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

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.

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.

Hi all,

Well, here it is: Gari the Hummingbird firmware version 2.3.6.0 for the Fonera 2.0n.

I have not much time to make a long post and I’m sure you all want to just flash it and test it, better than reading my silly comments. Just let me point out the changes we’ve made and what is missing yet. And please, have in mind that only the router functionalities have been improved; the web 2.0 and torrent and downloader applications remain the same (hoping to update soon).

Changelog (mixture from previous stable version Elan 2.3.0.0 and beta version Rudolph 2.3.5.0):

• WiFi driver fixed: we have updated to the latest WiFi driver from RaLink. This fixes most, if not all, the WiFi issues we had. Especially those affecting Broadcom chipsets (some iPhones, iPods, iMacs etc)
• WiFi Country region selection: the WiFi is configured for Spain, but some MAC OS X devices seem to have trouble with this, so now you can chose your country in the WiFi configuration menu.
• Many fixes in the 3G support:
  • added support for many more devices (anything on THIS list should be supported or ‘almost’, many others not in the list should also work)
  • improved the controls.
  • Japanese networks should work now.
  • Fixed the 3G / GPRS mode selection
• The FONSpot feature has been fixed (it didn’t work on the beta Rudolph 2.3.5.0)
• WiFi-WAN mode (WiFi repeater) has been removed for sanity (sorry for those who used it, but it was not very stable yet).
• Easier upgrade process: only one click from your “Applications” interface.
• Bridge mode has been added: this means the fonera can work as an AP on your network and you can use your main ADSL router to give IPs, so anything connected to the LAN or WAN of the Fonera will be in the same network. The only limitation is you need to set a static IP address on the Fonera so you know how to reach it. IMPORTANT: when you set bridged mode, you need to reboot so the private WiFi (MyPlace) works. (thanks blathijs)
• Many other fixes that I can’t even remember now, but many can be seen in the tickets we’ve closed on trac.fonosfera.org

Hi all,

Some of you might have noticed that Rudolph has been removed from the location it was made publicly available at. Many wonder why… well, Rudolph had a congenital illness: the FON Hotspot did not work and also, it registered a wrong MAC address on FON’s system.
Anyway, you can still compile the image from svn if you want to use the rest of the benefits.
We are working hard, even if it is Christmas and will try to release a new fixed RC asap.

Also, 2.3.5.0 will be available for the Fonera 2.0g too. A bit later than for the 2.0n, but it will come.

Thanks for understanding.

Hi all,

I would like to kindly remind you that “rudolph”, this is 2.3.5.0_rc2, is only a “release candidate”. We know it has bugs and we DO NOT recommend it for anyone that doesn’t like testing and reporting bugs.
We know it is a long waited firmware: it has very nice functionalities that many of you asked for (bridge, wlan client etc) but please be patient. There have been MAJOR changes on the firmware, including a completely new WiFi driver, so don’t expect it to work perfectly on the first run.

I am sure you all understand this is not an easy task. We are a small team and really appreciate your feedback and support, but also suffer your impatience and unhappiness. So please, try to be comprehensive and give usgood feedback so we can make Rudolph grow into a nice firmware from the little young reindeer it is now :)

Thanks a lot for your patience and understanding ;)

Ho, Ho, Ho, …..

its been nearly 3 months since the last update, but it was worth waiting.
Just intime for xmas, Santa has sent us a new update called Rudolph (2.3.5.0)

Rudolph

Santa gave Rudolph a lot of presents for us. The main ones are :
- adds new wifi driver (fixes 11n only, iphone, powersave,…)
- adds openvpn server
- adds upnp mediaAV in DEV-only image
- adds wifi-wan mode
- adds bridge mode
- adds wps support
- fixes cache problems that cause errors after 24 hours
- fixes ntp server pool, we now use openwrt pool
- qos was not enabled even if selected in webui due to a typo
- fixes column header in torrent app
- open torrent port and allow client to register as active on tracker
- disabe snr graph on fon_status page as it was not working as expected
- fixes wpa validation 8-63 chars with special chars are no supported
- small fix to SimpleForm template
- fixes “onsucess” logic of firewall app
- allow anonymous login for ftp (and make it configurable on webui
- onlined now only checks the fon server
- typo in italian translation, openvpn, qos pages
- fixes coova for NEC cell phones
- disable tcp_ecn in sysctl
- adds port allocation logic of switch when in bridge mode
- fixes lucid when ip changes
- fixes lan netmask
- fixes mac override for wan port
- fixes large file download in fonbrowser

This is RC2, a few translations are still missing but if everything goes well, we will release 2.3.5.0 final next week.

