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 Subject :Minimum components required to boot.. 2012-09-05- 12:53:26 
N8OHU
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Joined: 2012-01-02- 22:09:40
Posts: 12
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Good evening, I have a WRT54G v8 that I would like to set up to run HSMM-Mesh. My plan is to modify the router to support either an SD card or USB stick (possibly both) for the main file system. My question is this; what is the absolute minimum firmware loadout that I can use to accomplish this using the firmware build tools that are available here? I know I should try to find a supported router, but they are getting difficult to find; a recent search I did on "FleaBay" shows an increasing number of newer, "incompatible", routers.
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 Subject :Re:Minimum components required to boot.. 2012-09-05- 13:17:01 
KD5MFW
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Joined: 2010-01-18- 23:02:11
Posts: 104
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The WRT54GL is still for sale, new, on ebay.  So they are not hard to find.  You could save your self a huge amount of time starting with supported hardware.  Working with a WRT54G v8 would be a challenging project for someone with expert hardware and software skills.  If you get it working, let is know how you did it. 

The HSMM-MESH firmware will not fit in the native memory of a WRT54 v8.  There is no easy way to "leave stuff out" to try to make it fit.  If you can't get the firmware image loaded, you can't boot it.

If you want to try get a taste of trying to work with minimal foot print 3rd party firmware in newer Linksys routers, check out dd-wrt for ideas on how one might try.  We do not have a method for loading working HSMM-MESH firmware into a WRT54G v8.

-Glenn

KD5MFW
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 Subject :Re:Minimum components required to boot.. 2012-09-05- 16:10:32 
KY9K
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Joined: 2012-07-07- 23:39:07
Posts: 23
Location: Roy, WA
Matt, While you might be able to get a WRT54G-v8 working with lots of magic mojo, why not go with a fully supported WRT54GL (or WRT54GS-v3 or lower - even better) as a starting point? The v8 could then get DD-WRT as Glenn suggests and become a bridged-AP to allow normal wireless clients to connect. The savings in aggravation and loss of hair are well worth it. The HSMM-Mesh firmware is already about as small as its going to get. Even if you can get the Kamikaze full development environment working, there isn't much to take out. At most you could likely strip unneeded function out of uClibc and save a couple hundred KB at most. You're looking for size savings of a couple MB. You're still an order of magnitude away. I'm doing all kinds of wacky Mesh-geekery now, but I started with WRT54GS's and GL's. I still use them for interop testing and live work. -Brian/KY9K
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 Subject :Re:Minimum components required to boot.. 2012-09-07- 12:49:50 
N8OHU
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Joined: 2012-01-02- 22:09:40
Posts: 12
Location: 

There are plenty of newer routers that can be used for this, if the firmware could be made to work on them; I really don't want to have to resort to using DD-WRT mesh firmware (and having to hack it up if it's not compatible with HSMM-Mesh) to use this particular router for experimentation. I will use it (DD-WRT) for the wireless bridging capabilities it provides, though.
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