Custom firmware build for Orbi RBK50/RBK53 (RBR50, RBS50) v. 9.2.5.0.43SF-HW

[Voxel]

In looking at the circled log at /tmp/circled.log I saw it was making a check for updated firmware every 2 hours to https://http.fw.updates1.netgear.com/sw-apps/parental-control/circle/rbr50/mr22/ It looks like it was doing no harm, but why should this process be running at all when I have it disabled in the GUI?

It checks the updates for circle, not firmware. Similar for armor (bitdefender). As I said there are a lot of such "ghosts" in the stock fw. Such "presents" as silent update of firmware version make me crazy. ReadyCLOUD: even no real links on NG site and no GUI to enable/disable it, but in the stock fw it checks non-existing links permanently increasing your Internet traffic.

I know circled will come back when the Orbi reboots, but this is good enough for now.

I'll add a setting in nvram to allow disabling circle, so there will be no such needs to kill the processes after reboot. New version coming soon (I hope).

Voxel.

 

[Voxel]

Any chance you could include "iw" in the next firmware?

OK. I'll add iw 5.3 "as-is". I hope it will be OK for your experiments with Orbi kernel 3.14...

Voxel.

 

[Astaroth_PoD]

OK. I'll add iw 5.3 "as-is". I hope it will be OK for your experiments with Orbi kernel 3.14...

Voxel.

Thanks! 802.11s was included already in 2.6.26 so should be good.
I did just dump the Chaos Calmer package and dependencies into a standard firmware satellite, but "iw list" just gives a strange nl80211 error so hopefully it will work better now.

 

[alceasan]

OK, I'm doing some advances, so I'll put them here so maybe someone without USB port can make use of it to persist data on RBR50 and have a similar configuration.

First, I checked on mtd devices which were already on a UBI volume, using

root@RBR50:~# ubinfo --all
UBI version:                    1
Count of UBI devices:           1
UBI control device major/minor: 10:60
Present UBI devices:            ubi0

ubi0
Volumes count:                           9
Logical eraseblock size:                 126976 bytes, 124.0 KiB
Total amount of logical eraseblocks:     1175 (149196800 bytes, 142.3 MiB)
Amount of available logical eraseblocks: 1 (126976 bytes, 124.0 KiB)
Maximum count of volumes                 128
Count of bad physical eraseblocks:       1
Count of reserved physical eraseblocks:  79
Current maximum erase counter value:     21
Minimum input/output unit size:          2048 bytes
Character device major/minor:            249:0
Present volumes:                         0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9

Volume ID:   0 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        17 LEBs (2158592 bytes, 2.1 MiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_traffic
Character device major/minor: 249:1
-----------------------------------
Volume ID:   1 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        17 LEBs (2158592 bytes, 2.1 MiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_traffic.bak
Character device major/minor: 249:2
-----------------------------------
Volume ID:   2 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        42 LEBs (5332992 bytes, 5.1 MiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_devtable
Character device major/minor: 249:3
-----------------------------------
Volume ID:   3 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        5 LEBs (634880 bytes, 620.0 KiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_oopsdump
Character device major/minor: 249:4
-----------------------------------
Volume ID:   4 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        248 LEBs (31490048 bytes, 30.0 MiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_circle
Character device major/minor: 249:5
-----------------------------------
Volume ID:   5 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        372 LEBs (47235072 bytes, 45.0 MiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_ntgr
Character device major/minor: 249:6
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Volume ID:   7 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        17 LEBs (2158592 bytes, 2.1 MiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_rae
Character device major/minor: 249:8
-----------------------------------
Volume ID:   8 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        42 LEBs (5332992 bytes, 5.1 MiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_arlo
Character device major/minor: 249:9
-----------------------------------
Volume ID:   9 (on ubi0)
Type:        dynamic
Alignment:   1
Size:        331 LEBs (42029056 bytes, 40.1 MiB)
State:       OK
Name:        vol_armor
Character device major/minor: 249:10

Next, I checked on volume id 1 (vol_traffic.bak), because I don't have traffic monitoring active, and mounted it as ubifs on /mnt/sda1 trying to simulate an USB disk. I left some files there (a custom dnscrypt config and a custom script for updating blocklist) and did a reboot. After that, I mounted the volume again and checked that it survived.

Next step was trying to mount this volume on boot and execute some scripts, so I went back again on bitdefender and modified its init script on "/mnt/bitdefender/bin/bd" to do it. Thing is, it worked and persisted a reboot without problems. On next Voxel relese I'll check if it also survives a new firmware flash, but at least is an important step for me.

 

[exsmogger]

It checks the updates for circle, not firmware. Similar for armor (bitdefender). As I said there are a lot of such "ghosts" in the stock fw. Such "presents" as silent update of firmware version make me crazy. ReadyCLOUD: even no real links on NG site and no GUI to enable/disable it, but in the stock fw it checks non-existing links permanently increasing your Internet traffic.

Yes, poor choice of words on my part. I added this, along with a few other NG sites to the block sites list.

I'll add a setting in nvram to allow disabling circle, so there will be no such needs to kill the processes after reboot. New version coming soon (I hope).

Thanks, much appreciated.

I've also been looking into the xagent and upagent processes. Xagent was keeping a connection open to 52.26.86.12, which resolves to Amazon Web Services. The call was made by the Orbi router's IP address, but I haven't yet figured out what program is initiating the connection. I disabled both xagent and upagent with no apparent negative effects. Will update as I find out more.

 

[Voxel]

I've also been looking into the xagent and upagent processes. Xagent was keeping a connection open to 52.26.86.12, which resolves to Amazon Web Services. The call was made by the Orbi router's IP address, but I haven't yet figured out what program is initiating the connection. I disabled both xagent and upagent with no apparent negative effects. Will update as I find out more.

I'll check this too. I am not sure than I should allow to disable everything...

Voxel.

 

[exsmogger]

There is an upagent log at /tmp/upagent.log. Here's a piece of mine:

2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_main.c:167 DEBUG: =====UnLOCK Done..=====
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_main.c:189 DEBUG: Returning from XAgentStatus_cbHandler
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_cdil.c:465 INFO: On Subscription, state of CDIL is init
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_cdil.c:467 INFO: Registering Callback on CDIL Support Data Object!
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_dispatcher.c:267 DEBUG: Successful to spawn thread for UPAgent Dispatcher
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_dispatcher.c:55 INFO: Initing UPAgent Dispatcher!
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_dispatcher.c:60 DEBUG: gets the claimState
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_bst.c:148 INFO: Starting BST Thread!
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_bst.c:154 INFO: Registering Callback on BST Support Data Object!
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_utils.c:252 DEBUG: Internet Connection down!!! Dispatcher will not Start...
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_main.c:347 DEBUG: Initiating Connection with libXhdlr
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_main.c:159 DEBUG: Callback successfull, registered is: 1, claimed is 0, connected is: 0
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_main.c:162 DEBUG: =====LOCKed Process..=====
2019-12-22 13:13:25 (12448):up_reg.c:694 DEBUG: Device Registered with XCloud

XCloud is Microsoft's game streaming service. I don't play online games, so I believe it is safe to disable the upagent service.

exsmogger