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Piratebox on the A5-V11

If you liked having Piratebox on the Zsun. I am now bringing it to you now on a device the size of a pack of gum! After many MONTHS of installing, troubleshooting, resetting e.d. I now have a complete working Piratebox installation for the A5-V11. I would like to share my installation scripts in order to let you install your own.

This tutorial was created with OpenWRT LEDE 18.06.5 using the similar Zsun manual method

This tutorial is for the technical minded but should be simple to follow until we get a full install package/script working for extroot. NOBODY will take responsibility or be liable for anything you do to your device. If you brick it trying these procedures, YOU are solely responsible for your actions. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. However, we can try and help in the forums. This has been recently tested on Nov 17, 2019 and working with PirateBox v1.1.2.

0a. PreSetup A5-V11 from STOCK FIRMWARE

You need:

  • laptop/PC with Ethernet Port
  • telnet client (I use putty)
  • Ethernet Cable
  • VFAT formatted USB flash drive (might not be empty)

Download:

  • Copy them to USB drive, rename OpenWrt image to firmware.bin
  • Connect your laptop/PC to the A5-V11 via Ethernet and power up the A5-V11
  • Connect the USB Flash drive to the A5-V11
  • Telnet to the A5-V11 with the following command:
telnet 192.168.100.1
  • The username and password are admin
  • Mount the USB flash drive with the following command:
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
  • Wait a few seconds and verify that you see files
ls /mnt
  • You should see your files. Do not go further if you do not see files !
  • Upgrade uboot - be careful, do not reset router during and after this operation !
mtd_write write  /mnt/uboot256.img Bootloader
  • You should see on console
#Unlocking Bootloader …
#Writing from /mnt/uboot256.img to Bootloader …  [w]
  • Upgrade firmware - do not reset router during this operation!
 mtd_write write /mnt/firmware.bin Kernel
  • You should see on console
#Unlocking Kernel …
#Writing from /mnt/firmware.bin to Kernel …  [w]

Reboot router with the following command.

reboot

0b. PreSetup A5-V11 from OpenWRT

You need:

  • laptop/PC with Ethernet Port
  • pscp client (windows cli)
  • Ethernet Cable

Download:

  • In a command line interface be it bash for linux or CMD for Windows, copy over the sysupgrade using pscp. below is an example.
pscp -scp "C:\path\to\image\openwrt-ramips-rt305x-a5-v11-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin" root@192.168.1.1:/tmp/firmware.bin
  • Connect to your A5-V11 device via SSH and run
  sysupgrade -n -v /tmp/firmware.bin
  

Your device should reboot once the update is complete. Now, I had an issue with my old uboot not letting it boot due to bad magic. Fortunatly I was able to recover by installing the updated uboot256.img via serial and tftp.

1a. Network Debacle

I have an issue with my router that ANY device connected to it via static IP wont recieve DNS addresses from the gateway (my router). Here is a simple fix if you cant ping google.com from your A5-V11.

uci set network.lan.proto='dhcp'
uci commit
service network reload

Now try pinging google.com

ping google.com

if you see success, kill ping with a CTRL+Z

1b. Setup Mounts

Format USB Drive

  • Copy and paste one line at a time
cd /tmp
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH='/lib:/usr/lib:/tmp/lib:/tmp/usr/lib'
opkg update && opkg install -d ram e2fsprogs dosfstools fdisk
wget http://druss.org/public/parts
chmod +x /tmp/parts
./parts
/tmp/usr/sbin/mkfs.fat /dev/sda1
/tmp/usr/sbin/mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
  • copy and paste into command shell
mkdir -p /opt/piratebox/share
uci add fstab mount
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].target=/opt/piratebox/share
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].device=/dev/sda1
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].fstype=vfat
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].options=rw,sync
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].enabled=1
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].enabled_fsck=0
uci commit
mkdir /mnt/sda2 
mount -t ext4 /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2
tar -C /overlay -cvf - . | tar -C /mnt/sda2 -xf -
uci add fstab mount
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].target=/overlay
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].device=/dev/sda2
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].fstype=ext4
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].options=rw,sync
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].enabled=1
uci set fstab.@mount[-1].enabled_fsck=0
uci commit
reboot

It is getting late.

I will finish this later. :-D Hopefully not in a year or so.