fonosfera

After our recent 2.3.7.0 beta1 release, we’ve received a lot of feedback from you. After addressing most of the issues you raised, it seems appropriate to do a second beta release before heading on with the final release. So, here it is: 2.3.7.0 beta 2.

What changed?
This release brings mostly bugfixes, but a few small features as well. Here’s a few highlights:

• wifi-bridge mode was disabled on 2.0g. It turns out that there are fundamental problems with wifi-bridge mode which are hard to solve on 2.0g. wifi-bridge mode will continue to work on 2.0n as before. See ticket #1080 for the technical details.
• You can now do a wifi scan from the webgui. There is a scanning interface under the “internet” settings when wifi or wifi-bridge mode is selected, to help connecting to another wifi network. There is also a scanning interface under “wireless” settings, to help picking a free (or not-so-crowded) channel.
• Hopefully, big (>2TB) disks are now better supported. This is still untested, though, so feedback is welcome.
• Transmission was updated to version 2.33, bringing a bunch of extra fixes and features.

For the complete list of changes, see the changelog. There’s still a few issues that still need to be fixed or at least looked into. These issues are collected in the trac 2.3.7.0 milestone. We can’t promise that all of these issues will be fixed before the final release, but at least they will be looked into.

What about my feedback?
We welcome more feedback from this new beta release, so go ahead and comment and post away. This does not just mean issues or problems: If you test a new or fixed feature and it works for you, we’d like to know as well. Feedback is welcome through various channels: comments on this blogpost, the development mailing list, IRC or by creating a ticket on our trac. If you have found an actual problem you’d like to see fixed, a ticket on the trac is probably the best way to report it. For other feedback, any of the channels will do.

I’ve tried to respond to every particular issue you’ve raised in response to the first beta, but it might be that some issue slipped my mind. So if you haven’t seen any response to your issue, the issue is not fixed and it is not in the list of pending tickets, feel free to raise it again.

So, where is this release?
To install this beta firmware, download the web upgrade tarball here, navigate to your Fonera’s dashboard through “Settings” and then “System” and upload the downloaded file there (under “Firmware update”). Note that you should not unpack the file you download (and make sure your browser doesn’t automatically unzip the file either, it should remain a .tgz file).

The following versions are available. Note that because this is beta version, only the developer’s version is available, not the end user’s version (but you can freely switch between versions without problems). Be sure to pick the version for your hardware. If you pick the wrong one, the firmware update will silently bail out and no upgrade will happen (no error will appear either).

• 2.0g (FON2202) developer’s version
• 2.0n (FON2303) developer’s version

Hi,

The SIMPL GPL source tarball is now online.

Sorry for the delay,

FON

It has been a while until we started work on the 2.3.7.0 firmware release, and things took considerably longer than anticipated, but we’re getting there! In any case, the beta1 firmware is now available for download and contains tons of changes, features and fixes!

Since this a beta release, some problems should be expected. It’s highly unlikely that this release will actually damage any of your data, but there’s a realistic chance for networking problems in particular environments, losing settings on the upgrade (though that’s much improved!) or other small problems. However, don’t expect anything a factory reset or downgrade won’t fix. If this is ok for you, read on for the new goods.

So, what changed?

• 2.0g is supported again.
• 2.0g now supports bridge mode.
• All settings should be properly preserved on an upgrade or settings backup. This includes upgrades to this release, not just from.
• libevent, Transmission, fuse, ntfs-3, usb-modeswitch, OpenVPN, the 2.0n usb and 2.0n wifi driver have been updated.
• Networking code was restructured. Problems with networking after changing the configuration (previously needing a reboot to fix) should no longer occur.
• Anonymous access to the “Windows file shares” can now be enabled in the “Fileserver” settings.
• Various problems with OpenVPN have been fixed.
• The “Orange page” with the “Your internet is misconfigured” message was removed. It caused more problems than it solved, due to onlined incorrectly detecting a broken connection when it was still working.
• After unplugging a 3G modem, the previous internet configuration is restored (instead of always reverting to DHCP).
• Twitter notifications are working again. Visit the Twitter page in your dashboard to set this up again.
• The Fonera can act as a wifi client (”wifi wan mode”) again, now on both 2.0g and 2.0n. Additionally, wifi wan mode can be combined with bridge mode, to bridge two networks together using a wifi link. Note that wifi-bridge mode turned out to be broken on 2.0g. Only use it on 2.0n with this release!
• WPS is fixed and enabled again on 2.0n.
• opkg works out-of-the-box on the commandline now.
• The music plugin is working again on 2.0n. Unfortunately, 2.0g does not have enough free space for the music plugin (because of OpenSSL being included for OpenVPN and the twitter app), perhaps we can find some way to free up some space for the final release.

