The Mercury MAC1200R (TPLINK WR6300) is one of the cheapest AC based routers on the planet, as I have a few AC devices I thought I’d buy one to try out. They’re available for under RMB120 or so online.

Mercury hardware is TPLink hardware, albeit using a different name. Same stuff, same factory, different casing.

The router has 64M ram, and 8M flash. CPU / Wifi AR9344 / QCA9882

OpenWRT says it has support, so I had a quick go at taking a look at flashing one.

First steps:

Open up the unit (remove the 2 screws underneath, then use a spare credit card or similar to jam open the plastic case).

The serial headers are to the right of the SoC.
You’ll need a rs232 to ttl or usb to ttl adaptor.

Pin 1 is GND
Pin 2 is TX (connect to rx)
Pin 3 is RX (connect to tx)
Pin 4 is VCC (don’t connect).

Port speeds are 115200,8,n,1

Connect up, and you should see a flurry of activity on boot.

To get into the bootloader (uBoot), you’ll need to type tpl
May take a few tries, so prepare to pull power and retry again, and again till you get in.

You’ll need a TFTPD server running on 192.168.1.100 to push files over. My Mac no haz ethernet (and Thunderbolt to Ethernet is crud), so I use my venerable X40 and tftpd software.

Firmware is up here. (Or you can compile your own) -> http://pan.baidu.com/s/1hqkVOfa

Firmware locations in flash (see below)
printenv
bootargs=console=ttyS0,115200 root=31:02 rootfstype=jffs2 init=/sbin/init mtdparts=ath-nor0:256k(u-boot),64k(u-boot-env),6336k(rootfs),1408k(uImage),64k(mib0),64k(ART)
bootcmd=bootm 0x9f020000
bootdelay=1
baudrate=115200
ethaddr=0xba:0xbe:0xfa:0xce:0x08:0x41
ipaddr=192.168.1.111
serverip=192.168.1.100
dir=
lu=tftp 0x80060000 ${dir}u-boot.bin&&erase 0x9f000000 +$filesize&&cp.b $fileaddr 0x9f000000 $filesize
lf=tftp 0x80060000 ${dir}db12x${bc}-jffs2&&erase 0x9f050000 +0x630000&&cp.b $fileaddr 0x9f050000 $filesize
lk=tftp 0x80060000 ${dir}vmlinux${bc}.lzma.uImage&&erase 0x9f680000 +$filesize&&cp.b $fileaddr 0x9f680000 $filesize
stdin=serial
stdout=serial
stderr=serial
ethact=eth0

Environment size: 686/65532 bytes

Upload to the uBoot

It should boot into OpenWRT, you can flash from there.


...[long kernel bootlogs redacted]

I highly recommend replacing the bootloader with an unlocked one.
i.e. this one – https://github.com/pepe2k/u-boot_mod

Bootloader sits at 0x9f000000 and is 64kb in size.
Suggest load in ram at 0x80060000 like they do, and flash from there.

eg from the bootloader –

tfpboot 0x80060000 uboot.bin
erase 0x9f000000 +0x20000
cp.b 0x80060000 0x9f000000 0x20000


Pray that it didn’t mess up (or you need an spi flasher…), and reboot!

Other bits n bobs –

You’ll need to adjust the opkg.conf file

ssh into the router @ 192.168.1.1 / root / root

mv /etc/opkg.conf /etc/opkg.conf.orig

#src/gz barrier_breaker_base http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/packages/base
#src/gz barrier_breaker_management http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/packages/management
#src/gz barrier_breaker_oldpackages http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/packages/oldpackages
#src/gz barrier_breaker_packages http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/packages/packages
#src/gz barrier_breaker_routing http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/packages/routing
#src/gz barrier_breaker_telephony http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/packages/telephony' >> /etc/opkg.conf

…and install Luci (the openwrt webui)

opkg update
opkg install luci


You should be able to visit http://192.168.1.1 and start changing settings.

In January, I upgraded to 100M fibre, and paid upfront for the year (RMB2800).

While I was on vacation, my FTTB at home stopped working, so we called Shanghai Telecom.

What had actually happened was that there was a screwup with the account setup, and they’d put me on a monthly bill *and* 100M.
After 6 months, they decided that I hadn’t paid my bill, and cancelled my 100M fibre account!
Staff eventually sorted it out, and Telecom gave us a 6 month credit.
Even so, I ended up coming back to a crappy E8 wifi + modem setup and my router set to use DHCP.

The Shanghai Telecom unit was setup for a maximum of 16 wifi devices, and uPNP was disabled, sigh.

I prefer to use my own equipment, as I generally don’t gimp it, so I called Telecom to ask for my “new” account details so I could replace it.

Unfortunately the technician had changed the password, and the 10000 hotline didn’t have the new pass, or the LOID.

