! MWGAP Hacking



The goal is to port OpenWrt to this device. I'll document the process on this page  and include links to any patches that are created along the way. 



The steps are:

* Select the correct build options

* Build mips big-endian tool chain with non-mips patent free patch

* Add a build target for the MNGAP



! Select correct build options

oops, skip ahead to Add a build target before doing this

 make menuconfig, 

 select Advanced configuration options for developers, 

 select Toolchain options, 

 select gcc version 3.4.6-nonmips

 back up to advanced options,

 select show broken platforms

 back to top level,

 select the target system you added ( Realtek RTL8186 [2.4] )

 save your config



! Patent free toolchain

This step looks surprisingly simple. I was going to apply the patches we used for the Minitar MNWAPB development from (http://nonmips.sourceforge.net here), but after looking into the toolchain build there is already a option to build gcc 3.4.6 with a patent-free patch applied. The patch is different ( not sure of the origin ) but addresses the same instructions that the Lexra core does not support. 



Getting it to build needed a couple of hacks:

# the download of gcc will fail so cd dl and copy gcc-3.4.6.tar.bz2 to gcc-3.4.6-nonmips.tar.bz2 ( a hard link may also be OK )

# When the tar is unpacked it will by default unpack into gcc-3.4.6 and the patches will fail to apply. In the trunk/toolchain/gcc/Makefile find the place where the compiler is unpacked ( line 115ish )and add this line:

  mv $(PKG_BUILD_DIR)/../gcc-3.4.6/* $(PKG_BUILD_DIR)



! Add build target

Add the following to trunk/target/Config.in at line 191, just before the endif

  config LINUX_2_4_RTL8186

    bool "Realtek RTL8186 [2.4]"

    select LINUX_2_4

    depends BROKEN

    select mips

    select BIG_ENDIAN

    select USES_JFFS2

    help

      Build formware for Realtek RTL8186 based boards

      ( eg Minitar MWGAP )



That's all for tonight - next comes the target/linux/rtl8186-2.4 dir with the kernel config