FMK with Hame A15 (DD-WRT)

[cmusser]

Hi,

I tried to use FMK (v0.8.7) to modify an image file for a device I'm working with and ran into trouble. Not sure if the device is supported or I did something wrong, but here's what happened:

I started with an image for a Hame A15, a small router for which support has been recently added  by DD-WRT. My goal is to add an application and some libraries to the image, then reflash and test. As an initial experiment, I added a simple text file to the image, to see if I could boot the revised image and see the file.

The extract was successful, but build_image complained that the image was larger than the original. So I tried again with the -min flag. This built an image, but when flashed onto the device, resulted in a brick. Oops.

My questions are:

1.) I'm not sure if FMT needs to support a specific hardware type or just a particular image format. The image was given to us by the DD-WRT people (who were contracted to add support for the Hame A15). This is what the
"file" command says about the image:

fw.bin: u-boot legacy uImage, DD-WRT v24 Linux Kernel Image, Linux/MIPS, OS Kernel Image (lzma), 943530 bytes, Fri Mar  8 00:22:17 2013, Load Address: 0x80000000, Entry Point: 0x80004A70, Header CRC: 0x962ACC88, Data CRC: 0xA0F311CC

2.) How do you handle the case of adding new things to an image if the resulting size is bounded by the size of the original. From the looks of it, the -min option is only to be used as a last resort.

[Jeremy Collake]

You need to update to the latest version of the Firmware Mod Kit. Update here. A lot has changed the last couple weeks.

The most recent should result in a rebuilt firmware image of closer size, and may work better.

Then report back.

[nickf]

I too have a Hame A15, but I'm unable to find the DD-WRT firmware for this model...can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

[BenYeeHua]

I too have a Hame A15, but I'm unable to find the DD-WRT firmware for this model...can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

...link is here...

I think you need to build yourself.

[nickf]

Ahh - thank you!
I'll give it a go building. Couldn't fine the SVN repo (admittedly I didn't look that hard!)

[Endrio]

The extract was successful, but build_image complained that the image was larger than the original. So I tried again with the -min flag. This built an image, but when flashed onto the device, resulted in a brick. Oops.

[Jeremy Collake]

Sorry to hear that. I'm sure you know, but to reiterate: The FMK makes a best-attempt effort. It's by no means guaranteed to produce viable firmwares. It's for hard-core enthusiasts and developers. You must be able to unbrick your device if you use the FMK. We plastered that warning several places.

p.s. the FMK is a F/OSS project I founded, but isn't affiliated with Bitsum. It has contributors, such as Craig Heffner, who created the awesome Binwalk tool that FMK 2.0 depends heavily on. He has done more for v2 than I have for sure. My point, please post issues at the Google Code site, as he's more likely to get to them than myself, at least for the time being. I jump in from time to time too, may jump in again to leap to FMK 2.5.. but none of us all full time.