[BPI-R3 mini] Install OpenWRT on BPI R3-mini (my way and issue)

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R3/R3 Mini(MT7986)
1

When will the new Release image of OpenWRT 23.x for BPI-R3 mini be available?

2

we will review the OpenWRT 23.x branch, confirm if all features is OK, then we will release one new OpenWRT 23.x Image and BSP.

1 Like
3

I’m looking forward to it because in version 21.x the repeat mode does not work correctly. For this reason, the BPI-R3 mini is just sitting there waiting for a new release. Thank you!

Is there an estimated release date for the new version?

4

you may try to only upgrade the repeat mode package’s version to the latest. Maybe it can make more fast to resolve your issue.

5

How to do it step by step? I would be very grateful to you for this information.

6

Sorry, we can’t supply these steps, we only give one idea, you need develop it by yourself

7

Why not just use mainline openwrt? If stable does not support r3mini yet you can use snapshot.

8

I just wouldn’t want to turn this device into a brick. I don’t have deep knowledge of OpenWRT, so I ask questions here before doing anything.

If you think it’s a good idea to try installing OpenWRT from the official repository, I can try that. But before that, I would like to know if someone has already done this before me on the R3 mini.

9

Then better never touch one of the storage devices on board.

I never flash anything to spi-flash, keeping the original openwrt on it.

I install my operating system of choice on emmc (using openwrt on spi-flash), following the procedure in the wiki.

10

If you have a linux client you can always do uart-boot also if spi and emmc broken and reflash them from the uboot

But as eric says for first steps make sure 1 device still works (e.g. only flash to emmc to have spi untouched).

11

Okay, I’ll use emmc memory for my test. Thank u team!

I found this snapshot, I’ll try to install it. https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=SNAPSHOT&target=mediatek%2Ffilogic&id=bananapi_bpi-r3-mini

12

image

Correct me if I misunderstood. This is a very recent snapshot taken 2024-07-07 08:13:02. But for firmware it will not be enough to simply use the Sysupgrade image. In order for this snapshot to work I need to use: 1.EMMC-GPT.bin 2.EMMC-PRELOADER.bin 3. KERNEL

I’m right?

13

Yes upgrade from bpi image mostly does not work and you need to do first install as full flash

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Hi @frank-w ! Thanks for youre support!

As I understand it, now it is necessary to assemble an ISO image from these binaries. I’m right? If this is the case, then I will create a separate topic to discuss the process of creating the image.

15

Yes,it should create a full image for emmc…

16

This may seem like a stupid question to you, but I’m trying to figure it out. In this topic, I advanced in the emmc firmware and got into a dead end. Now I can boot in emmc and have access via ssh:

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II followed all these steps for eMMC.

nstallation instructions for eMMC
----------------------------------
0. Set boot switch to boot from SPI-NAND (assuming stock rom or immortalwrt
   running there).
1. Write GPT partition table to eMMC
   Move openwrt-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-emmc-gpt.bin to
   the device /tmp using scp and write it to /dev/mmcblk0:
    dd if=/tmp/openwrt-*-r3-mini-emmc-gpt.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0
2. Reboot (to reload partition table)
3. Write bootloader and OpenWrt images
   Move files to the device /tmp using scp:
    - openwrt-*-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-emmc-preloader.bin
    - openwrt-*-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-emmc-bl31-uboot.fip
    - openwrt-*-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-initramfs-recovery.itb
    - openwrt-*-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb
   Write them to the appropriate partitions:
    echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro
    dd if=/tmp/openwrt-*-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-emmc-preloader.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0
    dd if=/tmp/openwrt-*-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-emmc-bl31-uboot.fip of=/dev/mmcblk0p3
    dd if=/tmp/openwrt-*-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-initramfs-recovery.itb of=/dev/mmcblk0p4
    dd if=/tmp/openwrt-*-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb of=/dev/mmcblk0p5
    sync

4. Remove the device from power, set boot switch to eMMC and boot into
   OpenWrt. The device will come up with IP 192.168.1.1 and assume the
   Ethernet port closer to the USB-C power connector as LAN port.
  1. Switched R3 mini to eMMC boot
  2. I launched it and gained access via SSH.
  3. Switched R3 mini back to NAND.
  4. But NAND is no longer available.
18

What does this mean? You cannot boot from nand? Which error-message do you have?

19

I can’t get logs during startup from NAND memory because I can’t access the OS through more than one of the R3 mini interfaces. In order to get debaglogs I need a uart-usb. Am I positioning it correctly?

Therefore, I cannot say what happens when I try to boot from NAND. The fact is that I have not flashed this type of memory, and I cannot understand why the eMMC firmware affected the NAND partition.

20

emmc should not affect nand as this is different memory on different controllers, i only have flashed emmc (debian and not openwrt) and can still boot stock nand. so i wonder why your nand is also broken.

yes you need a debug-uart to see whats going on here…