I called the install technician who’d installed it in my absence, but he wasn’t very helpful, and told me I couldn’t have it. Surprise…

What to do.

I took a look at their modem, and thought it should be fairly easy to try get the details from it.

Did a bit of googling, and found that it had an accessible serial port, so opened up the unit, and connected it up.

After a bit of cable fiddling, got a connection @ 115200 / 8n1

Cable pinout should be –
GND | MISSING PIN | TX | RX | VCC

I’ll add some photos later.

With some more fiddling around, I got terminal access (accidentally!) with some prudent Ctrl C/ Ctrl Z’ing during the boot process as something crashed and I got a terminal prompt.
Its vxware, although the boot process does look quite linuxy.

Lots of interesting commands..

 > ls -al
telnetd:error:341.568:processInput:440:unrecognized command ls -al
 > help
?
help
logout
exit
quit
reboot
brctl
cat
loglevel
logdest
virtualserver
ddns
df
dumpcfg
dumpmulticfg
dumpmdm
dumpnvram
meminfo
psp
kill
dumpsysinfo
dnsproxy
syslog
echo
ifconfig
ping
ps
pwd
sntp
sysinfo
tftp
voice
wlctl
showOmciStats
omci
omcipm
dumpOmciVoice
dumpOmciEnet
dumpOmciGem
arp
defaultgateway
dhcpserver
dns
lan
lanhosts
passwd
ppp
restoredefault
psiInvalidateCheck
route
save
swversion
uptime
cfgupdate
swupdate
exitOnIdle
wan
btt
oam
laser
overhead
mcpctl
sendInform
wlanpower
zyims_watchdog
atbp
ctrate
testled
ipversionmode
dumptr69soap
lan2lanmcast
telecomaccount
wanlimit
namechange
userinfo
localservice
tcptimewait
atsh
option125Mode
eponlinkper
setponlinkuptime
loidtimewait
phonetest
 

First up, dump the nvram

> dumpnvram
============NVRAM data============
nvramData.ulVersion=6l
nvramData.szBootline=e=192.168.1.1:ffffff00 h=192.168.1.100 g= r=f f=vmlinux i=bcm963xx_fs_kernel d=1 p=0 c= a= 
nvramData.szBoardId=      XPT2542NUR
nvramData.ulMainTpNum=0l
nvramData.ulPsiSize=64l
nvramData.ulNumMacAddrs=10l
nvramData.ucaBaseMacAddr=??Umo
nvramData.pad=
nvramData.ulCheckSumV4=0l
nvramData.gponSerialNumber=             
nvramData.gponPassword=           
nvramData.cardMode=-1
nvramData.cardNo=  000000000000000000
nvramData.userPasswd=telecomadmin31407623
nvramData.uSerialNumber=32300C4C755116D6F
nvramData.useradminPassword=62pfq
nvramData.wirelessPassword=3yyv3kum
nvramData.wirelessSSID=ChinaNet-WmqQ
nvramData.conntrack_multiple_rate=0
============NVRAM data============

Nice, got the router admin pass already.
– nvramData.userPasswd=telecomadmin31407623
(user is telecomadmin).

I actually needed the login details, this turned out to be via

 > dumpmdm 

This dumped a rather large xml style file with some interesting bits

[excerpted are some of the good bits – the whole file is huge]


FALSE
e8ftp
e8ftp
21
TRUE
FALSE
TRUE
e8telnet
e8telnet
23
FALSE
admin
v2mprt



Hmm, telnet, and a password!
Telnet is not enabled by default, nor is FTP.

It also had the pppoe user/pass which was what I was looking for, and the LOID, which I needed to stick into my modem.
Score.

While that was pretty much all I needed, I decided to enable Telnet and FTP to play around.

Ok, so how do we enable telnet?

 > localservice
usage:
   localservice show: show the current telnet/ftp service status.
   localservice telnet enable/disable: set the telnet service enable or disable.
   localservice telnetAccess enable/disable: allow access telnet in wan side or not.
   localservice ftp enable/disable: set the ftp service enable or disable.
   localservice ftpAccess enable/disable: allow access ftp in wan side or not.

 > localservice telnet enable
 
> localservice show
Current local services status:
Ftp Service: Disable
Ftp Allow Wan Access: No
Telnet Service: Enable
Telnet Allow Wan Access: No
 
> localservice ftp enable

> localservice show
Current local services status:
Ftp Service: Enable
Ftp Allow Wan Access: No
Telnet Service: Enable
Telnet Allow Wan Access: No
 > save
config saved.

reboot the modem, and see if we can login via ethernet

telnet 192.168.1.1
Trying 192.168.1.1...
Connected to broadcom.home.
Escape character is '^]'.
BCM96838 Broadband Router
Login: telecomadmin
Password: 
Login incorrect. Try again.
Login: e8telnet
Password: 
 > 

Cool, so we now have full access to the device.

