[GNU-linux-libre] LibreWRT free distro?

[Karl Berry]

Jason Self, Denver Gingerich, and others have been developing LibreWRT,
a free distro of a rather different sort -- building an image that gets
flashed onto a router or whatever.  I think it may have been mentioned
on this list already.

Jason and I were talking about it recently.  I'll append the info from
him.

It uses linux-libre and otherwise meets the usual criteria, as far as I
can see.  There are a few stalenesses on the web site but I don't see
any stoppers.

Comments, considerations, thoughts?

karl


Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2012 09:50:07 -0800
From: "Jason Self" <address@hidden>
To: "Karl Berry" <address@hidden>

The website is http://librewrt.org.

The process to build a firmware image for either the Ben Nanonote [1] or
the Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH wireless router [2] (the only devices
supported at this time) are on the website [3]. Please ignore the part
about "Getting the source code"; that needs updating. You can download
it from [4].

The general idea is that it's a bunch of scripts that download a copy of
GCC, etc. and make a cross-compiler for the target device within the
expanded librewrt directory.

[...] embedded systems like this don't usually have much in the way of
RAM, CPU horsepower, etc. so you generally don't do the compiling on the
actual device but on something more powerful. Even if it were possible
for it to complete (assuming you don't run out of RAM or something) the
low-power CPU would take forever, or at least long enough to simulate
forever. :)

Depending on what software you select during the "make menuconfig" stage
it will then proceed to download other software (like Linux-libre,
Busybox, etc.) and build the firmware image that you can then flash onto
the device.

Denver Gingerich recently made a firmware image for that Buffalo router
with good results [5] but there are still some outstanding bugs to fix
before this version is released and before we can really say the Buffalo
router is supported.

[1] http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Ben_NanoNote
[2] 
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless/wireless-n-routers-access-points/airstation-highpower-n300-gigabit-wireless-router-wzr-hp-g300nh-v2/
[3] http://librewrt.org/index.php?title=How_To_Build_LibreWRT
[4] 
http://download.librewrt.org/creative-craftsman/pre-alpha0/librewrt-cc-alpha0-src.tar.bz2
[5] 
http://lists.librewrt.org/pipermail/dev-librewrt.org/2012-February/000469.html