MikroTik RouterBoard RB91xG 5HPnD (RB911/RB912)

There appears to be a new revision of this board, which has an ethernet problem https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/17385. It is distinguishable by the NANYA DDR memory on board. The ticket was closed on 2015-06-25. Ethernet is now reported working on Chaos Calmer.

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With this board you need to choose between mPCIe and USB slot. You cannot use both at the same time.

You can check this with command:

$ uci show system.usb_power_switch

Result will be something like this:

system.usb_power_switch=gpio_switch
system.usb_power_switch.name='USB Power Switch'
system.usb_power_switch.gpio_pin='52'
system.usb_power_switch.value='1'

system.usb_power_switch.value is the switch.

• value='1', USB port enabled, mPCIe slot disabled.
• value='0', mPCIe slot enabled, USB port disabled.

To change this type:

$ uci system.usb_power_switch.value='0'
$ uci commit system

This will enable mPCIe slot and disable USB port. Then just reboot, and your mPCIe card should be recognized.

$ mkdir /home/$USER/mikrotik/
$ cd /home/$USER/mikrotik/
$ svn co svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk/
$ cd /home/$USER/mikrotik/trunk

Configure image for booting from RAM and NAND, enable regdomain set

$ make menuconfig

Target System = AR7XXX Subtarget = Mikrotik device with NAND flash Target Images = choose ramdisk and tar.gz Kernel modules → Wireless Drivers → kmod-ath Atheros common driver part → enable Force Atheros drivers to respect the user's regdomain settings (CONFIG_ATH_USER_REGD)

$ make kernel_menuconfig CONFIG_TARGET=subtarget

Machine selection System type = Atheros AR71XX/AR724X/AR913X based boards Atheros AR71XX/AR724X/AR913X machine selection - enable MikroTik RouterBOARD 91X support

$ make V=s

Create script: nano /tftp/loader.sh

#!/bin/bash
USER=user #CHANGE THIS
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.10 up
dnsmasq -i eth0 --dhcp-range=192.168.1.100,192.168.1.200 \
--dhcp-boot=openwrt-ar71xx-mikrotik-vmlinux-initramfs.elf \
--enable-tftp --tftp-root=/home/$USER/mikrotik/trunk/bin/ar71xx/ -d -u $USER -p0 -K --log-dhcp --bootp-dynamic

• Run script loader.sh from root/sudo
• Unplug power jack from PoE injector
• Hold reset button
• Plug power jack
• Release the reset button after the 6 LEDS stopped blinking and all 6 LED lights turned off
• The router is now in network boot mode

Your RB91x should fetch an DHCP lease, load the initramfs image via tftp from your local machine and boot into OpenWrt. After a short beep the router should be reachable via IP: 192.168.1.1

NOTE: Sometimes board uses default IP range: 192.168.88.x. This happens especially, when you have soft bricked the board. Then you must modify the script and replace 192.168.1.x with 192.168.88.x.

The new & easy way to flash Openwrt/LEDE permanently

Once your router has booted the initramfs image and is accessible via ssh root@192.168.1.1, just:

• copy the sysupgrade image via scp into the routers /tmp folder

scp lede-ar71xx-mikrotik-nand-large-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin root@192.168.1.1:/tmp

* ssh into our router and trigger a normal sysupgrade

ssh root@192.168.1.1
root@LEDE:sysupgrade /tmp/lede-ar71xx-mikrotik-nand-large-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

The old way to flash an image

To flash openwrt-ar71xx-nand-vmlinux-lzma.elf you must login to router via telnet 192.168.1.1 and then copy OpenWrt image to /tmp/

Find kernel and rootfs partitions from /proc/mtd

root@OpenWrt:/# cat /proc/mtd
dev:    size   erasesize  name
mtd0: 0000b000 00001000 "routerboot"
mtd1: 00001000 00001000 "hard_config"
mtd2: 00001000 00001000 "bios"
mtd3: 00001000 00001000 "soft_config"
mtd4: 00040000 00020000 "booter"
mtd5: 003c0000 00020000 "kernel"
mtd6: 07c00000 00020000 "rootfs"

Erase them, there may be bad blocks detected and skipped during erase

root@OpenWrt:/# mtd erase /dev/mtd5
root@OpenWrt:/# mtd erase /dev/mtd6
root@OpenWrt:/# mkdir /mnt/kernel
root@OpenWrt:/# mkdir /mnt/rootfs
root@OpenWrt:/# mount /dev/mtdblock5 /mnt/kernel
root@OpenWrt:/# mount /dev/mtdblock6 /mnt/rootfs

Change password to enable ssh

root@OpenWrt:/# passwd

Copy kernel & rootfs to RB91x

$ cd /home/$USER/mikrotik/trunk
$ scp bin/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-mikrotik-vmlinux-lzma.elf root@192.168.1.1:/tmp
$ scp bin/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-mikrotik-DefaultNoWifi-rootfs.tar.gz root@192.168.1.1:/tmp

Flash kernel & rootfs

root@OpenWrt:/# mv /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-mikrotik-vmlinux-lzma.elf /mnt/kernel/kernel
root@OpenWrt:/# chmod +x /mnt/kernel/kernel
root@OpenWrt:/# umount /mnt/kernel
root@OpenWrt:/# tar -C /mnt/rootfs -xvzf /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-mikrotik-DefaultNoWifi-rootfs.tar.gz
root@OpenWrt:/# umount /mnt/rootfs

Stop loader.sh and finally

root@OpenWrt:/# reboot

After reboot you should be able to login via telnet 192.168.1.1

• http://routerboard.com/RB912UAG-5HPnD
• http://img.routerboard.com/mimg/884_hi_res.png
• Helpfull info: https://dev.openwrt.org/log/trunk/target/linux/ar71xx/patches-3.10/703-MIPS-ath79-add-RB91x-support.patch

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