There also seems to be a remote monitoring system config’d via devacs.edatahome.com, which maps to a Shanghai Telecom ip.

   http://devacs.edatahome.com:9090/ACS-server/ACS
      http://devacs.edatahome.com:9090/ACS-server/ACS
      hgw
      hgwXXXX1563

and something else called itms.

itms
 itmsXXXX5503

I’ve XXX’d out some of the numbers from my own dump, as I suspect its device / login specific.

I got what I needed though, which was admin access to the modem, despite Shanghai Telecom not telling me.

Would really be nice if they just gave you the PPPoE user/pass and LOID, but that would be too easy…

On my modem, the following were the default passwords:

Console Access (via serial port)

User: admin
Pass: v2mprt

Once in console, you can enable Telnet and FTP.

Telnet (not enabled by default)
User: e8telnet
Pass: e8telnet

FTP (not enabled by default)
User: e8ftp
Pass: e8ftp

To show the http password from console (either local, or via telnet).
dumpnvram

url: http://192.168.1.1
http user: telecomadmin
http pass: (as per nvram, mine was telecomadmin31407623 )

Once in you can see all the important bits. Probably easier to grep the xml file from

dumpmdm

Took me about an hour or so to get to that point, I’m running on my own equipment again, and its not gimped. Worth my time!

Someone from the JammaForums.co.uk emailed me a copy of the firmware in their SD card from a XinYe 138 in 1.

Card looks something like this:

I don’t have one, but I took a quick look at the data provided, and it looks fairly straightforward to “hack”.

It actually took me less than 30 minutes to have most of the good bits extracted from receiving the file!

There are 2 files on the SD card.

One is a 64 byte file called sn.bin which contains this data:

This looks suspiciously like a header, but I haven’t taken a clear look.

The second file is called x3rodl.bin, and contains a Linux firmware in ARM format.

The first few hundred bytes look like this:

Its obviously in ARM format, as the first set of bytes are ARM no-op codes.

00 00 A0 E1, which repeats 8 times.
02 00 00 EA, then…
18 28 6F 01 – Which is a magic word indicating that this contains a zImage (compressed Linux kernel)

18 28 6F 01 = 0x016f2818

Linux code looks something like this for identifying if its a kernel:

if (*(ulong *)(to + 9*4) != LINUX_ZIMAGE_MAGIC) {
printk("Warning: this binary is not compressed linux kernel image/n");
printk("zImage magic = 0x%08lx/n", *(ulong *)(to + 9*4));
} else {
printk("zImage magic = 0x%08lx/n", *(ulong *)(to + 9*4));
}


9 * 4 = 36, which is our location, and this happens to have our magic number.
So, we know its a kernel. Its also probably the VIVI bootloader from Samsung, as that uses that style MAGIC.

The following bits of data, contain the setup for the kernel, and the boot code.

This continues on until the compressed kernel+ramdisk. That starts with 1F 8B 08 (gzip header bytes) over at 0x3EF2, until roughly the end of the file.

I extracted that part and had a quick look.
Its about 7.7M size unpacked.

Linux version is: 2.6.36-FriendlyARM

Boot params are:
console=ttySAC0,115200 root=/dev/ram init=/linuxrc initrd=0x51000000,6M ramdisk_size=6144

RAMDISK File System starts at 0x20000, and looks like this:

lawrence$ ls -al
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 13 lawrence staff 442 Jun 17 23:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 lawrence staff 136 Jun 17 23:08 ..
drwxr-xr-x 51 lawrence staff 1734 Jun 17 23:09 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 lawrence staff 68 Jun 17 23:09 dev
drwxr-xr-x 11 lawrence staff 374 Jun 17 23:09 etc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 lawrence staff 3821 Jun 17 23:09 init
-rw-r--r-- 1 lawrence staff 3821 Jun 17 23:09 init~
lrwxrwxrwx 1 lawrence staff 11 Jun 17 23:09 linuxrc -> bin/busybox
drwxr-xr-x 2 lawrence staff 68 Jun 17 23:09 proc
drwxr-xr-x 2 lawrence staff 68 Jun 17 23:09 r
drwxr-xr-x 19 lawrence staff 646 Jun 17 23:09 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 lawrence staff 68 Jun 17 23:09 sdcard
drwxr-xr-x 4 lawrence staff 136 Jun 17 23:09 usr


The bootup script for this looks like this:


#! /bin/sh

# for running game
umount /proc
exec switch_root /r $INIT /r/dev/console 2>&1


The secondary loader in init looks like this:

Fairly easy to reverse!

