            4 Jan  1  1970 stdout -> fd/1
crw-------    1 root     root       4,   0 Jan  1  1970 tty0
crw-------    1 root     root       4,   1 Jan  1  1970 tty1
crw-------    1 root     root       4,  64 Jan  1  1970 ttyS0
crw-------    1 root     root       4,  65 Jan  1  2000 ttyS1
crw-r--r--    1 root     root       1,   9 Jan  1  1970 urandom
crw-rw-rw-    1 root     root       1,   5 Jan  1  1970 zero

You will need to use mknod to create the character special devices.

The httpd included with busybox 1.0 works OK for me.

Yes, but not with the Netgear firmware.

I'm using a 2.4.20 kernel built from slightly tweaked Netgear sources and madwifi CVS 2005.03.31.14.00.00

This works just fine as a client connecting to a D-Link DWL-2100AP with WEP. I have found that trying to change the mode of the Netgear supplied drivers always results in a kernel crash.

Hi,
thanks for that forum!

I've "upgraded" my old wgt634u with

-2.6.13 Kernel into flash
-booting rootfs Debian!!! via USB HDD
-atheros WLAN works fine
-pppoe, httpd, sshd, pptpd, daapd, samba ... works perfectly
-webcam video streaming via vlc, ... that was very hard to handle! 

Now its a great router, no crashes, amazing uptime!
But two problems left.

-Anyone got the LAN-device (not the broadcom) working?
-What about the "Sentry5 Crypto Accelerator (rev 01)", to improve VPN encryption?

Thx

YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!!!

Awesome job!

hi,

Do you think that it's possible with Gentoo ? May you post how you have done  ?
Thanks you very much.

Could you please sum the steps you did to have 2.6.13 working? Some guidelines on how and what you did, including the debian rootfs you are using etc, would be nice to a lot of people in this forum trying to use the wgt634u. Thanks.

i'm actually surprised that it runs so well for you.

for me, USB is absolutely broken. It seems that sending data (reading is fine) somehow corrupts data, probably because of some missing cache specialities of the BCM.

can you post kernel diffs & config?

Oh, i should read a little bit more before posting.

EHCI doesn't work (even with USB1 devices falling back to OHCI), but OHCI works fine.

great, now i'm happy

Hi, ....
i used the debian-nfs-rootfs installer to install debian.

1. Get the mipsel nfsrootfs
2. Boot the installer via nfs
3. Install Base dep packets to USBdrive
4. thats it, now "apt-get install your-stuff"

Do not forget to add "rootdelay=10" to your kernel Command-Line,
because the SCSI/USB subsystem needs a while to detect your USB drive before booting from it.

If there are any interested parties, i could provide a running debian rootfs with my default wlan configuration.

(Last edited by Gnubbel on 27 Jul 2005, 09:28)

Hi,
does anybody have a kernel that I could flash on the wgt634u to start with? (Gnubbel, if you have this, I would really like to try it)
I would like to have a point to start with even if I must have a tftpd on the wan port.
Or maybe somebody knows how to change a netgear firmware so that it includes the right STARTUP value?

I don't have the telnet access anymore with the 1.4.10. Does anybody have the same problem? (I get "Invalid Multibyte character" messages)

JEff

(Last edited by jeff78 on 27 Jul 2005, 21:24)

I'm interested in the rootfs. However I would like to learn how you did it. As I already have a working system compiled from the source. But i want the ease of a good stable package system. Perhaps a link to the "mipsel nfsrootfs" would be a good start.

Thanks
Steve

I would be very interested in debian rootstrap.  Could you also point to the pages you used for reference for installing 2.6?

Also, do you know if it's possible to expand the USB capability with a USB hub in order to use multiple USB devices?

Has anyone actually tried to boot openwrt on a WGT634U? Is there any reason why it wouldn't boot? What kind of image should be used to flash it? trx? or should it just be a raw squashfs/jffs2 image?

Follow here for instructions on crosscompiling the kernel.

http://www.nomis52.net/?section=project … ge=console

Read this for debian:
http://wiki.wl500g.info/index.php/Debian%20Distribution
and modify intructions with note to:
console is on ttys1.

So bascially the only change needed is to modify the kernel paramter to use ttys1 as the console?