OpenWRT support on Vega Switches?

Vega
1

Hi,

I found out about the Vega yesterday.
As far as I can see there’s no documentation for the networking part of the OS so far.
But while searching I found one chinese presentation that mentions OpenWRT.

Could you comment about that?

  1. Is there a list of CLI commands? I looked through the sources but didn’t manage to identify the web interface or CLI in there.
  2. Is there, well, hope for using this with OpenWRT?

I also didn’t find anything regarding the switch chip itself, maybe it’s just available in chinese but basically google came up blank, save for references to the Vega’s release announcement.

The OAM support is a cool feature, but if i understand correctly, it happens in the hardware, so without docs it’ll be hard to get something (O)perational.
It would also really help to know more about the switch’s feature set.

Please understand me well, I’m not complaining. I have two in my shopping cart and would be happy to set up “open” switches that aren’t huge monsters like the ONIE switches often are. But it’s still money and I’d want to avoid to end up with two fancy bricks :wink:

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2

I don’t know either but I am going to buy a Vega myself so I would also like to know, maybe this will get some traction and we will find out.

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3

So if nothing else we can at least could then start a self-help group :wink:
Good enough for a start?

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4

Just bought two Vega for some experimental networking. We can make a self-help group of Vega owners.

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5

I also have two of them.

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6

I got one coming in the next days.

Did one of you already find CLI manuals for the default installed OS?

7

Found on some official RISC-V group’s meeting notes

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image881×624 70.1 KB

PLCT is a research lab that seems to do a lot of RISC-V work, including trainings.
So this means:

  • it’s possible to run OpenWRT
  • for ‘person who gets a funded internship at a leading CPU research lab’ levels of possible.
10

We’ve released an OpenWrt image that is easily flashable via the vendor firmware, and is fully open source, including the driver. The whole stack is now up to date, inlcuding latest OpenSBI, u-boot and Linux and running on OpenWrt latest. The driver is a work in progress but should provide some basic switching features. Note that no SFP is currently supported at all, but once this first part is stable, I can work on it.

Here’s install instructions from the repository. The files are built from Github and available at the release page on Github.

Installing OpenWrt on the Milk-V Vega

How to install this OpenWrt build on the Milk-V Vega stock firmware, via network only.

The install has two stages:

  1. From the vendor firmware, write the OpenWrt bootloader and a recovery
    initramfs into flash.
  2. Boot that recovery OpenWrt and flash the full image with sysupgrade.

You need three files from a build (./build.sh, output in
bin/targets/milkv_vega/milkv_vega/):

File Stage What it is
vega-spl.bin 1 OpenWrt bootloader (OpenSBI + U-Boot + DTB) for NOR
…-initramfs-uImage 1 RAM-only recovery OpenWrt (~11 MB)
…-ubifs-sysupgrade.bin 2 The full OpenWrt image (~15 MB)

Stage 1

Log into the vendor firmware as root and copy the two files onto it — e.g.
serve them from your PC (python3 -m http.server 8080) and wget them:

cd /tmp
wget http://<your-pc>:8080/vega-spl.bin           -O spl.bin
wget http://<your-pc>:8080/<...>-initramfs-uImage -O init.uImage

Write the bootloader to NOR:

flashcp -v /tmp/spl.bin /dev/mtd0        # mtd0 = "freeloader" (NOR)

Write the recovery image to NAND. The vendor’s kernel_nand (mtd4) is only
4 MB, but the recovery image is ~11 MB, so it spans kernel_nand (mtd4) and
the start of ramfs_nand (mtd5). Split it at the 4 MB boundary:

dd if=/tmp/init.uImage of=/tmp/i1 bs=1M count=4
dd if=/tmp/init.uImage of=/tmp/i2 bs=1M skip=4
flash_erase /dev/mtd4 0 0 && nandwrite -p /dev/mtd4 /tmp/i1
flash_erase /dev/mtd5 0 0 && nandwrite -p /dev/mtd5 /tmp/i2

Power-cycle the board.

Stage 2

The new bootloader auto-detects the recovery image’s size, reads it, and boots
RAM-only OpenWrt. Give it ~2 minutes; br-lan then answers at 192.168.1.1.
From your PC (192.168.1.2):

ping 192.168.1.1

Flash the full image one of two ways.

Option A — LuCI web UI (easiest)

  1. Browse to http://192.168.1.1/ and log in as root with no password.
  2. System → Backup / Flash Firmware.
  3. Upload …-ubifs-sysupgrade.bin, leave Keep settings unchecked, click
    Flash image…, and wait for it to write and reboot.

Option B — SSH / command line

scp <...>-ubifs-sysupgrade.bin [email protected]:/tmp/fw.bin
ssh [email protected] 'sysupgrade -n /tmp/fw.bin'

Either way the console shows verifying sysupgrade tar file integrity →
Writing … to kernel_nand → sysupgrade successful → reboot. The board
then runs the full OpenWrt from NAND (UBIFS root).

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