Refs:
http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/
http://blog.csdn.net/liangkaiming/article/details/6259189

As I’ve been reasonably successful in the past at figuring out file systems from flat files, I thought I’d have a go at the Dell Mini 3i 1.5 Firmware that surfaced at damipan (http://www.namipan.com/d/DELL_MINI3I_OMS1.5.rar/a5ba3b06ab0bfc9baeb2f09b44f54aa40bac3457ee8ebc04)

The rar file unzips to a MFF file.

This I’m probably guessing is probably named after Marvell File Format or Marvell Flasher File.
Here’s my initial work on the file system of MFF format, based on DELL_Mini3i_OMS1.5.mff

Initial 80 bytes [0x0 – 0x080] (MFF HEADER)

0x00 – 0x03 : 3 Bytes Header MFF
0x03 – 0x07 : Still to figure out, probably file length or crc.
Have to grab another firmware file to check though..

0x08 : Number of files? 9 listed, so quite probably…
Rest of header padded out with zero’s to end of 80 bytes.

[0x80 – 0x180] File Allocation Table
0x80 – our first file. Looks like 0x100 / 256 bytes per file listed, padded with 0x0’s

File listing looks like this:

File header (for each file)
8 bytes, then filename, padded with 0’s to fill 256 bytes length

First 4 bytes – offset in MFF of start of file.
Second 4 bytes – length of file.

Remaining files repeat from next 256 byte intervals.

eg
0x180 – 0x280
0x280 – 0x380
…

[0x80 + 9 files x 0x100 bytes = 0x980] Start of Data.

How did I work this out?

HEADER | Filename (not in hex below as easier to read)
80 09 00 00 34 BB 00 00 | Tavor Flasher_Samsung_ONENAND_h.bin

0x0980 is the start of our first file data, so the first 2 bytes are definitely File Start.
0xBB34 looks quite possibly like File Length.

We can check this easily with one of the plain text files.

Flash_Protection_table.ini is prefixed with 63 EA AD 09 4B 00 00 00

So it should start at 0x09 AD – hmm, readable text starts at offset 9AD D564.
Not quite right. Start offset looks close though.

Lets look at another one.

Tavor_saar_onenand.ini – prefix says
64 d5 ad 09 6f 01 00 00

Ah, 0x9 AD D5 64 is actually our Tavor_saar_onenand.ini content. Cool, a match. So, the first 4 bytes are definitely our location pointer.

Lets look at the Flash protection table again Flash_Protection_table.ini

63 EA AD 09 | 4B 00 00 00
Should start at 09 AD EA 63, and go for 4B length. Bingo, it does 🙂

Our file contents for that area are:

[PROTECTED_REGION_0]
Block_Offset=0x100000
Length=0x20000
Mode=SKIP_BLOCKS

So, now we can start to split the files apart into their associated parts.

factory_BENZ2GWIFI.fbf is probably going to be the most interesting, as its the largest.

That starts at 0xC564, length of 0x09AD1000 and starts with “Marvell_FBF”
Basic math says that 0x9ADD564 (0x09AD1000 + 0xC564) should be our end of file.
Well, it is, as we know flash protection table.ini starts at 9add564.

So, should be fairly easy with that info to write an unpacker tool to rip out the first interior files from the MFF file format.
Some of the files inside are also “packed”, but those appear to be fairly easy to rip apart also 🙂

I’m guessing with a bit more work I’ll be able to replace parts of the firmware with different versions quite soonish.

The file I’m using off of namipan has the following files inside:

TavorFlasher_SAMSUNG_ONENAND_h.bin
TavorFlasher_SAMSUNG_ONENAND_TIM.bin
factory_BENZ2GWIFI.fbf
Tavor_SAAR_OneNAND.ini
factory_BENZ2GWIFI.mff.mlt
magic_fbf.ini
magic_fbf_inner.ini
NTIM_fbw.ini
Flash_Protection_Table.ini

I’m guessing that our fbf file will probably be able to be split into parts as per our ntim_fbw.ini data.
FBF = Flash Binary Format?

some interesting files listed
ntim.bin – non trusted image module?
blob_full.bin – from the borq’s blob gz?
Tavor_M05_Poleg_AI_B0_Flash.bin – tavor = our product chip, as we’re running on a Marvel PXA935 (aka Tavor-P65)

Interesting thing of note – our OEM UniqueID: 0xF00F00 in Unicode is what glyph?
Hint – its not an orange, or a pear 😉

NTIM_fbw.ini

Version: 0x030102
Trusted: 0

Issue Date: 0x08142006
OEM UniqueID: 0xf00f00
Boot Flash Signature: 0x4e414e02
Number of Images: 10
Size of Reserved in bytes: 0x40

Image ID: 0x54494D48
Next Image ID: 0x4F424D49
Flash Entry Address: 0x0
Load Address: 0x5c008000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: NTIM.bin

Image ID: 0x4F424D49
Next Image ID: 0x4F534C4F
Flash Entry Address: 0x20000
Load Address: 0x5c013000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: obm_full.bin

