The La Fonera is a wireless router that runs a light version of Openwrt, and to make the most of it i am going to install Gargoyle firmware.
First off, do NOT connect the device to internet, since it will try to update its firmware and you can only hack version up to 0.7.1 r1.
Give it some juice by hooking up it to the 5v power adapter, and connect to the “MyPlace” network, the key is the serial on the bottom sticker of the device.
If you dont find a MyPlace or it wont accept your key, you need to reset it to the original firmware by holding the reset button on the bottom 15-20 secs (not longer)
Open http://192.168.10.1/ and check your version, it needs to be 0.7.1 r1 or below, if not; you would need to downgrade it.
Click the advanced link and login with admin / admin.
Download (right click and save as) sshenable.html to your computer, open it and press submit.
open a terminal (spotlight: terminal) and ssh to the device.
ssh -l root 192.168.10.1
password is admin.
rename sshd so it starts at boot.
mv /etc/init.d/dropbear /etc/init.d/S50dropbear
Download out.hex and openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma to a folder (fonera).
Start another terminal and change directory to the folder
cd fonera
transfer out.hex and openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma files to the /tmp on the device.
scp openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma root@192.168.10.1:/tmp
scp out.hex root@192.168.10.1:/tmp
Now we patch the kernel
mtd -e vmlinux.bin.l7 write openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma vmlinux.bin.l7
…and reboot
reboot
Once available, reconnect to MyPlace.
ssh in again:
ssh -l root 192.168.10.1
…and patch redboot conf.
mtd -e "RedBoot config" write out.hex "RedBoot config"
…and reboot!
reboot
Download fonflash from http://www.gargoyle-router.com/download.php and the gargoyle version you would like to use, i have 1.3 and uptime of (may 12 2011) 37 days without a issue.
Unplug the power and make sure you have the ethernet cable hooked up.
Set firmware type to gargyole, and select both your downloaded Gargyole .squashfs and .lzma files.
Hit start in fonflash and wait a few seconds and then power up your fon router by plugging it in.
It will now flash your fon to gargyole and can take up to 30 mins, fonflash will tell you when it’s done.
Please leave a comment if you don’t get it to work!
November 4, 2011
Thanks for the step-by-step guide. I found it as the best guide for fon hack! :-) But the last part is a bit confusing.
1) I meant what is ‘fonflash’? There is no such file as fonflash (http://www.gargoyle-router.com/download.php), but of course two firmwares with lzma and and squashfs extensions (http://www.gargoyle-router.com/downloads/images/atheros-2.6/gargoyle_1.4.3-atheros-root.squashfs and http://www.gargoyle-router.com/downloads/images/atheros-2.6/gargoyle_1.4.3-atheros-vmlinux.lzma) There I also did see a combined img (http://www.gargoyle-router.com/downloads/images/atheros-2.6/gargoyle_1.4.3-atheros-combined.squashfs.img). Which one do you meant?
2) “Unplug the power and make sure you have the ethernet cable hooked up.
Set firmware type to gargyole, and select both your downloaded Gargyole .squashfs and .lzma files.”
Once the power is unplugged from fon, how can anything be done further? And where to hook the ethernet cable, to the computer or to the wlan?
Your clarifications would be appreciated!
November 5, 2011
Okay, now I found the fonflash for linux 64 bit at http://www.gargoyle-router.com/downloads/fon-flash/fon-flash-linux-64bit.tar.gz and for 32 bit at http://www.gargoyle-router.com/downloads/fon-flash/fon-flash-linux.tar.gz
Actually, first reboot hangs the terminal for a while. Pull the power plug out and then connect the fon with computer with a normal RJ45 cable and start the fonflash-gui utility by executing ./fon-flash-gui and select eth0 as the port and choose the rootfs and linux img file and finally flash the router. Takes a long time.
Thanks again!
December 23, 2011
Did you get it to work?
Was quite a while since i wrote this, so some things could have changed since i did this.
Please comment again if you need some help and i’ll do my best to help you out :)