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ZTE MF286 is an indoor LTE category 12 CPE router with simultaneous
dual-band 802.11ac plus 802.11n Wi-Fi radios and quad-port gigabit
Ethernet switch, FXS and external USB 2.0 port.
Software-wise it's compatible with previous MF286A, save for different
5GHz Wi-Fi board definition file, requiring a separate image.
Hardware highlights:
- CPU: QCA9563 SoC at 775MHz,
- RAM: 128MB DDR2,
- NOR Flash: MX25L1606E 2MB SPI Flash, for U-boot only,
- NAND Flash: W25N01GV 128MB SPI NAND-Flash, for all other data,
- Wi-Fi 5GHz: QCA9886 2x2 MIMO 802.11ac Wave2 radio,
- WI-Fi 2.4GHz: QCA9563 3x3 MIMO 802.11n radio,
- Switch: QCA8337v2 4-port gigabit Ethernet, with single SGMII CPU port,
- WWAN: MDM9250-based category 12 internal LTE modem
in extended mini-PCIE form factor, with 5 internal antennas and
2 external antenna connections, single mini-SIM slot.
- FXS: one external ATA port (handled entirely by modem part) with two
physical connections in parallel,
- USB: Single external USB 2.0 port,
- Switches: power switch, WPS, Wi-Fi and reset buttons,
- LEDs: Wi-Fi, Test (internal). Rest of LEDs (Phone, WWAN, Battery,
Signal state) handled entirely by modem. 4 link status LEDs handled by
the switch on the backside.
- Label MAC device: eth0
Internal modem of MF286C is supported via uqmi.
Console connection: connector X2 is the console port, with the following
pinout, starting from pin 1, which is the topmost pin when the board is
upright:
- VCC (3.3V). Do not use unless you need to source power for the
converer from it.
- TX
- RX
- GND
Default port configuration in U-boot as well as in stock firmware is
115200-8-N-1.
Installation:
Due to different flash layout from stock firmware, sysupgrade from
within stock firmware is impossible, despite it's based on QSDK which
itself is based on OpenWrt.
STEP 0: Stock firmware update:
As installing OpenWrt cuts you off from official firmware updates for
the modem part, it is recommended to update the stock firmware to latest
ath79: support ZTE MF286C
STEP 1: Booting initramfs image:
Method 1: using serial console (RECOMMENDED):
- Have TFTP server running, exposing the OpenWrt initramfs image, and
set your computer's IP address as 192.168.0.22. This is the default
expected by U-boot. You may wish to change that, and alter later
commands accordingly.
- Connect the serial console if you haven't done so already,
- Interrupt boot sequence by pressing any key in U-boot when prompted
- Use the following commands to boot OpenWrt initramfs through TFTP:
setenv serverip 192.168.0.22
setenv ipaddr 192.168.0.1
tftpboot 0x81000000 openwrt-ath79-nand-zte_mf286c-initramfs-kernel.bin
bootm 0x81000000
(Replace server IP and router IP as needed). There is no emergency
TFTP boot sequence triggered by buttons, contrary to MF283+.
- When OpenWrt initramfs finishes booting, proceed to actual
installation.
STEP 2: Backing up original software:
As the stock firmware may be customized by the carrier and is not
officially available in the Internet, IT IS IMPERATIVE to back up the
stock firmware, if you ever plan to returning to stock firmware.
It is highly recommended to perform backup using both methods, to avoid
hassle of reassembling firmware images in future, if a restore is
needed.
Method 1: after booting OpenWrt initramfs image via TFTP:
- Connect your USB-UART adapter
- Dump stock firmware located on stock kernel and ubi partitions:
ssh root@192.168.1.1: cat /dev/mtd9 > mtd3_ubiconcat0.bin
ssh root@192.168.1.1: cat /dev/mtd4 > mtd4_kernel.bin
ssh root@192.168.1.1: cat /dev/mtd9 > mtd5_ubiconcat1.bin
And keep them in a safe place, should a restore be needed in future.
Method 2: using stock firmware:
- Connect an external USB drive formatted with FAT or ext4 to the USB
port.
