conceptronic

Hacking into Conceptronic C54BRS4A router

Conceptronic is selling the C54BRS4A (Atheros Based Wireless Router) for a couple of month’s now. That device should be fully GNU/GPL compliant and therefor Conceptronic has released the SoureCode including Toolchain.

Using alternative configurations / images / firmware with the Conceptronic C54BRS4A should be possible as it is running Linux

Me as nono on Linux took the challenge to see if it was / is possible to create a custome made ‘AroundMyRoom’ firmware version

The steps I followed were:

1. Downloaded the NetInst of Debian (debian-40r1-i386-netinst). Debian is necessary to be able to compile sources. I burned the ISO to a CD-ROM and took an old notebook

2. Intalled Debian on it and installed some additional packages afterwards like MC, some GCC tools, other libs and stuff I saw were necessary to use, the NetInst is simple as it is downloading the content directly from the Internet so no hassle with many CD’s ..

3. after Installation I wgetted the SourceFile from the ftp of Conceptronic. Right now they supply two sourcefiles. I needed both files! especially as 1 file (called: ‘RGDB’) was generating an error and a working was was available in the older sourcefile (sigh.. )

4. After the Tar -xvzf [sourcefile] I read the included readme document and followed the guidelines. (C54BRS4A.GPL.readme.txt)

5. The process is clean and simple and if found any error (I found 2) it could be easily fixed

start with:
1. Building the toolchain
 ~# ./build_tool_chain.sh
Select: Generic (MIPS I) (CONFIG_MIPS_ISA_1) and keep the rest default

check the output and if found any error it must be your system missing some special tools (Bison etc.. )

2. Building the image
 ~# source ./setupenv
 ~# make
 ~# make
 ~# make
  ===================================================
  You are going to build the f/w images.
  Both the release and tftp images will be generated.
  ===================================================
  Do you want to rebuild the linux kernel ? (yes/no) : yes
Issues I found:

in folder: c54brs4a/tools/../rgdb the rgdb file creates a segmentation fault when called through the make process. If you download the first gnu/gpl and take the same file the size is different and replacing the exiting rgdb executable for the other one it works ..

in folder: c54brs4a/templates/../c54br4s4a/ the file gendef.sh was creating a make error due to a missing DDNS statement, when commenting out: issue solved. It seems not to affect the creation of the firmware ..
And finally your system will create the firmware files.. Upgrade through the webinterface and you can have your modified firmware .. Hey .. that is what geeks want .. !

If I have some time left tomorrow I will make some internal images ;-)

Conceptronic CH3SNAS 1.03beta2 Firmware

Just before the black box is hitting the shelves. 

Today a new firmware was released to some beta users .. 1.03beta 2

update: firmware withdrawn, version 1.03abeta 2 had issue that UPnP server did not start. New Version released!

release notes:

1. Users with RAID1 configuration could loose their data after the reboot of upgrade 1.02 to 1.03beta1. The device was asking if you want to re-format the device. Removing the HDD’s and restart the device empty could save the data, but some users were pig-headed and lost all their data. Some RAID parameter were wrong causing this issue. It’s fixed now.
Password courrupted :  user’s password could get corrupted after changing. We fixed that also.

Conceptronic CH3SNAS: The BlackBox Edition

I have just received the new Conceptronic CH3SNAS: the Blackbox Edition. The look of the device is different than the previous version of the CH3SNAS.

What has been changed you wonder? Cause maybe some of you have it in backorder ..

blackbox1.jpgblackbox2.jpgblackbox3.jpgblackbox4.jpgblackbox5.jpgblackbox6.jpgblackbox7.jpg

Hit the images to enlarge

Changed is: a lock for the frontcover, the backside HDD slides have been moved to the front cause during assembly it was very hard to remove harddisks easily. Colour from grey black to black.

Firmware and hardware are equal to the first Conceptronic CH3SNAS version. So no changes there. Enjoy ..

CH3SNAS beta firmware 1.03

Be one of the first CH3SNAS users with the 1.03 new firmware

Conceptronic is announcing NEW features and FIXED features in this 1.03 release

Beta v1.03 was released on  11/16/2007 to a select number of beta testers. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK !!   