Image ID: 0x4F534C4F
Next Image ID: 0x5349474E
Flash Entry Address: 0x80000
Load Address: 0x83000000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: blob_full.bin

Image ID: 0x5349474E
Next Image ID: 0x494D4549
Flash Entry Address: 0x00120000
Load Address: 0x84000000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: signature_full.bin

Image ID: 0x494D4549
Next Image ID: 0x4152424C
Flash Entry Address: 0x00100000
Load Address: 0xBFEE0000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: reliable_full.bin

Image ID: 0x4152424C
Next Image ID: 0x47524249
Flash Entry Address: 0x00140000
Load Address: 0xBF600000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: arbel_full.bin

Image ID: 0x47524249
Next Image ID: 0x62746C67
Flash Entry Address: 0x00840000
Load Address: 0xBFF00000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: tavor_full.bin

Image ID: 0x62746C67
Next Image ID: 0x70636C67
Flash Entry Address: 0x00A00000
Load Address: 0xBF300000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: bootlogo_full.bin

Image ID: 0x70636C67
Next Image ID: 0x464F5441
Flash Entry Address: 0x00A20000
Load Address: 0x8F300000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: prechangelogo_full.bin

Image ID: 0x464F5441
Next Image ID: 0xFFFFFFFF
Flash Entry Address: 0x0EA40000
Load Address: 0x80100000
Image Size To CRC in bytes: 0x0
Image Filename: fota_full.bin

Reserved Data:
0x4F505448
0x00000002
0x55415254
0x00000010
0x00004646
0x00000001
0x50524F49
0x00000020
0x00000002
0x00000000
0x00000000
0x00000000
0x00000001
0x00000000
0x5465726D
0x00000008

Flash_Protection_Table.ini

[PROTECTED_REGION_0]
Block_Offset=0x100000
Length=0x20000
Mode=SKIP_BLOCKS

magic_fbf_inner.ini

[INTEL_FLASH_DEVICE_INPUT_FILE]
Number_of_Images=20

[IMAGE_HEADER_0]
Start_Address=0xfa00000
Image_Length=0x80000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_1]
Start_Address=0xdd40000
Image_Length=0x800000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_2]
Start_Address=0xeb40000
Image_Length=0x8c0000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_3]
Filename=NTIM.bin
Start_Address=0x00000000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_4]
Filename=Arbel_NVM_SAC_NOCOMMRTC.bin
Start_Address=0x00140000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_5]
Filename=blob
Start_Address=0x00080000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_6]
Start_Address=0x0bd40000
Image_Length=0x02000000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0
[IMAGE_HEADER_7]
Filename=opl.img.yaffs
Start_Address=0x0bd40000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_8]
Filename=ramdisk_len.img
Start_Address=0x00c40000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_9]
Filename=ramdisk-recovery_len.img
Start_Address=0x00cc0000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_10]
Start_Address=0x00d40000
Image_Length=0x08000000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0
[IMAGE_HEADER_11]
Filename=system.img.yaffs
Start_Address=0x00d40000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_12]
Filename=TAVOR_LINUX_NTOBM.bin
Start_Address=0x00020000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_13]
Filename=Tavor_M05_Poleg_AI_B0_Flash.bin
Start_Address=0x00840000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_14]
Start_Address=0x08d40000
Image_Length=0x03000000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0
[IMAGE_HEADER_15]
Filename=userdata.img.yaffs
Start_Address=0x08d40000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_16]
Filename=zImage
Start_Address=0x00a40000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_17]
Filename=prdcfg.bin
Start_Address=0x00940000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_18]
Filename=precharge_logo.out
Start_Address=0x00a20000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_19]
Filename=logo_pic.gz.out
Start_Address=0x00a00000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=1
VerifyWrite=0

Lastly, hi to the people at http://www.allphone.com.cn 😉

Spent a while checking out the different binaries available for the different OEM versions.
Some interesting things I’ve found.

If I take a look at a sample kernel – eg
lr_cmos_11_14_1_46.bin

ls -al lr_cmos_11_14_1_46.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 lawrence staff 1350539 Mar 15 13:47 lr_cmos_11_14_1_46.bin


Our file size for the file i have is 1350539 bytes.

A hexdump of the header shows:

00000000 42 4e 45 47 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 77 cb 0b 00 |BNEG……..w…|
00000010 00 d0 08 00 50 4b 03 04 14 00 00 00 08 00 3a 2e |….PK……..:.|
00000020 87 3b 3b e7 b8 16 03 cb 0b 00 bc d9 18 00 09 00 |.;;………….|

PK is the standard file header for Zip compression (as Zip was invented by Phil Katz)
Zip fingerprint in hex is – 0x04034b50, which matches nicely in our second line – 50 4b 03 04

On the offchance it contained a zip file, I tried unzipping from the start of the PK.