Enjoy !!

Developer image: http://download.fonosfera.org/Rudolph/20091210_FON2303_2.3.5.0_DEV-RC2.tgz

Hi all freaks!

We’ve got a new animal in our very own personal zoo: Flipper! < -- Check it, it's fun!

And here is the last pic you took of it:

As you can see it’s a Dolphin (yeah, I know you guessed by the name, smartass!) and is here to help you and play with you. Flipper does already include all the features we want in the Fonera 2.0 (for now :D). Here is the list of the new features compared to old good Platero:

• Facebook Uploader: wanna share the pics of the weekend with all your mates? Put them in a pendrive, “facebook” folder and plug it in the Fonera 2.0. Everybody will see you drunk! (No, no, calm down. All the pics and videos are always uploaded in PRIVATE mode :D)
• Flickr Uploader and Picasa Uploader were already added in the Release Candidates.
• Install new versions from the Applications menu! From now on, a single click will separate your Fonera 2.0 from the next firmware… no need to visit blog.fonosfera.org anymore :( But please, come back or we will be sad!
• Nintendo DS works.
• Freed space for more plugins! We now have 1,5MB instead of 1,19MB
• Samba and FONBackup have a separated firewall option.
• Fixed IE visualization of the Wizard (yes, IE users, now it works… dunno why we fixed it though, lol).
• Fixed Torrent crashing problem with files that have many seeds.
• Torrent downloader now lets you chose the port and will be automatically opened on the firewall.
• The partitions on multi-partition disks can be now labeled as well.
• Polish has been added (thanks Łukasz!).
• You can now assign static DHCP leases and domain names inside your local network.
• 3G connectivity reworked: a long list of providers is preloaded so you need not to configure any value.
• And many more things… if you’re interested, check previous posts. I’m not writing all we did again :D

Bugs: yeah… as always. We will fix them, please report them!

Once again, and after having released the HW to the public, thanks to all involved! Martin, Jordi, John, Pablo, Javi, Steven, Alex etc etc etc etc etc etc etc (yeah, lots of people :D)

Images:

• Web Interface image: DEVELOPER Version (includes ssh access)
• Web Interface image: ENDUSER Version (without ssh access)
• Firmware image: DEVELOPER Version (includes ssh access) - md5sum bf12bbd3a006ff6f22fec6cdeb69a15f
• Firmware image: ENDUSER Version (without ssh access) - md5sum 1ad43c52cff0595c951af010421946f2

Let us introduce you to Platero, fon-ng version 2.2.4.0. This will be the firmware our users will get when they buy a Fonera 2.0.

Platero is a donkey. It has taken long time to come, but it finally arrived and his side-bags are full of new features. First of all, and before anyone starts asking about it: TORRENT DOWNLOAD IS HERE. Yes, yes! and this is not all… This is the nice list:

• Installation wizard. Some questions will be asked the first time you connect to the fonera 2.0 and type “fonera” on your browser.
• Youtube Uploader. Take a pen drive, put all your videos in a folder named “youtube” and plug it to the fonera. Your videos will be automatically uploaded to your YouTube account! This is a real 2.0 router.
• Torrent downloader. Get some torrent files, upload them to the fonera and this will download them for you. You can turn your computer off and go to bed. Platero will do the work :)
• MegaUpload and RapidShare downloads. Yes, we never announced this. How does it sound? Configure your RS or MU account, copy a big lot of MU or RS links from the Internet and paste them on the fonera interface. The fonera will download the. But wait… you don’t want to download stuff while you surf? no worries, tell Platero to download things at a certain time frame, while you sleep for instance!
• 3G provider list. Have a 3G USB dongle and don’t know your configuration settings? No worries, tell the fonera your country and your 3G provider… Platero knows the rest (except for your PIN, of course :P)
• Need help? check our videos. Every page in the fonera GUI now has a help button. It will take you to a video where our lovely colleague Martina will tell you how to use that page. Ain’t it sweet? More videos and improvements are coming!
• More to come… we’re already developing new features (improved interface), new applications (VPN, advanced networking, Picasa uploader, iStremer for iTunes…), fixing bugs, etc.

