Zsun can't connect to wwan and is not broadcasting its ssid

Having carefully followed your instructions for configuring PirateBox on my Openwrt-running Zsun device, I am now locked out of the device. It happened after running the following configuration line and pressing enter:

/etc/init.d/network reload && /etc/init.d/firewall reload && wifi

As mentioned in your notes, I was disconnected. Problem is, however, that I can't reconnect. As a matter of fact, I don't even see the new ssid on the list of available networks. Furthermore, the Zsun is not able to connect to my wireless network. Looking at the blinking light pattern, it seems to be cycling through the same process again and again, seemingly trying to successfully establishing a connection with my router.

Your instructions say that "Because OpenWrt (and PirateBox) are using the IP 192.168.1.1 (sub-netmask /24) the network (WiFi) you are connecting to can't use the same sub-net mask. " So my question is: which subnet mask is it using? My router uses 192.168.0.1. Maybe that is not compatible with the "new"subnet used by the Zsun device?

Then, after some verification, I see that my curent router uses wep for security while the line I copied from your instruction page contains "encryption=psk2". That is another potential problem, isn't it?

What do you think?

Of course, whatever caused this in the first place, the only way to gain back access to the device is through a wired connexion. But the pads on the board are so tiny... Fortunately, the case is very easy to open without damaging it.

Does it work now?

No it doesn't. I am in the process of building some kind of adapter to be able to connect to the console port without having to solder connections directly on the pcb. If all goes well, once I'm in, I'll be able to find out exactly what went wrong, and I'll let you know.

The only thing that's different from yesterday is that after unplugging the device and reconnecting it, it stopped cycling through whatever process it was involved in after the first reboot.

Have you tried to boot it in failsafe mode?
As far as I can remember, there is an additional script which may open up a hotspot on failsafe mode to regain access.

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I took me a few days to build my adapter board. And thank God, I was able to short the missing receive line jumper as mentionned on Hackerspace, and therefore successfully connect to the Zsun. Then I proceeded to copy the /etc/config directory to a backup directory and restore the initial /etc/config directory which I had made a copy of before attempting to configure the Zsun as a PirateBox.

So everything was fine. However, I needed to go to another computer in order to analyse the configuration files. So I typed "exit". I then got a message saying "Press enter to enter this console". However, I dismissed the message and simply disconnected the Zsun. When I got to my other computer however, the device would not boot anymore. No light, no nothing... Obviously I did something wrong. :-(

I have therefore ordered 2 other devices from China. Should receive them in 7-8 days from now. The worst part is not that I bricked the device, but that I won't find out what happened exactly. And I feel like I somewhat let you down with this!

I finally received more Zsuns and was able to install PirateBox without almost any problem. More about this in a moment.

I just want to confirm that what went wrong in my first installation is the line:

uci set wireless.@wifi-iface[-1].encryption=psk

which of course is inappropriate if the encryption is wep based. So I replaced it with:

uci set wireless.@wifi-iface[-1].encryption=wep

These uci settings relate to the Zsun to home router connection. If this connection isn't successful, the OpenWRT documentation says that wireless access to the device will be deactivated. As a result it then becomes impossible to communicate with the Zsun. So, just to be on the safe side, I created a script to restore the initial wireless configuration in case of such a scenario. The instructions for creating this script are described here. Go directly to step 3 to access the instructions. On a wireless only device like the Zsun, having extra insurance can't hurt.

Now regarding the PirateBox installation, almost everything went smoothly except the folowing:

During execution of:

opkg update && opkg install -d ram e2fsprogs mkdosfs fdisk

I got the following:

Configuring mkdosfs.
grep: /usr/lib/opkg/info/mkdosfs.control: No such file or directory
cat: can't open '/usr/lib/opkg/info/mkdosfs.list': No such file or directory

Configuring libext2fs.
grep: /usr/lib/opkg/info/libext2fs.control: No such file or directory
cat: can't open '/usr/lib/opkg/info/libext2fs.list': No such file or directory

Configuring e2fsprogs.
grep: /usr/lib/opkg/info/e2fsprogs.control: No such file or directory
cat: can't open '/usr/lib/opkg/info/e2fsprogs.list': No such file or directory

Configuring fdisk.
grep: /usr/lib/opkg/info/fdisk.control: No such file or directory
cat: can't open '/usr/lib/opkg/info/fdisk.list': No such file or directory

Then, after executing this:

sed -i '​s:​DROOPY_CHMOD:#​DROOPY_CHMOD:'​ /​opt/​piratebox/​conf/​piratebox.conf

I got this:

sed: unsupported command

And not much later, while executing this:

/opt/piratebox/init.d/piratebox_alt start

I got a bunch of denied chown operations. I also got another batch of those during the installation of Kareha.

PirateBox works nonetheless, but the sd card is not functional as it should. Plus, File upload always end with a Retry message.

How can I fix this?

Mh, these messages

Quote

Then, after executing this:

sed -i '​s:​DROOPY_CHMOD:#​DROOPY_CHMOD:'​ /​opt/​piratebox/​conf/​piratebox.conf

I got this: sed: unsupported command

Are directly related to the upload problem.
I am wondering why sed is not supported... it is a built in tool

Matthias

Yes, it is strange considering that the 4 previous sed commands worked fine...

Could I repair my installation with the auto-flash method, and if so what would be the image to use? And since fat32 doesn't seem to be the adequate formatting scheme for the sd card, what is the right one?