- The drive will be auto-mounted to /var/usb_disk
- Check the flash layout of the device:
cat /proc/mtd
It should show the following:
mtd0: 000a0000 00010000 "u-boot"
mtd1: 00020000 00010000 "u-boot-env"
mtd2: 00140000 00010000 "reserved1"
mtd3: 000a0000 00020000 "fota-flag"
mtd4: 00080000 00020000 "art"
mtd5: 00080000 00020000 "mac"
mtd6: 000c0000 00020000 "reserved2"
mtd7: 00400000 00020000 "cfg-param"
mtd8: 00400000 00020000 "log"
mtd9: 000a0000 00020000 "oops"
mtd10: 00500000 00020000 "reserved3"
mtd11: 00800000 00020000 "web"
mtd12: 00300000 00020000 "kernel"
mtd13: 01a00000 00020000 "rootfs"
mtd14: 01900000 00020000 "data"
mtd15: 03200000 00020000 "fota"
mtd16: 01d00000 00020000 "firmware"
Differences might indicate that this is NOT a MF286C device but
one of other variants.
- Copy over all MTD partitions, for example by executing the following:
for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15; do cat /dev/mtd$i > \
/var/usb_disk/mtd$i; done
"Firmware" partition can be skipped, it is a concatenation
of "kernel" and "rootfs".
- If the count of MTD partitions is different, this might indicate that
this is not a MF286C device, but one of its other variants.
- (optionally) rename the files according to MTD partition names from
/proc/mtd
- Unmount the filesystem:
umount /var/usb_disk; sync
and then remove the drive.
- Store the files in safe place if you ever plan to return to stock
firmware. This is especially important, because stock firmware for
this device is not available officially, and is usually customized by
the mobile providers.
STEP 3: Actual installation:
- Set your computer IP to 192.168.1.22/24
- scp the sysupgrade image to the device:
scp -O openwrt-ath79-nand-zte_mf286a-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin \
root@192.168.1.1:/tmp/
- ssh into the device and execute sysupgrade:
sysupgrade -n /tmp/openwrt-ath79-nand-zte_mf286a-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
- Wait for router to reboot to full OpenWrt.
STEP 4: WAN connection establishment
Since the router is equipped with LTE modem as its main WAN interface, it
might be useful to connect to the Internet right away after
installation. To do so, please put the following entries in
/etc/config/network, replacing the specific configuration entries with
one needed for your ISP:
config interface 'wan'
option proto 'qmi'
option device '/dev/cdc-wdm0'
option auth '<auth>' # As required, usually 'none'
option pincode '<pin>' # If required by SIM
option apn '<apn>' # As required by ISP
option pdptype '<pdp>' # Typically 'ipv4', or 'ipv4v6' or 'ipv6'
For example, the following works for most polish ISPs
config interface 'wan'
option proto 'qmi'
option device '/dev/cdc-wdm0'
option auth 'none'
option apn 'internet'
option pdptype 'ipv4'
The required minimum is:
config interface 'wan'
option proto 'qmi'
option device '/dev/cdc-wdm0'
In this case, the modem will use last configured APN from stock
firmware - this should work out of the box, unless your SIM requires
PIN which can't be switched off.
If you have build with LuCI, installing luci-proto-qmi helps with this
task.
Restoring the stock firmware:
- Boot to initramfs as in step 3:
- Completely detach ubi0 partition using ubidetach /dev/ubi0_0
- Copy over the stock kernel image using scp to /tmp
- Erase kernel and restore stock kernel:
(scp mtd4_kernel.bin root@192.168.1.1:/tmp/)
mtd write kernel /tmp/mtd4_kernel.bin
rm /tmp/mtd4_kernel.bin
- Copy over the stock partition backups one-by-one using scp to /tmp, and
restore them individually. Otherwise you might run out of space in
tmpfs:
(scp -O mtd3_ubiconcat0.bin root@192.168.1.1:/tmp/)
mtd write ubiconcat0 /tmp/mtd3_ubiconcat0.bin
rm /tmp/mtd3_ubiconcat0.bin
(scp -O mtd5_ubiconcat1.bin root@192.168.1.1:/tmp/)
mtd write ubiconcat1 /tmp/mtd5_ubiconcat1.bin
rm /tmp/mtd5_ubiconcat1.bin
- If the write was correct, force a device reboot with
reboot -f
Quirks and known issues
- It was observed, that CH340-based USB-UART converters output garbage
during U-boot phase of system boot. At least CP2102 is known to work
properly.
