Running OpenWRT on the Plusnet Hub One (& BT Home Hub 5a)

[#1]

You are going to struggle to find a ADSL/VDSL Router/Modem with the features this has. As for wireless performance, I think these are excellent, the performance is great if anything seems better than it did with the PN/BT firmware. 

To find a something which comes close to this when running OpenWRT, you're gonna be looking at £80+ 

[#2]

Would you have a chance to solder and upload the openwrt on 2 of these if I send you the pcb (I can open it and just send the actual boards)? I can post them out myhermes and send you a send back label too if you have some spare time?

Another Question - How easy is it to update newer firmwares once it is on openwrt or lace etc? Does that need to be done by serial again?

[#3]

Nope, once you are running Openwrt you can easily upgrade versions, via the terminal or the LUCI web interface. 

pm me if you want to arrange to send your Routers for me to flash for you. 

[#4]

Sent - Thanks in advance.

[#5]

Thanks for awsome guide!

Unfortunatelly im stuck in CFG 04 mode with and without boot_sell2 grounded.

2 day ago i made backup of my router (caldata + nand) and today after getting no errors while flashing router booting only in UART mode. Any remedy for that?

[#6]

Any alternative points, particularly for r78? I've burnt the pad and can't get a connection on the resistor

[#7]

I can confirm you should be able to get a connection when soldering from the resistor. Not too sure of any other points to solder from besides those however 😕 

[#8]

Hi Guys,
I finally ended up ordering a cheap soldering iron and usb-ttl from ebay for under a fiver so back to this on my own head. Can someone guide me to what would be latest compilation / image and dummy's guide (steps) to follow on windows. I am on sky adsl2.

Thanks in advance everyone!

[#9]

Hi,
Can we use CH340 USB- TTL convertor instead of PL2303?

Thanks,
Manish

[#10]

Hi Guys,
I started following http://openwrt.ebilan.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=138&p=1356 to get openwrt onto my home hub 5. Everything was going great and I started to backup nand. But midway through the nand backup - I had to unfortunately step away from the computer. So being the idiot I thought it was only backing up the nand and it should be ok - hence I stopped tftp, closed putty and shut down the router.

Now I started it this morning and each time I start putty I get to below without shorting boot_sel2 with gnd.

ROM VER: 1.1.4
CFG 06
NAND
NAND Read OK

DDR autotuning Rev 0.3d
DDR size from 0xa0000000 - 0xa7ffffff
DDR check ok... start booting...

But it doesn't allow me to proceed any further from here. I have tried to restart from type openwrt-lantiq-bthomehubv5a_ram-u-boot.asc > COM4. When I started Putty again after tftp - putty would continue to just show blank window.

I don't know if it helps but the two leds in the middle cycles from steady orange to few quick flashes and back whilst bottom left led is flashing orange / red. I believe this is the Led which flashes when trying to connect to broadband or under b.

Please help guys - I really need this router to start working....any help would be appreciated and sorry to trouble everyone.

[#11]

You have to have the short in place in order to boot from uboot sent over the serial port.

[#12]

If I short boot_sel2 then I get to

ROM VER: 1.1.4

CFG 04

UART

But then as soon as close putty & go to command (admin) and do

type openwrt-lantiq-bthomehubv5a_ram-u-boot.asc > COM3

Then subsequent opening of putty returns blank screen. No BTHOMEHUBV5A prompt anymore.

Edit :

Ignore above as I don't know after sending last message - I repeated the same steps again for god knows how many timeth and it worked. Thanks - You are the lucky charm!

[#13]

Hi,

Can someone guide me to location of jimbof r1491  firmware?

Thanks,

[#14]

It is here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-_YzKUQ1hkzVEJHaVhMc0Y5TXM

I'm not sure how useful it is any more though, I haven't kept up with latest LEDE developments - I still find wifi under LEDE a bit flakier than stock, so I'm on stock at the moment.

You might be better off using the latest snapshot builds.  Don't know if they've enabled SMP support yet, that would be the only reason to carry on using my build really.

If I get some spare time I might re-build the latest tree with SMP again (assuming that is isn't in the main tree by now).

[#15]

---

@jimbof wrote:

It is here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-_YzKUQ1hkzVEJHaVhMc0Y5TXM

I'm not sure how useful it is any more though, I haven't kept up with latest LEDE developments - I still find wifi under LEDE a bit flakier than stock, so I'm on stock at the moment.

You might be better off using the latest snapshot builds.  Don't know if they've enabled SMP support yet, that would be the only reason to carry on using my build really.

If I get some spare time I might re-build the latest tree with SMP again (assuming that is isn't in the main tree by now).

---

Thanks. Please let me know if you rebuild. I had stock but I needed to use sky instead of BT.

On secondary note, what do I do next?

root@OpenWrt:/# ls -l /tmp
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             4 Jul 12 19:37 TZ
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Jul 12 19:43 dhcp.leases
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            40 Jul 12 19:42 dnsmasq.d
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            40 Jul 12 20:43 dropbear
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            60 Jul 12 19:42 etc
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        129024 Jul 12 20:23 hh5a-calcdata-backup
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            60 Jul 12 19:42 hosts
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       5263360 Jul 12 20:51 lede-lantiq-xrx200-BTHO                                                                                        MEHUBV5A-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root            60 Jul 12 19:42 lib
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            40 Jan  1  1970 lock
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            80 Jul 12 19:36 log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            32 Jul 12 19:44 resolv.conf
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Jul 12 19:36 resolv.conf.auto
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root           200 Jul 12 20:44 run
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            60 Jul 12 19:41 state
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            80 Jan  1  1970 sysinfo
root@OpenWrt:/# sysupgrade /tmp/lede-lantiq-xrx200-BTHOMEHUBV5A-squashfs-sysupgr
ade.bin
Cannot save config while running from ramdisk.
Watchdog handover: fd=3
- watchdog -
Sending TERM to remaining processes ... ntpd dnsmasq ubusd logd netifd odhcpd
Sending KILL to remaining processes ...
Unlocking kernel ...

