Using Upstream OpenWrt with Gateworks Products

Gateworks takes an active role in the OpenSource community and as such continually submits patches to upstream projects like the Linux kernel, the U-Boot bootloader, and OpenWrt. As such pre-built OpenWrt images and packages from the upstream OpenWrt auto-builders generally work very well.

You can find pre-built artifacts at ​https://downloads.openwrt.org/.

If you are not sure exactly what your looking for, you can use the image selector at ​https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org:

• enter a model to search for
• select a release
• click on the image found

There are two types of pre-built releases:

• Stable release branches: OpenWrt tries to create a stable release branch once a year and will have maintenance releases that get pre-built images/packages several times during the life of that branch.
• nightly development snapshot: builds are against the 'main' development branch with bleeding edge features and thus a moving target. It is advised to use the stable release branches whenever possible.

If using an upstream pre-built image it will be a minimal package install and you can use package management to install pre-built packages in the OpenWrt package feeds:

• 24.10 / 23.05 stable releases:
  • these use OPKG based on /etc/opkg/distfeeds.conf
  • see ​opkg
  • examples:

    # show installed packages
    opkg list-installed
    # update package feeds (/etc/opkg/distfeeds.conf}
    opkg update
    # install a kernel config package (enable kernel config in /proc/config.gz)
    opkg install kmod-ikconfig
    # install ath11k support for qcn9074
    opkg install kmod-ath11k-pci ath11k-firmware-qcn9074
    

• SNAPSHOT builds:
  • as of Nov 2024 OpenWrt uses APK (instead of OPKG) based on /etc/apk/repositories.d/distfeeds.list
  • see:
    • ​announcement
    • ​opkg-to-apk-cheatsheet
    • ​apk
  • examples:

    # show installed packages
    apk list --installed
    # update package feeds (/etc/apk/repositories.d/distfeeds.list)
    apk update
    # install a kernel config package (enable kernel config in /proc/config.gz)
    apk add kmod-ikconfig
    # install ath11k support for qcn9074
    apk add kmod-ath11k-pci ath11k-firmware-qcn9074
    

Venice

Venice is supported in the nightly development builds (SNAPSHOT) as well as the 24.10 stable releases. These images are in the form of compressed disk images which are typically installed via U-Boot:

• Venice compressed disk image installation

Ventana

Ventana is supported in the nightly development builds (SNAPSHOT) as well as the 24.10 and 23.05 stable releases:

• normal geometry NAND flash

Upstream OpenWrt 24.10 branch:

The 24.10 branch can be summarized as:

• Linux 6.6 kernel
• pre-built image support for Venice (compressed disk image) and Ventana (normal flash geometry ubi)

Upstream OpenWrt 23.05 branch

The 23.05 branch can be summarized as:

• Linux 5.15 kernel
• pre-built image support for Ventana (normal flash geometry ubi)