Resources for “Linux on Linksys Wi-Fi Routers”

August 1st, 2004 by James Ewing in

Seattle Wireless is one of the largest wireless networking communities and maintains a large Web site with up-to-date Wi-Fi information: www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWrt54g.

Linksys Source Code (Linksys, now a division of Cisco Systems, has a support section with GPL source code for its products): www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp.

The WRT54G Group maintains a mailing list and an on-line support group and is an active discussion forum for the WRT54G: groups.yahoo.com/WRT54G.

Sveasoft, this Swedish company's site is the author's home on the Net and his personal favorite. The Linksys forum is focused primarily on the Linksys WRT54G and offers source code and firmware downloads: www.sveasoft.com/forums.html.

Broadband Reports—this on-line forum has several active discussion groups focused on the major wireless device manufacturers. The Linksys forum is a great source of information and tips: www.broadbandreports.com/forum/equip,16.

OpenWRT is a recent project that promises to offer a hacker's version of the WRT54G source code. At the time of this writing nothing is available, but it's still worth a peek: openwrt.sourceforge.net.

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more Linux distros for Linksys

On May 23rd, 2006 ciscostu (not verified) says:

Another cool alternative is www.dd-wrt.com.

There's also a security distribution (built on top of OpenWrt) that adds WPA Enterprise wireless, IDS, IPS, and remote access VPN functionality to your wifi router-

http://packetprotector.org/

Build Clarification

On July 30th, 2004 mikelamb (not verified) says:

I built firmware version 2.04.3 from source and transfered the image to a WRT54G v2 router, without converting it into a doorstop. The instructions in the article didn't quite match the contents of the source code I downloaded from Linksys, so in case it's useful for someone else, these are the steps I took:

  • tar xzf wrt54g.2.04.3.tgz
  • su -c 'ln -s $PWD/WRT54G/tools/brcm /opt'
  • PATH=$PATH:/opt/brcm/hndtools-mipsel-linux/bin:/opt/brcm/hndtools-mipsel-uclibc/bin
  • cd WRT54G/release/src/router
  • make menuconfig
  • cd ..
  • make

This process builds the file WRT54G/release/image/code.bin which I transfered to the router using the web interface.

Now on to the interesting stuff!

Re: Resources for Linux on Linksys Wi-Fi Routers

On July 16th, 2004 tmetro (not verified) says:

> OpenWRT is a recent project...http://openwrt.sourceforge.net/

That link is dead. Try:
http://openwrt.ksilebo.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openwrt/

> The WRT54G Group... http://groups.yahoo.com/WRT54G

Also dead. I couldn't find a better link.

Other links of interest:

Linksys product information
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=508&scid=35

BatBox wrt54g distribution
http://www.batbox.org/wrt54g-linux.html

Netgear DG834 Hacking Site (similar hardware)
http://dg834.grandou.net/

Other Linux friendly appliance hardware/software projects:
http://openbrick.org/
http://www.soekris.com/
http://meshcube.org/english/specs.html

-Tom

WRT54G yahoo group

On November 28th, 2004 nathanst says:

> > The WRT54G Group... http://groups.yahoo.com/WRT54G
>
> Also dead. I couldn't find a better link.

Looks like this is simply:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WRT54G/

Nathan

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