I do very limited tested beforehand. I currently have 1 very helpful tester that is giving me constant feedback, but I post builds after I change something I find worthwhile. I need YOUR FEEDBACK I do not actually run this router on my network, because it's always connected to my laptop getting hacked. Maybe someone should send me one or two more.

I have looked at our bootloader, and it has no method to attempt a failsafe TFTP flash as Broadcom's does. The WRT54G I believe will load a TFTP image from bootloader if kernel is broke without intervention. Our current bootloader will not. If you attempt to start a TFTP transfer, it will try again and again and again indefinitely, thus it will never start the flashed image. I am trying to find solution to this, and the best I can think of now is replacing the bootloader. This is tricky as well and may produce a real brick requiring a JTAG which I don't have! :( [edit 11/nov/2010: okay i got one now because i broke it. lol.]

RECOMMENDED BUILD FOR USE IS BACKFIRE The 2.6 kernel lacks USB and the wifi driver will run your CPU hot and leave you disappointed.

I must give a shoutout to those who have been so generous with their feedback. I hope to add to this list.

• Mayckel (a guy from Curacao) - has tons of these routers and is certainly #1 with feedback. He hacked together a serial cable to help me out (well, and himself with the dozen bricks I helped make).

This is something I would actually finally send to end-users…

binary: http://wrt.scottn.us/wrtu54g-tm-xwrt-b2.bin

Simply connect to LAN port or wifi and configure from http://192.168.1.1 the username is 'root' and the default password is blank.

Basic openwrt build.

binary: http://wrt.scottn.us/wrtu54g-tm-backfire-b3.bin (ChangeLog)

source: http://wrt.scottn.us/openwrt-backfire-adm8668-r1.tar.gz needs updated bad.

1. Flash the router from Linksys web interface.
2. Telnet to 192.168.1.1
3. Set password to enable ssh and disable telnet: passwd
4. SSH to root@192.168.1.1
5. Update opkg: opkg update
6. Install X-WRT: opkg install webif
7. Make web daemon start on bootup: /etc/init.d/uhttpd enable
8. Reboot: reboot

At least from my experience, USB1.1 is reliable, while USB2.0 storage just … breaks/corrupts stuff. Also, since EHCI is made in the kernel, we must override dependency of kmod-usb-core. I did this:

root@OpenWrt:~# opkg install kmod-scsi-core
root@OpenWrt:~# opkg install --nodeps kmod-usb-storage
Installing kmod-usb-storage (2.4.37.9-1) to root...
Downloading http://downloads.openwrt.org/backfire/10.03/brcm-2.4/packages/kmod-usb-storage_2.4.37.9-1_brcm-2.4.ipk.
Configuring kmod-usb-storage.
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
  Vendor: Generic   Model: STORAGE DEVICE    Rev: 9451
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

There it is! Just make sure it's a USB1.1-only hub for great success. I found a Belkin F5U021 after *much* searching on eBay/interwebs. They are hard to come by nowadays. :(

These require nls_base which should have been made in the kernel but was not due to incorrect kernel config by default. I will fix this in next build, but the workaround is to install it as a module. That module is at http://wrt.scottn.us/nls_base.o and you can place it manually in /lib/modules/ and create a file in /etc/modules.d to autoload it for now.