Raidsonic IB-4220-B

The Raidsonic IB-4220-B was produced around 2009 and the last vendor firmware was released in 2010. It has reasonable upstream Linux support with OpenWrt as of 25.12.

Using this method, new installs are downloaded using TFTP, see the generic OpenWrt TFTP instructions.

The firmware can be reflashed from the RedBoot derivative “Boot Menu” that comes up if you have a serial console and hammer Ctrl+C during startup like this:

Obtain the latest snapshot image and extract the actual image files:

 cd /var/lib/tftpboot
 curl http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/gemini/generic/openwrt-gemini-generic-raidsonic_ib-4220-b-squashfs-factory.bin | tar xvz

This should download and extract the files zImage, rd.gz and hddapp.tgz into /var/lib/tftpboot. This is just an example, but to install the images you will need a TFTP server and this is the most common location of the TFTP file server directory.

Don't mind the fact that these files are not at all what they say they are: in the original firmware this is indeed a zImage and initial ramdisk etc. In OpenWrt the kernel is split upp between zImage and rd.gz, and hddapp.tgz is the actual root filesystem.

• You will be using the RedBoot commands Y, R and A for zImage, rd.gz and hddapp.tgz.
• Do NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE try to use the “upgrade firmare” (Z) alternative! This will destroy your RedBoot if the first 128KB of that image does not contain a RedBoot image... This is not the same as using a factory firmware image or even the official firmware images! It's just a very dangerous option. (I learned this the hard way.)
• Hit 6 and set up the IP address for your device (e.g. 169.254.1.2 if you're using local link).
• Hit Y to “Upgrade Kernel”, enter TFTP and your hosts IP number and type zImage. The kernel should upload and flash.
• Hit R to “Upgrade Ramdisk”, enter TFTP and your hosts IP number and type rd.gz. The “ramdisk” (i.e. the second part of the kernel) should upload and flash.
• Hit A to “Upgrade Application”, enter TFTP and your hosts IP number and type hddapp.tgz. The “application” (i.e. the root filesystem) should upload and flash.
• Hit 0 to reboot into OpenWrt.
• Wait for the JFFS2 root filesystem to complete initialization after boot, it will say: jffs2_scan_eraseblock(): End of filesystem marker found at 0x0 followed by different messaged and ending with jffs2: notice: (2437) jffs2_build_xattr_subsystem: complete building xattr subsystem, 0 of xdatum (0 unchecked, 0 orphan) and 0 of xref (0 dead, 0 orphan) found.

Now OpenWrt is installed on your router, and you can proceed to basic configuration.

The same method with the same named files from a stock firmware recovery image can be used to revert back to the original firmware.

For background and generic information see the generic serial console documentation.

   9     7     5     3     1
 +---------------------------+
 | o     o     o     o     o |
 |                           |
 | o     o     o     o     o |
 +---------------------------+
  10     8     6     4     2

• 2 = RXD
• 3 = TXD
• 5 = GND
• 10 = 3V3

These serial connectors actually often desire to have the power line (3V3) connected to the UART adapter, so if only connecting GND, RX and TX doesn't work, try to also connect the power.

This device uses 19200N8 serial communication settings.