Above, the most important changes are shown. There is also a complete list of changes since 2.3.6.1 available.

This beta version already contains most of the stuff that will be in the final 2.3.7.0 release, so don’t expect any major changes until then. The reason we do release a beta now, instead of going straight ahead and release the final version is so the firmware can get some additional testing and we can get some feedback. This is particularly needed on the 2.0g hardware, where the amount of changes since the last stable release is massive.

How to install?

To install this beta firmware, download the web upgrade tarball here, navigate to your Fonera’s dashboard through “Settings” and then “System” and upload the downloaded file there (under “Firmware update”). Note that you should not unpack the file you download (and make sure your browser doesn’t automatically unzip the file either, it should remain a .tgz file).

The following versions are available. Note that because this is beta version, only the developer’s version is available, not the end user’s version (but you can freely switch between versions without problems). Be sure to pick the version for your hardware. If you pick the wrong one, the firmware update will silently bail out and no upgrade will happen (no error will appear either).

• 2.0g (FON2202) developer’s version
• 2.0n (FON2303) developer’s version

After upgrading, all of your settings should be preserved. If you still find a setting that got lost during the upgrade, please report it as a bug!

What to do with feedback?
If you install this beta firmware, we appreciate all the feedback on the firmware you can spare. This does not just mean issues or problems: If you test a new or fixed feature and it works for you, we’d like to know as well. Feedback is welcome through various channels: comments on this blogpost, the development mailing list, IRC or by creating a ticket on our trac. If you have found an actual problem you’d like to see fixed, a ticket on the trac is probably the best way to report it. For other feedback, any of the channels will do.

And what’s next?
So, where do we go from here? Next up is a period of testing, both for us internally and for you, if you feel up to it. I expect this testing to last at least one, possibly two months, depending on how much things still turn out to be broken. After we’ve collected enough feedback and fixed any problems reported, we’ll probably release a Release Candidate for some final testing and then the final release shortly after.

As a last note: when leaving comments here on the blog, please remember the comment policy. Offensive, inappropriate and cynical comments will be deleted as usual.

Hi

I’ve just uploaded a new version of the plugin which fixes the authentication code with transmission which was not working.

If you cannot wait, you can download it from here

Javier

Edit: Link fixed.

Hi

Firefox 4 is out and the Fonera 2.0 downloader plugin for Firefox has been updated and submitted to mozilla addons website today. If everything goes fine, it should be available real soon here. This release (v0.1.8) only adds support for Firefox 4.0, no new features.

If you can’t wait, see the ticket in trac with links to the file and instructions to build it for the adventurous.

Javier.

Japanese hacker Hot Tuna did quite some work since past summer on our latest Fonera. He has just re-hosted his work on this brand new google site.

Of course Fon won’t support these changes, and they’ll void product warranty. The Fonera SIMPL is an end-user oriented product. So do it at your own risk!

Happy hacking!

Recently a problem was discovered with the firewall on the Fonera 2.0n: When it is running in “bridge mode” (by selecting “bridge” in the internet settings screen), users can access the LAN network from the public wifi network (FON_FREE_INTERNET signal).

Because of the severity of this problem, we’ve provided a hotfix that fixes just this issue. We recommend all users to install this hotfix, though it should only affect users running in bridge mode.

This issue does not affect the Fonera 2.0g or SIMPL, which do not support bridge mode yet.

The hotfix is available for the 2.3.6.1 firmware. To install it, go to the “Applications” page on the dashboard of your Fonera and click the “plus” icon next to “Hotfix: Firewall in bridge mode”.

Alternatively, you can download the hotfix manually and upload it again at the the “Applications” page on the Fonera dashboard. This might also work on firmwares older than 2.3.6.1, but this has not been tested. If you are still running an older firmware, we recommend that you upgrade and then install the hotfix.

Note that if you ever do a factory reset, you will need to install the hotfix again.