- Kernel partition size is increased to 4MB compared to stock 3MB, to
accomodate future kernel updates - at this moment OpenWrt 5.10 kernel
image is at 2.5MB which is dangerously close to the limit. This has no
effect on booting the system - but keep that in mind when reassembling
an image to restore stock firmware.
- uqmi seems to be unable to change APN manually, so please use the one
you used before in stock firmware first. If you need to change it,
please use protocok '3g' to establish connection once, or use the
following command to change APN (and optionally IP type) manually:
echo -ne 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","<apn>' > /dev/ttyUSB0
- The only usable LED as a "system LED" is the blue debug LED hidden
inside the case. All other LEDs are controlled by modem, on which the
router part has some influence only on Wi-Fi LED.
- GPIO5 used for modem reset is a suicide switch, causing a hardware
reset of whole board, not only the modem. It is attached to
gpio-restart driver, to restart the modem on reboot as well, to ensure
QMI connectivity after reboot, which tends to fail otherwise.
- Modem, as in MF283+, exposes root shell over ADB - while not needed
for OpenWrt operation at all - have fun lurking around.
The same modem module is used as in older MF286.
Signed-off-by: Lech Perczak <lech.perczak@gmail.com>
Link: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/17620
Signed-off-by: Hauke Mehrtens <hauke@hauke-m.de>
OpenWrt Project is a Linux operating system targeting embedded devices. Instead of trying to create a single, static firmware, OpenWrt provides a fully writable filesystem with package management. This frees you from the application selection and configuration provided by the vendor and allows you to customize the device through the use of packages to suit any application. For developers, OpenWrt is the framework to build an application without having to build a complete firmware around it; for users this means the ability for full customization, to use the device in ways never envisioned.
Sunshine!
Download
Built firmware images are available for many architectures and come with a package selection to be used as WiFi home router. To quickly find a factory image usable to migrate from a vendor stock firmware to OpenWrt, try the Firmware Selector.
If your device is supported, please follow the Info link to see install instructions or consult the support resources listed below.
An advanced user may require additional or specific package. (Toolchain, SDK, ...) For everything else than simple firmware download, try the wiki download page:
Development
To build your own firmware you need a GNU/Linux, BSD or macOS system (case sensitive filesystem required). Cygwin is unsupported because of the lack of a case sensitive file system.
Requirements
You need the following tools to compile OpenWrt, the package names vary between distributions. A complete list with distribution specific packages is found in the Build System Setup documentation.
binutils bzip2 diff find flex gawk gcc-6+ getopt grep install libc-dev libz-dev
make4.1+ perl python3.7+ rsync subversion unzip which
Quickstart
-
Run
./scripts/feeds update -ato obtain all the latest package definitions defined in feeds.conf / feeds.conf.default -
Run
./scripts/feeds install -ato install symlinks for all obtained packages into package/feeds/ -
Run
make menuconfigto select your preferred configuration for the toolchain, target system & firmware packages. -
Run
maketo build your firmware. This will download all sources, build the cross-compile toolchain and then cross-compile the GNU/Linux kernel & all chosen applications for your target system.
Related Repositories
The main repository uses multiple sub-repositories to manage packages of
different categories. All packages are installed via the OpenWrt package
manager called opkg. If you're looking to develop the web interface or port
packages to OpenWrt, please find the fitting repository below.
-
LuCI Web Interface: Modern and modular interface to control the device via a web browser.
-
OpenWrt Packages: Community repository of ported packages.
-
OpenWrt Routing: Packages specifically focused on (mesh) routing.
-
OpenWrt Video: Packages specifically focused on display servers and clients (Xorg and Wayland).
Support Information
For a list of supported devices see the OpenWrt Hardware Database
Documentation
Support Community
- Forum: For usage, projects, discussions and hardware advise.
- Support Chat: Channel
#openwrton oftc.net.
Developer Community
- Bug Reports: Report bugs in OpenWrt
- Dev Mailing List: Send patches
- Dev Chat: Channel
#openwrt-develon oftc.net.
License
OpenWrt is licensed under GPL-2.0