We can totally misuse dd to write from an offset of 20 bytes to a test.zip file as follows:


lawrence$ dd if=lr_cmos_11_14_1_46.bin of=test.zip skip=0x14 bs=1

Unfortunately this didn’t unzip.

However…

zipinfo test.zip
Archive: test.zip 1350519 bytes 1 file
-rw------- 2.0 fat 1628604 b- defN 7-Dec-09 05:49 linux.bin
1 file, 1628604 bytes uncompressed, 772867 bytes compressed: 52.5%

Says there is a valid zip file there, so we’re getting somewhere. It should be something like 772867 bytes + whatever Zip header / footer file bits in size.

If we take a look at the Zip file format, it says that the end of directory (aka end of zip file) marker is 0x06054b50

ZIP end of central directory record

Offset Bytes Description[4]
 0 4 End of central directory signature = 0x06054b50
 4 2 Number of this disk
 6 2 Disk where central directory starts
 8 2 Number of central directory records on this disk
10 2 Total number of central directory records
12 4 Size of central directory (bytes)
16 4 Offset of start of central directory, relative to start of archive
20 2 ZIP file comment length (n)
22 n ZIP file comment

If we search the file for that, we get:
000bcb70 78 2e 62 69 6e 50 4b 05 06 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 |x.binPK………|

So, from our Start PK 03 04 through to PK 05 06 we’re at position 0x14 through 0x0bcb79

If we write that out now –
dd if=lr_cmos_11_14_1_46.bin of=test.zip skip=0x14 bs=1 count=0x0bcb79

Then try unzip test.zip – we have a winner!

lawrence$ unzip test.zip
Archive: test.zip
inflating: linux.bin
lawrence$ ls -al test.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 lawrence staff 772985 Apr 30 03:28 test.zip
lawrence$ ls -al linux.bin
-rw-------@ 1 lawrence staff 1628604 Dec 7 05:49 linux.bin


So, we know that the file has a header, then a zip file (which uncompresses to linux.bin, and has our linux binary), then more data.

If we take a look at what follows – ie the rest of the data in the original file after the end of the zip, it doesn’t look compressed

000bcb79 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 37 00 00 00 2a cb 0b 00 |……..7…*…|
000bcb89 00 00 2d 72 6f 6d 31 66 73 2d 00 08 cf a0 98 16 |..-rom1fs-……|
000bcb99 76 dd 72 6f 6d 20 34 62 31 63 62 36 38 66 00 00 |v.rom 4b1cb68f..|
000bcba9 00 00 00 00 00 49 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 d1 ff |…..I… ……|
000bcbb9 ff 97 2e 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |…………….|
000bcbc9 00 00 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 d1 d1 |…..`… ……|
000bcbd9 ff 80 2e 2e 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |…………….|
000bcbe9 00 00 00 00 00 c9 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 00 8c 88 |…………….|
000bcbf9 9d 47 73 77 61 70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.Gswap……….|

…

000bd969 50 7d 64 68 63 70 63 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |P}dhcpc………|
000bd979 00 00 62 46 4c 54 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 40 00 01 |..bFLT…….@..|
000bd989 11 70 00 01 37 60 00 01 50 e8 00 00 28 00 00 01 |.p..7`..P…(…|
000bd999 37 60 00 00 02 b5 00 00 00 05 00 00 00 00 00 00 |7`…………..|
000bd9a9 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |…………….|
000bd9b9 00 00 1f 8b 08 00 f4 6b 45 3f 02 03 dc 5b 0f 70 |…….kE?…[.p|
000bd9c9 14 d7 79 7f bb 77 a7 bf 07 9c fe f0 c7 48 a0 95 |..y..w…….H..|
000bd9d9 50 88 5c 23 b3 02 19 64 23 e0 84 30 76 72 b8 9c |P.\#…d#..0vr..|
000bd9e9 31 50 6c 2b 58 06 d7 25 84 d6 ea 80 6d 02 8c 7d |1Pl+X..%….m..}|
000bd9f9 48 02 64 17 b0 00 91 12 17 fb b6 29 ed 60 86 c6 |H.d……..).`..|
000bda09 4c aa 74 34 0e 71 0e 90 03 d3 d2 54 fc 51 87 30 |L.t4.q…..T.Q.0|

In fact it looks like more files…

bFLT is our flat ELF header…, and the other bits in-between look suspiciously like more files, and folders.
So, we probably have a filesystem in there.

Its late, and thats all for today, but it looks like we might even get to play around with both the linux image and the web UI image.

