Re: Linksys WRT54G and the GPL

[Erik Andersen <andersen@codepoet.org>]

On Sunday, Jun 08 2003, 15:57:04 EST, Peter Westwood wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> In a similar vein to the Linksys router.  I have a Buffalo (Melco) WBR-G54.
> 
> Looking through the latest firmware update available :
> http://www.buffalo-technology.com/support/firmware.htm
> 
> It does appear to be similar to the Linksys firmware and contain linux and
> possibly busybox
> 
> No mention here or anywhere on there site of the GPL or the source code to
> what they are distributing!

Wow, thanks for the pointer!  I just visited the Buffalo site 
    http://www.buffalo-technology.com/
and I could not find any source code.  And not only are they
distributing the linux kernel and BusyBox, their rom is
_remarkably_ similar to the Linksys one in many respects.
Perhaps they share an upstream vendor that did not make them
aware of their responsibilities?

Here is a script I just whipped up to open up their firmware...

    #!/bin/sh

    wget http://www.buffalo-technology.com/download/firmware/wbr-113b.exe

    # Next I used wine (20030408) to extract the content
    wine wbr-113b.exe

    # Move into the directory into which the firmware was extracted
    cd Wbr_1.13b

    # I noticed a GZIP signature for a file named "piggy" at offset
    # 62 bytes from the start, suggesting we have a compressed Linux
    # kernel
    dd if=wbrbg-113b bs=62 skip=1 | zcat > kernel

    # Noticed there was a cramfs magic signature at offset 786466
    dd if=wbrbg-113b of=cramfs.image bs=786466 skip=1
    file cramfs.image

    sudo mount -o loop,ro -t cramfs ./cramfs.image /mnt 
    ls -la /mnt/bin
    file /mnt/bin/busybox
    strings /mnt/bin/busybox | grep BusyBox
    /usr/i386-linux-uclibc/bin/i386-uclibc-ldd /mnt/bin/busybox

It seems my Dad will have another letter to mail out in the
morning!

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen             http://codepoet-consulting.com/
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