Also note that right now, version 2 of this hotfix is available. If you already installed version 1, it is not possible to upgrade (because the hotfix cannot be uninstalled). However, version 1 offers the same protection, but might break the public signal in some very specific cases (which should not normally occur). If you really want to upgrade to version 2, you’ll need to do a factory reset to remove the hotfix.

I’ve announced this post a long time ago, but I’ve finally gotten around to write a bit about our plans for the next release. I’ll try to be as specific as I can in this post, but of course I’m not 100% sure about how 2.3.7.0 will look or when it will be released either. So, expect some things to change from what I say here :-)

The primary goal for 2.3.7.0 is supporting 2.0g again. It’s been a long while without updates for 2.0g owners. Each time there was some important argument to get out the 2.0n update sooner and leave 2.0g for a while longer, but we really should get the latest fixes and features working for 2.0g again. So the plan is to release 2.3.7.0 for both 2.0g and 2.0n. Having the same version working on both Foneras will also make our life a bit easier, since investigating bugs is easier when we only need to check a single firmware version :-)

In addition to this, we’re trying to squeeze in some actual bugfixes and features as well. A good indication of these plans is the 2.3.7.0 milestone in trac, which lists the tickets we hope to get closed for 2.3.7.0 (or have already closed). Note the word “hope” here: We’d like to close as much of these tickets as possible, but if fixing them takes too much time, we might release 2.3.7.0 without them.

Some highlights:

• Updating some upstream software: Transmission, usb_modeswitch and OpenVPN.
• Fixing the twitter plugin (which is broken because Twitter changed its authentication scheme).
• Some fixes related to special characters in filenames on USB disks.
• Some improvements for developers (more usable opkg, easier plugin building, etc.)
• Fixing the music plugin again
• Enabling wifi repeater / wifi-wan mode again. This needs an update to the wifi driver for 2.0n so it hopefully becomes stable enough to enable in the non-dev as well.
• Bridge mode for 2.0g. This wasn’t actually planned, but when thinking about it a bit more closely a few weeks back, this appeared to be easier to implement than I had originally thought. I’ve since worked on this and found out that it wasn’t so easy after all, but it is nearly working now, so will probably be included after all.

To get an idea of the fixes committed already, you can look at the closed tickets above, but also at the
revision log for trunk. Anything that is commited to trunk right now, will be included in th 2.3.7.0 release (though we might create a 2.3.7 branch later on).

One issue that needs some attention as well is firmware size: The main firmware has slowly grown a bit over the last year (mainly due to the addition of OpenVPN and OpenSSL). This works fine on 2.0n, but 2.0g has slightly less Flash space available, leaving only a few hundred KiB for plugins. Perhaps we can save some space here and there, or perhaps we’ll release a firmware version without OpenVPN included. We’re not sure yet.

As for the actual release process: There will probably be a beta release first. Since there’s quite some changes, particularly for 2.0g, I expect some new problems to emerge when people start testing. After the issues in the beta release are fixed, there will be one or more release candidates (RC) and finally the actual release.

You’ve been waiting on this release for a while (and again it took longer than expected, partly because the orange page turned out to be hard to debug, partly because the method of building the firmware was made a bit more reliable, partly because of the holiday season), but it’s finally here: Gari jr. (or, less poetically, 2.3.6.1). It fixes the most important bugs that had snuck into 2.3.6.0 (so this release is still just for the 2.0n).

Here’s the (exhaustive) list of changes:

• The “Your internet is misconfigured” page will not show up so quickly anymore. With 2.3.6.0 a lot of people were seeing this “orange page”, even when their internet was configured just fine. This happened in particular when their internet connection was loaded and some packets got lost. Now, the Fonera rechecks a few times if the connection is really broken before showing the orange page (so it might still show up when (over)loading the internet connection occasionally. In the future, we might remove the orange page altogether. See ticket #669 for more details.
• Friends & Family accounts and configuration on fon.com has been fixed. To get existing F&F accounts working again, you’ll have to go to the F&F page on fon.com and click the save button (no need to make actual changes, but it could take a bit more than 2 minutes to take effect). See ticket #620 for details.
• Registration should work again. In 2.3.6.0, the registration link on the dashboard was wrong, but this has been corrected. If you have bought your new Fonera and updated the firmware before registering, you should now update it again so you can register it. See ticket #830 for details.
• WPS was disabled. It seems it got broken in 2.3.6.0, and in its broken state it caused problems with some Android and Blackberry phones not detecting the private signal. See ticket #540 for details.
• Rapidshare premium accounts are working again in the download manager. Rapidshare had changed their login procedure, so the downloadmanager needed an update as well. Note that the firmware upgrade (still) does not preserve your login details, so you’ll have to re-add both your Megaupload and Rapidshare account after the upgrade. See ticket #872 for details.
• The default (and only) SSL library is now openssl. Previously, some parts of luci still used cyassl, but having both caused build failures. This shouldn’t have any visible changes, though.
• In DEV mode, the Fonera no longer forgets the password strength on upgrades. Previously, this would cause SSH WAN access to become disabled in an undetectable way. Note that the upgrade still forgets the application firewall settings, so you’ll still have to re-enable all services to allow access on the WAN side. See ticket #633 for details.

Note that this update does not fix ticket #874, which causes the public signal to flicker off and on for some people. This issue can also prevent registration from working! If our diagnosis about this issue is correct, we should be able to fix this on the server side somewhere in the coming week.

Due to changes in the buildprocess, most of the lua code has been precompiled as well (which somehow didn’t happen with 2.3.6.0). This might cause the web interface to respond a bit faster as well.

Overall, we recommend all users to install this update.

To install the new firmware, download the web upgrade tarball here (NO NEED to extract them, just upload them to the Settings->System page). If you don’t know which version to pick, you’ll want the Enduser version.

• Enduser version
• Developer’s version (with ssh access)
• All versions

For me personally, preparing this release has allowed me to find out how things work exactly at Fon and in the firmware itself. Turns out things are pretty complicated ;-) Anyway, the firmware release process has been improved a bit already and documented, but we will probably automate it even further for the next release. Hopefully all of this means the next firmware release will be smoother than this one.

Speaking about that next release, it will be versioned 2.3.7.0. The major release goal for that release is to support 2.0g again: In the past we’ve been hard pressed to get the 2.0n firmware stable (especially the wifi driver side), but we hadn’t got the time to give 2.0g the proper attention. Now we’ll try to make up for that and have a release for both 2.0g and 2.0n again, which should include some extra updates and bugfixes as well. I’ll try to publish a bit more detailed post about this in the coming weeks.

Update: We’ve found the first minor regression in 2.3.6.1. When you do a factory reset and go through the welcome wizard, you’ll get a lua error: “attempt to index field ’spot’ (a nil value)”. For more info and a workaround, see ticket #894. We’ll probably not release a separate fix for this, but instead make sure this is fixed in 2.3.7.0.

Update: There’s a second minor regression in 2.3.6.1. Again in the wizard, you can enter your Rapidshare account details. However, the code that processes those details has not been updated to reflect the new Rapidshare login method, so entering your details in the wizard will (silently) fail. Entering your details in the download manager settings normally should work.

Since the release of firmware 2.3.6.0 two months ago, we’ve received reports of a number of new problems. A few of these are quite serious and really need to be fixed soon. We’re considering releasing a very small update (which will probably be 2.3.6.1), containing just a handful of bugfixes, to get these issues fixed. After that, we’ll focus on getting a bigger release out, which should also be available for 2.0g again.

The following issues have been found and will (hopefully) be fixed in the bugfix release.

• Configuration changes made through fon.com and Family & Friends accounts are not working. Due to an issue with the changed MAC addresses in the last update, the Fonera does not identify correctly with fon.com and no longer receives any configuration updates. We have found a fix for this issue, see ticket #620 for details and a preview of the fix.
• Registration is broken. When you click the “Register” button in the dashboard, registration will not work. This issue is also caused by the changed MAC address. We have found a fix for this issue, see ticket #830 for details and a preview of the fix.
• The message “Your internet is misconfigured” frequently appears when browsing the internet. Quite some users have been reporting this problem, but it is unclear what is causing it right now. We haven’t been able to reliably reproduce this problem, so we haven’t been able to fix this one either. If you are seeing this problem as well and want to help out debugging it, see ticket #669 for the latest status and instructions. Especially if you can (somewhat) reliably trigger the problem (by using some application, changing a setting, etc.) we would like to know.