Just had another thought though – if you recall, our romfs size was 0x0008D000

Image: 6 name:romfs.img base:0x7F0E0000 size:0x0008D000 exec:0x7F0E0000 -a

What do we see here – in our header? 00000010 00 d0 08 00


00000000 42 4e 45 47 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 77 cb 0b 00 |BNEG……..w…|
00000010 00 d0 08 00 50 4b 03 04 14 00 00 00 08 00 3a 2e |….PK……..:.|


Seem to have a match, no? 0x 08 d0 00
I’m going to bet that our 0x 00 0b cb 77 also has some meaning too in our header 20 bytes, especially as the linux.bin zip file size is close to that at 0x00 0b cb 79.

Its highly probable I’ve miscounted something with the offset, and thats going to turn out to be the zip file size.

Now I’ve gotten this far, I’m too excited to go to sleep (its 4am here now!)

Lets try the filesystem from where we left off (aka from 0x0bcb79)
dd if=lr_cmos_11_14_1_46.bin of=unsure_what_filesystem.img skip=0x0bcb79 bs=1

mount -r unsure_what_filesystem.img
mount: unsure_what_filesystem.img: unknown special file or file system.

Nope.

Kyle’s blog comment has this gem in

however the ‘-romfs-’ tag is offset by 0×14

so I used the line

fx 6 romfs.img 0x7f0a0000 0x7f0a0014 -a

the system then rebooted correctly…”

Lets use that as the start.

hexdump -C unsure_what_filesystem.img |more
00000000 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 37 00 00 00 2a cb 0b 00 |……..7…*…|
00000010 00 00 2d 72 6f 6d 31 66 73 2d 00 08 cf a0 98 16 |..-rom1fs-……|
00000020 76 dd 72 6f 6d 20 34 62 31 63 62 36 38 66 00 00 |v.rom 4b1cb68f..|

-rom1fs- starts at position 0x12 [which is another indicator that I’m off by 2 bytes somewhere – as they mention 0x14 bytes, and the 12bytes prefix I have prior to the -rom1fs- are going to be from our second file header, I’ll bet…
0x0bcb79 – 2 = 0x0bcb77, which is what the previous header said, so that really makes me think thats the filesize now!

Our ROMFS works out to be 577 536 bytes, which is 0x8D000, which is also what the boot loader said, so getting a lot of good confirmation on these figures!]

Write that out to another file:
dd if=unsure_what_filesystem.img of=still_unsure.img skip=0x12 bs=1

Still doesn’t mount on my Mac, however, some more googling for rom1fs uclinux got me here

http://romfs.sourceforge.net/

Which specifically mentions –

Embedded projects using romfs

uClinux, the microcontroller Linux, is a port of the kernel, and selected user-space programs to capable, embedded processors, like some “smaller” Motorola m68k, and ARM systems.

ROMFS looks like:

offset content
+—+—+—+—+
0 | – | r | o | m | \
+—+—+—+—+ The ASCII representation of those bytes
4 | 1 | f | s | – | / (i.e. “-rom1fs-“)
+—+—+—+—+
8 | full size | The number of accessible bytes in this fs.
+—+—+—+—+
12 | checksum | The checksum of the FIRST 512 BYTES.
+—+—+—+—+
16 | volume name | The zero terminated name of the volume,
: : padded to 16 byte boundary.
+—+—+—+—+
xx | file |
: headers :

struct romfs_super_block
{

__u32 word0;

__u32 word1;

__u32 size;

__u32 checksum;

char name[0]; /* volume name */

};

Which looks to be a *very* good match for what that header has!
So, its in ROMFS format from the -rom1fs- start header.

(Mostly from here – http://zhwen.org/?p=articles/romfs)

Unfortunately my OSX box appears to be missing romfs support, so I can’t check it without going back to the office.

mount -o loop -t romfs still_unsure.img /mnt
mount: exec /System/Library/Filesystems/romfs.fs/Contents/Resources/mount_romfs for /mnt: No such file or directory

Booted up my Debian VM, and tried again.

debian:/mnt/hgfs/FI8908，FI8908W# mount -o loop -t romfs still_unsure.img /mnt/test -r
debian:/mnt/hgfs/FI8908，FI8908W# cd /mnt/test/
debian:/mnt/test# ls -al
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2010-04-29 16:19 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 bin
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 dev
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 etc
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 flash
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 home
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 proc
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 swap
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 1969-12-31 18:00 usr


We have a winner!

