Run Linux On Your RouterBoard
Anthony, who accomplished this hack, was kind enough to let me repost it here.
It seems he has found a way to run Debian linux on his RB433AH, and he was kind enough to show us all how it is done.
“Basically the technique is to netboot the router off a vmlinux-initramfs image I constructed which allows you to nfs mount an entire Debian-mips root file system served out by another computer.”
I can personally see this as a nice little home automation server or brains for some centralized control or collection system. Perhaps with the U version you could attach and access an USB HD for additional storage.
What would you guys use it for?
The original article with instructions can be found here.
Here’s an article on loading Openwrt on a 450G.
It seems MTK will send you drivers or patches for the various systems, see here.
Anyway, happy hacking.
Cooooollll 🙂 !!!
How about using the box for a phone system with Freepbx? This should work with sip trunking and sip phones. (no need for analog cards and jacks)
http://chillingsilence.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/diy-freeswitch-freepbxv3-from-livecd/
Hi guys. I just saw this article on my stuff. Thanks for posting it. I got the same technique working on the rb450g which sports 256MB of ram rather than 128 for on the rb433ah. If you want the goodies, go to the same directory. I refreshed the boot images so they’ll work on three boards: rb433ah, rb433uah, and rb450g.
I tried the same technique using nbd rather than nfs, but had some serious file corruption issues which I didn’t have time to trace down. Would be more thin client-ish if I could get that going.
Anthony,
Thanks for popping in and updating us!