Property:SDK-Firmware

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Term

Term:	SDK-Firmware	Wiki	Freetz	IPPF	whmf	AVM	Web
Short for:	Software Development Kit Firmware
Location:	Lexicon >> FRITZ-Terms
Weblinks:
Description:	USB-Stick containing Firmware to be booted from RAM.

Goto:   Preparation  -  Tips  -  Gallery  -  FRITZ!OS   -   SMW-Browser

Details

See also the explanation in german language I wrote in the passed Wehavemorefun Wiki.

SDK-Firmware is a specially prepared USB-Stick containing Firmware to be booted from RAM.

It is only supported in fw 5.01 - 5.54 for the 7270v2 and 7270v3 which have CONFIG_SDK = 'y'.
The Kernel of these Firmwares has builtin Kernel-Modules which are normally external modules:

• USB modules: usbcore.ko, usbmon.ko, usb-storage.ko
• SCSI modules: scsi_mod.ko, sd_mod.ko
• Filesystems: msdos.ko, fat.ko, vfat.ko, ext2.ko, ext3.ko
• NLS modules: nls_ascii.ko, nls_cp437.ko, nls_cp850.ko, nls_iso8859-15.ko, nls_iso8859-1.ko

In userland these Firmwares have an udev-mount-sd hotplug script which calls boot_sdk.sh for each detected disk device.
Besides this there is an extended flash_update.ko which supports a ram_boot_file parameter.

A SDK-Stick requires 4 partitions, 3 of which must be labeled correctly:

• rootfs - ext3
• boot - vfat - must contain the firmware.image to be booted
• data - ext3
• unlabeled - swap

boot_sdk.sh uses blkid to check the presence of these 4 partitions on the specified disk, and terminates otherwise.
Next it checks for the presence of the string tffs=/tffs/[1-2] in cmdline, which is present in running SDK-Firmware.
If the string was found the script terminates, if not the 3 labeled partitions are mounted to:

• /var/sdk/rootfs - ext3
• /var/sdk/boot - vfat
• /var/sdk/data - ext3

After resetting the watchdog the swap partition is activated with swapon -a.

If not already present the TFFS partitions are copied using cat:

• /var/sdk/rootfs/tffs/1 - copy of mtd3
• /var/sdk/rootfs/tffs/2 - copy of mtd4

Next the md5sum of firmware.image is compared to the stored checksum in /var/sdk/rootfs/firmware.md5.
If both differ then firmware.image is unpacked to /var/sdk/boot using tar and /var/sdk/boot/var/tmp/kernel.image
is splitted into /var/sdk/boot/kernel.image and /var/sdk/boot/filesystem.image using split_image.

Now the TFFS dumps in /var/sdk/rootfs/tffs are backed up to /var/sdk/boot for the following steps.
Then the /var/sdk/boot/filesystem.image is mounted to /var/sdk/squashfs using the loop device.
The content of /var/sdk/rootfs is deleted and the content of /var/sdk/squashfs is copied there.

After a sync /var/sdk/squashfs can be umounted again. Then the TFFS backups in /var/sdk/boot are restored to
/var/sdk/rootfs/tffs and firmware.md5 is updated with the previously calculated md5sum.
/var/sdk/boot/var containing the unpacked tar image and /var/sdk/boot/filesystem.image are deleted again.

Next /var/sdk/boot/boot.config is created containing the kernel_args for the SDK-Firmware:

root=/dev/sdaX rw rootfstype=ext3 swap=/dev/sdaX tffs=1,0x40000 rootdelay=15

After a sync and a swapoff -a the real magic starts:

insmod flash_update.ko ram_boot_file=/var/sdk/boot/kernel.image,boot.config,crc=0

Finally all SDK partitions are umounted and a reboot is performed.

The ram_boot_file parameter of flash_update.ko and split_image are present from fw 5.01 to the latest fw 6.06.
But the boot_sdk.sh script is only present until fw 5.54.

