ASUS WL-600g hacking

Daniel Fišer, 2007-02-19

This article describes my hacking of ASUS WL-600g All-in-1 Wireless ADSL2/2 + Home Gateway. All the information are provided without any warranty. Make sure you know what you are doing before commiting any changes to your ASUS WL-600g.

Prerequisites
Standard GPL firmware build
- Kernel customization
Custom program build
- Samba compilation

Prerequisites

You need a Unix machine to cross-compile firmware for ASUS WL-600g. Root access is required by ASUS make script.

This guide describes custom cross compilation based on GPL source code for ASUS WL-600g firmware version 1.0.2.8B for German, Czech, and Nordic. The firmware was compiled on the following machine:

>$ name -privs
Linux 2.6.19-1.2911.fc6 #1 SMP Sat Feb 10 15:51:47 EST 2007 i686 i386

>$ cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora Core release 6 (Zod)

Standard GPL firmware build

Install compatibility compiler and libraries for gcc 2.96 and 3.3.4 – see below for installed libs.

>$ rpm -qa | grep compat
compat-libgcc-296-2.96-138
compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-138
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61

Download GPL source code for ASUS WL-600g's firmware.[1] Unzip the GPL_WL600g_1028B.zip archive, unzip the GPL_WL600g_1028B.tar.gz tarball and run consumer_install.

Install uclibc-based cross compilation RPMs:
```
>$ sudo rpm -Uvh uclibc-crosstools-*rpm
```
You need to create symlink for every file in /opt/toolchains/uclibc-crosstools/bin:
```
>$ cd /opt/toolchains/uclibc-crosstools/bin
>$ for A in mips-linux-uclibc-* ; do
> sudo ln -s ${A} mipsel-uclibc-${A#mips-linux-uclibc-}
> done
```

Apply the cur_menu.patch:[2]

>$ cd /opt/bcm963xx
>$ patch -p0 <cur_menu.patch

Make the firmware:
```
>$ make PROFILE=96348GW
```

Kernel customization

The kernel is preconfigured: the /opt/bcm963xx/kernel/linux/.config file is copied upon every build from /opt/bcm963xx/kernel/linux/arch/mips/usb_defconfig. Edit the latter file to customize kernel.

I have managed to compile kernel with ext2 support; ReiserFS support was reported to work too.[2]

Custom program build

You must prepare your environment prior to any additional software compilation. Create an environment setting script, for example in /opt/bcm963xx:

>$ cat /opt/bcm963xx/environment
TOOLCHAINS_HOME=/opt/toolchains/uclibc-crosstools

export LIBS="-L${TOOLCHAINS_HOME}/lib/gcc/mips-linux/3.4.2"
export INCLUDES="-I${TOOLCHAINS_HOME}/include/c++/3.4.2 \
	-I${TOOLCHAINS_HOME}/mips-linux/sys-include \
	-I/opt/bcm963xx/kernel/linux/include"
export CFLAGS="${INCLUDES} ${LIBS} -static"
export LDFLAGS="-static"
export CC="${TOOLCHAINS_HOME}/bin/mipsel-uclibc-gcc"

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${TOOLCHAINS_HOME}/lib
export PATH="${PATH}:${TOOLCHAINS_HOME}/bin"

Set the environment before you execute any configure or make command.

>$ . /opt/bcm963xx/environment

Samba compilation

My goal is to run samba and share externally attached harddisk. I have not tried to include samba into firmware, but prefer to run it from external harddisk.

Download samba source code, unpack and patch it (I used samba 3.0.24):

>$ wget ftp://mirrors.dotsrc.org/samba/samba-3.0.24.tar.gz
>$ tar zxvf samba-3.0.24.tar.gz -C /opt/bcm963xx/userapps/opensource/samba-3.0.24
>$ rm -f samba-3.0.24.tar.gz
>$ cd /opt/bcm963xx/userapps/opensource/samba-3.0.24
>$ wget http://www.samba.org/samba/patches/fetch-patches
>$ sh ./fetch-patches 3.0.24
>$ for PATCH in patches/*.diff; do patch -p1 <${PATCH}; done
>$ cd ..
>$ mv samba-3.0.24/source ./samba
>$ rm -rf samba-3.0.24

Apply the samba-cross_compile.patch patch to samba:[3]
```
>$ patch -p1 <samba-cross_compile.patch
```

Configure samba:

>$ ./configure --host=mipsel-linux --target=mipsel-linux \
	--without-automount --without-sendfile-support --with-included-popt \
	--with-included-iniparser --disable-cups --without-sys-quotas --without-ads \
	--enable-statis=yes --enable-shared=no \
	--prefix=/var/harddisk/asus/samba

Patch config.h:[4]

>$ CFG="include/config.h"
>$ echo "#define SIZEOF_INT 4"              >> ${CFG}
>$ echo "#define SIZEOF_LONG 4"             >> ${CFG}
>$ echo "#define SIZEOF_SHORT 2"            >> ${CFG}
>$ echo "#define HAVE_GETTIMEOFDAY_TZ 1"    >> ${CFG}
>$ echo "#define USE_SETEUID 1"             >> ${CFG}
>$ echo "#define HAVE_IFACE_IFCONF 1"       >> ${CFG}

Make samba:
```
>$ make
```
Install samba:
```
>$ sudo make install
```

Strip binaries:

>$ cd /var/harddisk/asus/samba/bin
>$ sudo /opt/toolchains/uclibc-crosstools/bin/mipsel-uclibc-strip *
>$ cd /var/harddisk/asus/samba/sbin
>$ sudo /opt/toolchains/uclibc-crosstools/bin/mipsel-uclibc-strip *

Copy samba to an USB disk:

>$ cp -prL /var/harddisk/asus/samba/* /media/USB/asus/samba/

Do not forget to create /var/harddisk/asus/samba/var/smb.conf file.

Now it's time to mount your USB disk to ASUS WL-600g, login to the box and start nmbd and smbd daemons.

TODO: The ultimate goal is either to include samba in the firmware or, unless possible, to tweak the firmware to start custom program upon inserting an external USB disk. Any suggestions are welcome.

ASUS WL-600g hacking

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Contents

Prerequisites

Standard GPL firmware build

Kernel customization

Custom program build

Samba compilation

Links