>From what I can tell the way the openwrt broadcom-wl is compiled makes it
extremely difficult to patch in any upstream changes from broadcom. The
broadcom-wl binary module distributed with stock routers does not appear to
be kernel version specific since it is not statically linked, however it is
kernel configuration specific, and by that I mean it requires a few
non-default packages be built directly into the kernel, mainly it seems to
require the hnd shared dependencies be included. Adding these dependencies
appears to be the method one would use to make broadcom-wl maintainable in
newer ARM and even MIPS devices. Basically hnd needs to be patched into any
kernel that we want to use on a broadcom device with broadcom drivers. We
can't simply patch the driver to work with the kernel, instead we have to
patch the kernel to work with the driver. This way we can use relocatable
binary drivers pulled directly from GPl tarballs rather than having to rely
on customized compiles, and both mips and arm binary drivers are
relocatable. Luckily I have the patches broadcom uses to add the
dependencies on the newer 2.6.36 kernel for ARM which should be easy enough
to port to openwrt in addition to necessary packages specific patches.
Basically the method currently used to handle the mips broadcom-wl driver
should be scrapped since it is nearly impossible to keep up to date and
maintain as it attempts to provide an interface layer rather than simply
building in the kernel dependencies directly. I've uploaded the kernel
patches as well as the current driver set for the ea6900 here
https://sourceforge.net/projects/routertesting/files/ea6900%20patches/ .
Ethernet drivers seems to be fully open source although the wireless driver
is a relocatable ELF but it should be compatible assuming we patch in the
needed kernel changes. The main patch that adds the neccesary hnd
dependencies to the kernel is the linux-2.6.36.4-f70_000_BSP.patch , I'm
fairly sure it should just be patched in directly of course dealing with
any kernel version change breaks. Mostly it is adding files to the kernel
build rather than actually changing files that already exist so breaks due
to kernel version changes should be minimal. The rest of the patches are
package specific patches for the broadcom ARM platform and ea6900. The src
tarball in that folder includes the wireless and ethernet drivers
themselves as well as some other dependencies. Ive also uploaded the
toolchain buildroot in the same directory which includes a number of
platform specific patches. Let me know if there are any patches you think
might be missing and I can also try get the patches for other Broadcom ARM
devices and boards. Some of these patches may be unneeded as they are used
for the stock configuration. The patch set is fairly extensive as it
encompasses multiple packages as well as significant kernel
changes/additions.
James
On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Hauke Mehrtens <ha...@hauke-m.de> wrote:
> On 11/01/2013 01:22 PM, James Hilliard wrote:
> > I noticed that there is a broadcom ARM build option but it only seems to
> > build for the r6250 and I'm not sure if its actually making installable
> > builds. I have a number of very large patches that are part of the build
> > system for these routers. Has anyone been working on these recently? The
> > broadcom-wl arm driver for this appears to be relocatable to any kernel
> > provided the kernel is patched properly with the open source hnd
> > dependencies.
>
> Hi James,
>
> The Broadcom ARM target is for the Northstar BCM470{7,8,9} and BCM5310X
> Chips. I am working on that when I find some time. It currently
> generates only images for the Netgear R6250 because this is the only
> device with this SoC I have, the code should also work on other devices
> with this SoC.
>
> Images from this target are only booting, currently Ethernet, flash,
> wireless, pci and so on are not working.
>
> The broadcom-wl in OpenWrt does not have a ARM binary blob just Mips
> blobs and it does not support the BCM4331 or any ieee80211ac chip from
> Broadcom, this has to be replaced with a more recent one, but
> broadcom-wl is relocatable on MIPS, we use it with various different
> kernel versions and configurations.
>
> What patches do you have for this SoC?
>
> Hauke
>
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