search

Chadster766 / McDebian

Linksys WRT3200ACM, WRT1900AC, WRT1900ACS, WRT1200AC and WRT32X Router Debian Implementation
98 stars 14 forks source link

Building the kernel as a .deb package #64

Closed villesinisalo closed 4 years ago

villesinisalo commented 4 years ago

Upgrading and customizing a McDebian system would be much easier if the kernel was distributed as a .deb file. For upgrades, the kernel .deb file could even be distributed from a private apt-get repository (PPA). This way, users would ever need to install the base system once and from there on upgrading would be as simple as using apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, like on any Debian system. This is how e.g. Raspbian (Raspberry PI Debian distribution) works. They have a deb package called raspberrypi-kernel.

As an minimal solution, the custom kernel could depend on mtd-utils and contain an install script that flashes the kernel to correct bank(s) on each router model.

AFAIK there should be no reason why this was not possible, and I'd be interested into looking to making it to work. However, for that there would need up-to-date build instructions for the current kernel. Am I not wrong in assuming that these instructions from 2015 are probably not very not up to date? ;)

Having up-to-date instructions for building the kernel (as a deb or not) would of course enable users to customize the kernel config to their own needs more easily, as lots of the issues users seem to be facing are related to the kernel config options.

Chadster766 commented 4 years ago

I have fine tuned the process somewhat from that article.

If you can provide instructions on how to create the deb file to install a McDebian kernel that would really speed things up.

I think fw_setenv, flash_erase and nandwrite commands would have to be run from the kernel upgrad\update deb installation process.

Chadster766 commented 4 years ago

Sorry I doubt I will have time to work on this recommendation.