Preparation

Here a Howto to create a SDK-Stick.

1) Check the prerequisites

• boot_sdk.sh only works if loop.ko is loaded, which is used for the Internal-Storage RAM disk. Make sure it's running.
• If you are using Freetz make sure you disable freetzmount and keep blkid and e2fsprogs.
• Do not use Replae Kernel in Freetz unless you preserve the additional builtin modules explained above
• An SDK reboot has to umount the stick. Make sure no program locks ressources on the stick.

2) Partition the USB-Stick

Example: 4 primary partitions on a 4 GB stick (3859 MB in gparted) - see the Gallery:

• 2500 MB ext3 labeled data
• 1000 MB ext3 labeled rootfs
• 233 MB fat32 labeled boot
• 128 MB linux-swap

Size, order and partition type (primary/logical) may vary, filesystem and labels must not.

3) Install the firmware

The firmware version may differ from the flashed firmware, but some combinations may not work.

• Rename the firmware to firmware.image
• Mount the boot partition
• Copy firmware.image there
• Unmount the boot partition

4) Plug the stick into the box

• Plug the stick into the running box
• If your stick has an LED you notice activity
• After a few seconds all 5 box LEDs flash once in red
• The box boots into the SDK-Firmware

Tips

Detect being inside a SDK-Firmware

$ cat /proc/cmdline
root=/dev/sda2 rw rootfstype=ext3 swap=/dev/sda4 tffs=/tffs/1,0x40000 rootdelay=15

$ cat /firmware.md5
4f82c62ea7bf86f2cfb430c8408be4c0  -

$ df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root               980.5M     70.2M    860.5M   8% /
/dev/mtdblock5            2.0M    436.0K      1.6M  21% /data
/dev/loop0                3.9M    261.0K      3.4M   7% /var/media/ftp

As expected / is approx. 1 GB and is writable!

Mount the data partition

Partitions on a SDK-Stick are not mounted automatically (besides rootfs and swap but they are nomally accessible.
The Webinterface just shows 1 Speicher (entfernt) (german for "1 storage (removed)").

$ blkid
/dev/mtdblock0: TYPE="squashfs" 
/dev/loop0: UUID="3b85c627-9dc1-4ed5-aa08-1fa5b17d92cb" TYPE="ext2" 
/dev/ramzswap0: TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda1: LABEL="data" UUID="a034cd7a-0cf6-4a2c-a698-793f275d68c8" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="rootfs" UUID="9d69b61e-32b7-4c9e-89dc-dc8085dc98af" TYPE="ext3" 
/dev/sda3: LABEL="boot" UUID="1847-F72C" TYPE="vfat" 
/dev/sda4: TYPE="swap" UUID="21c1cd29-8250-40b9-8cad-15d280ed63e3"

Of course fstab could be adapted but changes are lost with a firmware update and it does not create mount points.
In Freetz a persistent rc.local script is more reliable, since the cloned TFFS is preserved on SDK-Firmware updates.
Make sure you do not mount the boot partition into /var/media/ftp since it contains the TFFS partitions and the config.
The data partition is completely free for whatever one desires and by default empty.

Here my rc.local, which already fixes a lot:

mkdir -p /var/media/ftp/uStor01
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /var/media/ftp/uStor01
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount -t vfat /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot
mkdir -p /mnt/oldroot
mount -t squashfs /dev/mtdblock0 /mnt/oldroot
msgsend multid update_usb_infos 

This is by far not perfect, the Webinterface still shows nonsense here and there.
But NAS, FTP, WebDAV, etc work. See the Gallery.

Don't be surprised about double reboots

If you call reboot from within the SDK-Firmware it will reboot twice.
The first boot boots into the flashed firmware, the second boot boots into the SDK-Firmware.

Gallery

If you want to extend the gallery with own work then please get in touch. See also the Photography-Inspiration article.

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  SDK-Stick Partitions

• 

  Freetz Mount-Overview

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