 DO BACKUP YOUR DATA BEFORE APPLYING THIS FIRMWARE ! THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR KEEPING YOUR DATA OR UNFORMATTING THE HARDDRIVES ! DO NOT USE AT PRODUCTION DEVICES !

What was addressed and fixed  

1.Stop at 94% issue.

Due to some various wierd issues some pre-formatted HDD’s are unable to be formatted. Than they stop at 94%

I think this bug finally is fixed

2.NFS Server modules added.

Requested by End-Users: add the NFS modules to apply ‘Fun Plug’ stuff: so we did !

3.PS3 Support.

Requested by End-Users: support for PS3 .. Hey this should work now .. Are you happy?  

4.”Removing files or folders in combination with Windows Vista”
 When using scheduled back-up in combination with Windows Vista it is not possible to remove files or folders in any way afterwards. 

Phew .. again happy!

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK ! [download here]

Many new and other issues will be addressed and released in the 1.03 series.. What kind of new stuff?

  • Give you the ability to skip the formatting of a HDD 
  • Add more option in the power management like: add 60 and 120 min options
  • Use also the IP address as sharename
  • Some stuff with anonymous FTP
  • Something to be valid with the e-mail system ..

Hey you can add your idea here ..  

Conceptronic CH3SNAS 1.02 Firmware #2

Just received new beta firmware 1.02, with bugfixes addressed in a previous 1.02 release.

http://www.aroundmyroom.com/ch3snas/ch3snas102a.rar

many issues / options resolved / added / fixed ..

among them:
File Transfer tools where able to damage files
Subtitle files are supported through UPnP A/V tool when playing divx
Progress bar with Itunes Server
Admin cannot be used as groupname anymore
wuftpd has been abandoned and pureftpd is now in use (utf-8 support)
Samba 2.2.8a replaced by Samba 3.0.24 (fix vista issue)

Please do not test this firmware in systems where precious data is stored .. use it for test ;-)

Conceptronic CH3SNAS 1.02 Firmware

New beta firmware released (version 1.02)  for the Conceptronic CH3SNAS

New stuff:

  • Improved Samba
  • Pureftpd
  • Format bug: allow correct formatting if HDD was already formatted FAT32 or NTFS. Get rid of the 94% format bug ;-)
  • Do not allow to have group named admin: dangerous ;-)
  • Many other fixes

Download the beta here the beta is withdrawn due to some issues when transferring files through the Network File Sharing (SMB) part .. things got corrupted

Conceptronic CH3SNAS

speleding1_1.jpg

New Playtoy around from Conceptronic .. The Conceptronic CH3SNAS a NAS storage device for 2 SATA drives based on Linux with funplug to add functionalities. See some innershots here

Some hints and tips:

  • Use the funplug module to add features like telnet .. 
  • Not longer username than 8 characters: this is due to the tinylogin module which has this restriction. Another login module would solve this issue
  • Bittorrent support? Not by default.

ADSL firmware upgrade C54APRA2Plus

Just upgraded a beta (soon to be final) release of the C54APRA2plus firmware.

I encountered a bug where Traceroute was not functioning when PPPoA is used for the DSL connection. This has been fixed in my new firmware. Now this bug is fixed. Now testing the stability ;-)

ADSL Firmware Version: 6.00.01.00 – 6.00.01.00 – 6.00.04.00 Annex A – 01.07.2b – 0.54

ADSL Software Version: V3.02B01T01.GE.20070607

FON

Ik heb een ‘witte’ FON AccessPoint ontvangen en nog geen paar dagen na installatie werd mijn DSL verbinding tijdelijk door m’n provider geblocked. Hoe toevallig. Maar het zal wel niets met elkaar te maken.

Het is jammer dat SNMP gewoonweg niet geimplementeerd is op de FON om eventueel datatraffic te blijven volgen. Dat heb ik namelijk wel geactiveerd op mijn C54APT en C54APRA2Plus Conceptronic AccessPoint en DSL modem. Inmiddels dus weer online, maar de witte FON is offline gezet. Ik ga hem maar weer naar het werk meenemen, en ‘s kijken of ik rare dingen zie (de configuratie is ok)