Writing from <stdin> to kernel ...
[ 4685.336000] UBI: attaching mtd4 to ubi1
[ 4688.500000] UBI: scanning is finished
[ 4688.508000] UBI error: ubi_read_volume_table: the layout volume was not found
[ 4688.544000] UBI error: ubi_attach_mtd_dev: failed to attach mtd4, error -22
ubiattach: error!: cannot attach mtd4
           error 22 (Invalid argument)
ubiformat: mtd4 (nand), size 131465216 bytes (125.4 MiB), 1003 eraseblocks of 13                                                                                        1072 bytes (128.0 KiB), min. I/O size 2048 bytes
libscan: scanning eraseblock 1002 -- 100 % complete
ubiformat: 999 eraseblocks have valid erase counter, mean value is 0
ubiformat: 4 eraseblocks are supposedly empty
ubiformat: formatting eraseblock 1002 -- 100 % complete
[ 4706.064000] UBI: attaching mtd4 to ubi1
[ 4709.180000] UBI: scanning is finished
[ 4709.656000] UBI: attached mtd4 (name "ubi", size 125 MiB) to ubi1
[ 4709.660000] UBI: PEB size: 131072 bytes (128 KiB), LEB size: 129024 bytes
[ 4709.668000] UBI: min./max. I/O unit sizes: 2048/2048, sub-page size 512
[ 4709.676000] UBI: VID header offset: 512 (aligned 512), data offset: 2048
[ 4709.684000] UBI: good PEBs: 1003, bad PEBs: 0, corrupted PEBs: 0
[ 4709.692000] UBI: user volume: 0, internal volumes: 1, max. volumes count: 128
[ 4709.700000] UBI: max/mean erase counter: 3/1, WL threshold: 4096, image seque                                                                                        nce number: 1899619325
[ 4709.712000] UBI: available PEBs: 979, total reserved PEBs: 24, PEBs reserved                                                                                         for bad PEB handling: 20
[ 4709.728000] UBI: background thread "ubi_bgt1d" started, PID 1375
UBI device number 1, total 1003 LEBs (129411072 bytes, 123.4 MiB), available 979                                                                                         LEBs (126314496 bytes, 120.5 MiB), LEB size 129024 bytes (126.0 KiB)
Volume ID 0, size 28 LEBs (3612672 bytes, 3.4 MiB), LEB size 129024 bytes (126.0                                                                                         KiB), dynamic, name "rootfs", alignment 1
Set volume size to 122701824
Volume ID 1, size 951 LEBs (122701824 bytes, 117.0 MiB), LEB size 129024 bytes (                                                                                        126.0 KiB), dynamic, name "rootfs_data", alignment 1
sysupgrade successful
[ 4729.888000] reboot: Restarting s▒
ROM VER: 1.1.4
CFG 04
UART

After a restart of the router I see the below in the same putty session.

ROM VER: 1.1.4
CFG 06
NAND
NAND Read OK

DDR autotuning Rev 0.3d
DDR size from 0xa0000000 - 0xa7ffffff
DDR check ok... start booting...



U-Boot 2010.06-LANTIQ-v-2.2.46 (Sep 07 2013 - 02:57:04 on tester@clean-machine)

CLOCK CPU 500M RAM 250M
secure boot
DRAM:  125 MiB
NAND:  ONFI flash detected
ONFI param page 0 valid
NAND device: Manufacturer ID: 0x01, Chip ID: 0xf1 (AMD S34ML01G1)
128 MiB
*** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment

Erasing Nand...
Bad block table not found for chip 0
Bad block table not found for chip 0
Bad block table written to 0x000007fe0000, version 0x01
Bad block table written to 0x000007fc0000, version 0x01
Erasing at 0xa0000 -- 100% complete.
Encrypting enviroment...
Writing to Nand... done
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   Internal phy(GE) firmware version: 0x841b
vr9 Switch

Type "run flash_nfs" to mount root filesystem over NFS

Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
Creating 1 MTD partitions on "nand0":
0x000000100000-0x000007fc0000 : "mtd=0"
UBI: attaching mtd1 to ubi0
UBI: physical eraseblock size:   131072 bytes (128 KiB)
UBI: logical eraseblock size:    129024 bytes
UBI: smallest flash I/O unit:    2048
UBI: sub-page size:              512
UBI: VID header offset:          512 (aligned 512)
UBI: data offset:                2048
UBI: attached mtd1 to ubi0
UBI: MTD device name:            "mtd=0"
UBI: MTD device size:            126 MiB
UBI: number of good PEBs:        1012
UBI: number of bad PEBs:         2
UBI: max. allowed volumes:       128
UBI: wear-leveling threshold:    4096
UBI: number of internal volumes: 1
UBI: number of user volumes:     2
UBI: available PEBs:             19
UBI: total number of reserved PEBs: 993
UBI: number of PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 10
UBI: max/mean erase counter: 3/1

Looking for active section/image:
  0. section: type:8 not an image
  1. section: type:9 not an image
  2. section: type:1 not an image
  3. section: type:3 not an image
  4. section: type:3 not an image
  5. section: type:2 image. reading section header @0x140e76c...
OpenRG volume not found
ubi_volume_read failed; read -19
header read failed!
  6. section: type:2 image. reading section header @0x281cf6c...
OpenRG volume not found
ubi_volume_read failed; read -19
header read failed!
  7. section: type:7 not an image

Verifying image(s):
No active image found!!!
Wrong Image Format for bootm command
ERROR: can't get kernel image!
VR9 #