Netgear R8000

Discuss the technical details of Gargoyle and ongoing development

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rg66
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:07 am

Netgear R8000

Post by rg66 »

Hi,

My friend gave me his NetGear Nighthawk 6 R8000, it is supported by openwrt.
https://openwrt.org/toh/netgear/r8000
Any chance this will/can be supported by Gargoyle 1.15?

I also have an Asus RT-AC1200G which I believe also has Broadcom but it doesn't look like it's supported by opnwrt.

Thanks

Lantis
Moderator
Posts: 6735
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by Lantis »

I won't bother with broadcom based devices sorry. It isn't worth anyone's time.
If someone wanted to do a custom build of one for their own use, that is entirely possible.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

rg66
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:07 am

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by rg66 »

I'm up for a custom build but what target should I use?

Lantis
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Posts: 6735
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by Lantis »

bcm53xx which we don’t have, so you have to start from scratch on it. You can do
make FULL_BUILD=true CUSTOM_TARGET=bcm53xx custom
To start.
Selecting the gargoyle packages is done via a shortcut menu now which should ensure you’ve got the basics.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

rg66
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:07 am

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by rg66 »

Thanks, I will have a go at it on the weekend. Assuming I can get it to build, I need to make sure I can do a recovery before I flash anything.

Cheers

pythonic
Posts: 230
Joined: Mon Mar 11, 2019 5:47 am
Location: Australia

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by pythonic »

A serial console would appear to be advisable for recovery of this device.

Note that using make custom will drop you into make menuconfig - don't forget to save your config file when exiting this step.

rg66
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:07 am

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by rg66 »

I've downloaded nmrpflash which looks fairly simple to do a recovery, I'll do a test first before flashing.

I've done a bunch of custom builds for my MR3420v5 so will not forget to save the config as I've already done that once but thanks for the reminder.

Cheers

rg66
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:07 am

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by rg66 »

Well, I got it to build. I figured I'd get a squashfs.chk but instead get an initramfs.trx file so not sure what to do with that. Most of the info I can find has to do with Tomato.
Last edited by rg66 on Sun May 28, 2023 5:42 am, edited 2 times in total.

Lantis
Moderator
Posts: 6735
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by Lantis »

It is possible but unlikely that the chk file was too large and the initramfs is all that built.
Or the config may not have been set up correctly to build the right image output.

You can post your config file for review if you like
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

rg66
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:07 am

Re: Netgear R8000

Post by rg66 »

My inexperience got the better of me. I found the squashfs.chk in /custom-src/bin...

I made sure I could flash stock firmware from cmd with nmrpflash which after a few tries was successful. Flashed the gargoyle image through the netgear gui and have a running gargoyle system.

There are a few bugs though. 2.4Ghz wireless only does G and no wireless leds. I'm going to try another build with basic defaults without removing anything, I might have left something out.

Anyway, it's a start. We'll see what happens after this next build.

Thanks

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