Please, all our niceand beloved Betatesters… Install Platero and let us know how you like it. It’s a lovely sweet donkey.

Poor Platero is not perfect though. We noticed some NDS games don’t work properly with it. Well… we will fix it, don’t worry gamers!

And finally, the big question… When will we sell Foneras 2.0 for everybody? Hmmm I won’t give you a date, just in case the Foneras are stolen (once, in the very begging, a boat with our linksyses was burned in the far ocean…), but let’s say it will be in the beginning of April :P

So, you all that have been watching this creature evolve and grow… go tell your friends to stay tuned to buy it!

I know I always thank a lot of people. I don’t want this to sound repetitive but this is a special release. The Fonera 2.0 has come to life after long discussions, arguments, fights, work, decisions, changes… Thanks to all that helped at FON:

• Martin and Alex for believing in the project and let us work our way
• Martina, Inouk, Luis, Javi, Pablo, Cyrus, Rico, Iban etc for their key work on certain fields.
• John Crispin… he is the real guy behind the fon-ng firmware. No need to explain anything else.

I want to finish the post with a nice sentence by John… “Thanks for letting me build the best firmware in the market” - Now, it’s on your hands, enjoy it!

iurgi

P.S.: The firmwares :P

• Developers WEB image. Use it with Tantor, OktoPussy or Caterpillar.
• Developers command line image. md5sum c31e190820581d3102501aca4da9ee8b
• Enduser WEB image (no SSH). Use it with Tantor, OktoPussy or Caterpillar.
• Enduser command line image (no SSH). md5sum a735bed86ee931d98aafbf6ae0df649b

This is the beautiful story of a firmware that was slow, dumb, unfriendly and weak, like a Caterpillar… and one day, after months of metamorphosis from the very inside… It became a powerful, lightweight and flexible firmware, ready to discover and astonish the world with it’s beautiful wings!

This is the release of Mr. Caterpillar (version 2.2.3.0), the firmware that finally is mature enough to be considered as a final user product.

We have made some nice additions and some changes on the available plugins. Here you have the list:

• The plugins can be installed directly from the console! Yes, you don’t need to go anywhere else… every new plugin will be put in the repository and the fonera will show you all available plugins. It will also let you know if one of the installed plugins has a new version available. In the future… maybe plugin ranking/popularity? We’ll see…
• We merged the FONBackup and FTP tabs. They are basically the same since the backup is done using FTP. The PC application (available for Windows, Linux and Mac) is getting very nice features, we might release another beta soon… Muuuuuch faster! Btw, try it on the cable instead of WiFi you get up to 2MB/s transfer! That’s not bad!
• Printer and Webcam plugins have been removed!!! WHY? will some ask… well, they take space (not much, OK) and they are not usable for everybody. You need it? Why don’t you try the new plugin installation system? They are already there for you! Install the one you need. The way it works hasn’t changed at all :D
• A nice link in the left-bottom box, on the Version number will show you the version and animal of your Fonera. Handy to know what you have installed without being an expert ;)
• Catalàs, benvinguts!!! We’ve added new languages: find the interface in Catalan and Simplified Chinese. More to come! We don’t want to leave anyone apart.

So please, everybody install it and let us know if you like it.find below, the firmware for developers, the firmware for non-developers (no ssh so don’t use it if you need it - we will soon enable fon.com to ’switch to developer mode’ with a single click), the failsafe firmware and the FONbackup application - it is a new release… much faster and reliable. Try it!

• Caterpillar DEVELOPERS FON file (web interface Tantor or later): download.
• Caterpillar DEVELOPERS image: download. MD5Sum: 8526415082a2fe0cebc8a73d73e26edd
• Caterpillar END USER FON file (web interface Tantor or later): download. (please don’t use this if you want ssh enabled)
• Caterpillar END USER image: download. MD5Sum: 8d9620d274ad8f35a073c6c5d868a5f8 (please don’t use this if you want ssh enabled)
• Fonera 2.0 failsafe (versionless): download. MD5Sum: d29e07bdcb6df04209cafafce8f3bc5f
• FONBackup 0.2 (only for use with Mr. Caterpillar): download.

Once again, thanks to all the collaborators (translators: chihchun, victor and albert, bmpeter, merlin, Michelangelo, blogic, inouk…) and specially to the firmware team, which we’re very proud of!!