• soc.broadcom.bcm53xx

• First supported in 15.05 release
• 15.05 could fail to boot on device with NAND bad blocks (fixed for 15.05.1 release and in trunk)
• Second data partition (79 MiB) not available in OpenWrt
• For a proper performance use:
  • radio0 for the higher 5 GHz band (channel 149 or something else, depending on country)
  • radio2 for the lower 5 GHz band (channel 48, or something like that and lower)

The Netgear R8000 can't be flashed with OpenWrt directly from the stock web UI, because Netgear has put in a version check to prevent this. See https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=315110&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15&sid=2e30821c57229618190338695f339fe7

To get the latest OpenWrt firmware on the R8000:

Build the firmware from this git repo. These instructions assume a Debian based Linux OS.

1. sudo apt install gcc binutils bzip2 flex python3.5+ gawk subversion libz-dev ncurses-base ncurses-bin ncurses-dev openssl
2. git clone https://github.com/willson556/openwrt.git Note: This repo builds firmware that does not include the LuCi web UI You could include the LuCi packages in the build, but the next step will be to install the latest official OpenWRT firmware so it's not really necessary.
3. cd openwrt/
4. ./scripts/feeds update -a
5. ./scripts/feeds install -a
6. make menuconfig
7. Wait while this compiles…
8. The firmware will be at ./bin/targets/bcm53xx/generic/openwrt-bcm53xx-netgear-r8000-squashfs.chk

On a PC:

1. Connect via ethernet to port 1 on the R8000 (disable WiFi if necessary)
2. Browse to 192.168.1.1, go to the firmware upload page
3. Upload the openwrt-bcm53xx-netgear-r8000-squashfs.chk built from the git repo

When the R8000 reboots, the LuCi web UI will not be available, but you can ssh to the R8000

1. scp openwrt-18.06.5-bcm53xx-netgear-r8000-squashfs.chk root@192.168.1.1:/tmp This is the full OpenWRT build from https://downloads.openwrt.org/ . (As of this writing, https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06.5/targets/bcm53xx/generic/openwrt-18.06.5-bcm53xx-netgear-r8000-squashfs.chk)
2. ssh root@192.168.1.1
3. root@OpenWrt:/tmp# sysupgrade -v /tmp/openwrt-18.06.5-bcm53xx-netgear-r8000-squashfs.chk

When the R8000 reboots, the web UI will be available at http://192.168.1.1

Need for usbkey

kmod-phy-bcm-ns-usb3 (for usb3 connection)

kmod-usb-storage kmod-usb3

kmod-fs-ext4 block-mount (to mount usbdrive ext4 for example)

For WIFI

for 5ghz work great load on radio2

1. opkg install kmod-brcmfmac kmod-brcmutil
2. set country code to US
3. set channel 48 to radio2
4. set channel 149 to radio0→ SAVE → Reboot

See https://forum.lede-project.org/t/is-there-a-way-to-unbrick-an-r8000/4173/3

The CPU of this device does not provide VFP support:

# grep "\(model\|Feature\)" /proc/cpuinfo
model name      : ARMv7 Processor rev 0 (v7l)
Features        : half thumb fastmult edsp tls 
model name      : ARMv7 Processor rev 0 (v7l)
Features        : half thumb fastmult edsp tls 

Runnning ARMv6 or ARMv7 targeted Go executables on that platform will result in Illegal instruction errors.

The work-around is to target ARMv5 during compilation:

# export GOOS=linux
# export GOARCH=arm
# export GOARM=5

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