PCEngines Alix boards

Hardware description: http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

We use this Boards as Routers of our 5Bone and run OpenWRT Kamikaze on these boards. Debian and OpenBSD would be other alternatives.

The x86 images created with the OpenWRT image builder work fine.

The second Version of our patch to build the firmware. This image contains support for Hardware Crypto of the Geode CPU and the newest madwifi modules which support DFS. You can build the image by invoking the following commands:

# wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/7.09/kamikaze_7.09.tar.bz2
# tar -xjf kamikaze_7.09.tar.bz2
# cd kamikaze_7.09
# patch -p1 < ../kamikaze_7.09-for-alix-0xff-02.patch
# make

Below there is a sample wireless configuration for both master and slave which is used by us on our 5Bone-Routers:

Master:

config wifi-device  wifi0
        option type      atheros
        option distance  <distance in meter>
        option channel   <channel 100-140>
        option agmode    11a
        option diversity 0
        option txantenna 1
        option rxantenna 1

config wifi-iface
        option device   wifi0
        option network  <network name>
        option mode     ap
        option ssid     <name>.5bone.ffgraz.net
        option encryption none
        option txpower  5
        option bursting 1
        option ff       1
        option ar       1
        option turbo    1

Slave:

config wifi-device  wifi0
        option type      atheros
        option distance  <distance in meter>
        option agmode    11a
        option diversity 0
        option txantenna 1
        option rxantenna 1

config wifi-iface
        option device   wifi0
        option network  <network name>
        option mode     sta
        option ssid     <name>.5bone.ffgraz.net
        option encryption none
        option txpower  5
        option bursting 1
        option ff       1
        option ar       1
        option turbo    1

And currently we are using an olsr config like this:

config olsr
        option DebugLevel       '0'
        option IpVersion        '4'
        option AllowNoInt       'yes'
        option Pollrate '0.025'
        option TcRedundancy     '2'
        option MprCoverage      '7'
        option LinkQualityFishEye       '1'
        option LinkQualityWinSize       '100'
        option LinkQualityDijkstraLimit '0 10.0'
        option LinkQualityLevel '2'
        option UseHysteresis    'no'
        option FIBMetric        '"approx"'
        option ClearScreen      'yes'
        option LinkQualityAging '0.1'
        option LinkQualityAlgorithm    '"etx_ff"'

config Interface                                                                                       
        option Interface 'lan' 
        option HelloInterval    '3.0'
        option HelloValidityTime        '125.0'
        option TcInterval       '2.0'
        option TcValidityTime   '500.0'
        option MidInterval      '25.0'
        option MidValidityTime  '500.0'
        option HnaInterval      '10.0'
        option HnaValidityTime  '125.0'

config Interface
        option Interface        '<network name>'
        option HelloInterval    '3.0'
        option HelloValidityTime        '125.0'
        option TcInterval       '2.0'
        option TcValidityTime   '500.0'
        option MidInterval      '25.0'
        option MidValidityTime  '500.0'
        option HnaInterval      '10.0'
        option HnaValidityTime  '125.0'

config LoadPlugin
        option Library  'olsrd_httpinfo.so.0.1'
        option port     '8080'
        option Host     '127.0.0.1'

config LoadPlugin
        option Library  'olsrd_txtinfo.so.0.1'
        option Accept   '127.0.0.1'

The older patch without crypto support and old madwifi can be found here. The patch can be used to build an image with kernel modules for VIA Rhine and Alix Leds. The image also contains ip, olsrd, kmod-madwifi, wireless-tools, tcpdump and libpcap. There is currently no support for the Hardware Crypto of the Geode CPU.

Some hints:

• http://wiki.openwrt.org/AlixPort

• http://wiki.openwrt.org/HardwareAcceleratedCrypto

• http://www.docunext.com/wiki/My_Notes_on_Patching_2.6.22_with_OCF

ChangeLog

20080605 The challenge is getting the Geode's hardware crypto support running with Kamikaze. Or actually, the challenge is to build Kamikaze from trunk anyway when something is broken