Guide for installing LEDE onto a
BT Home/Business Hub 5 Type A and Plusnet Hub One
If you are looking for a more detailed guide, have a look at Bills "Installation Guide for BT Home Hub 5A".
You need an USB flash drive with at least 512MB free capacity, formatted as FAT32, exFAT or ext2/3/4, attached to the Hub. The attached flash drive will be accessible at /tmp/mounts/.
To install LEDE, the USB flash drive must have a copy of the file lede-lantiq-xrx200-BTHOMEHUBV5A-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
To restore the stock Firmware, the USB flash drive must have a have a copy of the nanddump backup file (hh5a.nanddump) containing the stock Firmware.
Changes in this version
- updated to LEDE 17.01.4
- support for BT Business Hub 5 Type A added
- no need to select the used Hub any longer (u-boot environment gets decrypted and updated on the fly instead of flashing pre build environments)
- uncompressed kernel is used to improve boot time
- UART u-boot doesn't try to boot an installed LEDE any longer
List of commands
To create a backup of the installed firmware (Take care to not overwrite any previously made backup): nanddump --file /tmp/mounts/<directory>/hh5a.nanddump /dev/mtd4
To install LEDE: prepare
To restore stock firmware: restore
Switch from stock firmware to LEDE
- Start u-boot via UART (Topic "Installation over serial" in the HomeHub 5a OpenWrt Wiki article)
- Upload the installation image via tftp:
tftpboot 0x81000000 lede-lantiq-xrx200-BTHOMEHUBV5A-installimage.bin; bootm 0x81000000 - Run
prepareand follow the on screen instructions
Upgrade from any OpenWrt version or LEDE prior to r2363-0e34459e6b
Restore the stock firmware and do a fresh install of LEDE.
If you don't have a backup of the stock firmware from your Hub, use the experimental migrate script. It is offered with no guarantee of success. You are strongly advised to restore the stock firmware.
LEDE fails to start and stuck at VR9 prompt
When you installed LEDE and executed the prepare script, you may have encountered this warning message:
WARNING: U-boot environment could not be decrypted!
'bootcmd' will be reset to default values. When the HH5A starts up after
installing LEDE, the boot process will halt at the VR9# u-boot prompt.
'bootcmd' will be reset to default values. When the HH5A starts up after
installing LEDE, the boot process will halt at the VR9# u-boot prompt.
To update 'bootcmd' variable refer to the guide hosted at the installimage
download page.
Erasing 128 Kibyte @ 0 -- 100 % complete
Press any key to continue...
Here are some of messages displayed on the serial console when the HH5A starts up. LEDE will fail to start and the boot process will halt at the VR9# u-boot prompt as shown below:
Warning - bad CRC, using default environment
Erasing Nand...
Bad block table found at page 65472, version 0x01
Bad block table found at page 65408, version 0x01
Erasing at 0xe0000 -- 100% complete.
Encrypting enviroment...
Writing to Nand... done
Verifying image(s):
No active image found!!!
Wrong Image Format for bootm command
ERROR: can't get kernel image!
VR9 #
The prepare script attempted to use all known AES keys to decrypt the u-boot environment and failed.
To resolve the problem, enter these two commands at the bootloader VR9# prompt:
setenv bootcmd ubi part UBI\; ubi read \$(loadaddr) kernel\; bootm \$(loadaddr)
saveenv
Finally power cycle the HH5A and hopefully LEDE will now start up.
If you do encounter the above issue, it would be appreciated if you can spare some time to report it to help improve future releases of the installation image.
Please restore your hh5a.nanddump backup and run the following commands from the started installimage:
dd if=/dev/mtd0 of=/tmp/mounts/<directory>/u-boot.bin
dd if=/dev/mtd1 of=/tmp/mounts/<directory>/u-boot-env.bin
Attach the USB flash drive to your computer and create a ticket with the files attached.