Hello, Is it possible to install Ubuntu on LinkSys WRT54GL? Is it a simple procedure or do you have to cross compile Ubuntu on one machine and then install the image on LinkSys WRT54GL? Did any one tried it ?
second question: I just wondered: which processor does the WRT54GL have ? is it ARM ?
Rgs, Mark Ryden
AFAIK you can't install Ubuntu on it. You would need to build it yourself for your linksys. It is, however, far too large to install it. Also, the linksys only supports linux 2.4 kernels; the drivers for the wireless aren't open source; they come as a binary blob that only support
2.4. This means that you would need to adapt the userland of any recent Linux distro to the use of 2.4. I don't know if that is even possible.My WRT54GL uses a Broadcom BCM947XX, which I think is a MIPS derivative.
peter
I believe that's no longer the case - you can now use 2.6 on these devices, since the relevant wireless drivers have been updated.
Yes, these are MIPS processors (the Broadcom chips are MIPS-based systems-on-a-chip, with things like networking hardware built in).
It /is/ possible to run general Linux distributions on devices like this, but you are very limited - the WRT54GL has IIRC 8 MB flash and 32 MB ram. Few distributions have MIPS as a standard architecture, but it might be possible to use some of the smaller or more flexible ones - Ubuntu is too big to be useful here. Even if you could cut out enough to get it installed, it would no longer be Ubuntu!
Far and away the best way to use these devices is with a distribution aimed at such systems. OpenWRT is one of the oldest and most popular, but there are many others (see google or wikipedia). I have installed OpenWRT on perhaps a dozen of these devices, which I use for routers, OpenVPN servers/clients, firewalls, etc.
Even TinyCore Linux requires at least 48MB of RAM to boot. You probably won't get a desktop OS to run on a router. However, stuff like OpenWRT, DDWRT, tomato, and what have you will run just fine. You may be able to find the sources to these and kludge around with the router's firmware. However, if you brick the firmware, goodluck getting it to work again. Is there a particular reason you're trying to get Ubuntu on such an embedded device? Or is it curiosity?
Thanks, Dark Fox
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