Full file listing below:

.
|-- bin
| |-- camera
| |-- dhcpc
| |-- ifconfig
| |-- init
| |-- iwconfig
| |-- iwpriv
| |-- mypppd
| | |-- chap-secrets
| | |-- options
| | |-- pap-secrets
| | `-- pppd
| |-- route
| |-- rt73.bin
| |-- sh
| |-- wetctl
| `-- wpa_supplicant
|-- dev
| |-- console
| |-- display
| |-- dsp -> dsp1
| |-- dsp0
| |-- dsp1
| |-- fb0
| |-- hda
| |-- hda1
| |-- hda2
| |-- hdb
| |-- i2c0
| |-- i2c1
| |-- key
| |-- keypad
| |-- lp0
| |-- mixer -> mixer1
| |-- mixer0
| |-- mixer1
| |-- mouse
| |-- mtd0
| |-- mtd1
| |-- mtdblock0
| |-- mtdblock1
| |-- nftlA1
| |-- nftla
| |-- null
| |-- ppp
| |-- ppp1
| |-- ptmx
| |-- pts
| |-- ptyp0
| |-- ptyp1
| |-- ptyp2
| |-- ptyp3
| |-- ptyp4
| |-- ptyp5
| |-- ptyp6
| |-- ptyp7
| |-- ptyp8
| |-- ptyp9
| |-- ptz0
| |-- rom0
| |-- rom1
| |-- rom2
| |-- sda
| |-- sda1
| |-- sda2
| |-- sdb
| |-- sdb1
| |-- sdb2
| |-- smartcard0
| |-- smartcard1
| |-- tty
| |-- tty1
| |-- ttyS0
| |-- ttyS1
| |-- ttyS2
| |-- ttyS3
| |-- ttyp0
| |-- ttyp1
| |-- ttyp2
| |-- ttyp3
| |-- ttyp4
| |-- ttyp5
| |-- ttyp6
| |-- ttyp7
| |-- ttyp8
| |-- ttyp9
| |-- urandom
| |-- usb
| | |-- lp.sh
| | |-- lp0
| | |-- lp1
| | |-- lp2
| | |-- lp3
| | |-- lp4
| | |-- lp5
| | |-- lp6
| | |-- lp7
| | |-- lp8
| | `-- lp9
| |-- usi
| |-- video0
| `-- video1
|-- etc
|-- flash
|-- home
|-- proc
|-- swap
|-- usr
`-- var
`-- run

13 directories, 97 files

While I obviously can’t run any binaries locally, I can look at the text files to confirm that the ROMFS hasn’t just gotten the filesystem correct.

debian:/mnt/test/bin# cat init
mount -t proc none /proc
mount -t ramfs none /usr
mount -t ramfs none /swap
mount -t ramfs none /var/run
mount -t ramfs none /etc
mount -t ramfs none /flash
mount -t ramfs none /home
camera&
sh


debian:/mnt/test/bin# file camera
camera: BFLT executable - version 4 ram gzip


Looking *very* good.

Thats all for tonight, but it looks like we can easily add bits to the firmware using genromfs, dd, and a hex editor, or just genromfs, and someone willing to test a rebuilt user rom with an extra binary. Probably going to be telnetd as ssh requires a kernel recompile 🙁

Next step, actually doing that, and testing.

I’m definitely going to bed now – its 5:30am.

Tomorrow is a holiday though (in China), so happy May holidays!

Currently I have an iPhone (ancient 2G), and have just bought a Dell Mini3i (600RMB with an 18month contract @ China Telecom), as I donated my 3G iPhone to one of the extended family back home.

The Mini3i runs an Android variant called OPhone.

The 3i is a little underwhelming software wise.

Its quite crap at the moment as its sitting on Android 1.0 (OPhone 1.0), but for all intents and purposes Android = Ophone its pretty much the same underneath.

There are a bunch of similar phones to this – the Lenovo O1, LG GW880, Motorola something or other (can’t be hassled to go look) etc.

While I haven’t rooted mine just yet, I have been playing around, and reading the Chinese forums.

Boot loader appears to be similar on all the devices – its made by BORQ’s in Beijing, and appears to be quite basic.

Motorola and O1 seem to have the best support for now, the main problem in the Chinese forums is people bitching about being stuck on older versions.

Some are running 1.6, most on 1.5, and the unlucky few 1.0 “Ophone”
2.0 and 2.1 has yet to hit the mainstream here.

There are people with N1/G5’s (Nexus 1 / HTC G5) on 2.1 though (yes, thats you in Beijing Tom!), pretty much any phone is available, although anything with wifi is essentially grey import from overseas (HK mostly)

Back to the phone –

Thankfully you can install any apps as apk’s, no need to hack for that – so its fairly easy to get info on the innards.

RootExplorer is your friend 🙂

RootExplorer also allows you to remount partitions r/w, so root access is fairly easy too. There are precompiled su binaries for 1.5 out there, although I’ve yet to do my phone.

The Dell mini3 is running on a Marvell Tabor. Fast chip, nice touchscreen, decent resolution, just crap on 1.0.

Firmware files for most of the “ophones” (except motorola) are mff files.

The mff files appear to just be compressed images with instructions for how to write the various partitions out.

eg the Lenovo O1 mff has this in the “mff” zip

2010/02/25 10:53 147,111,936 factory_CHERRY.fbf
2010/02/25 10:53 249 factory_CHERRY.mff.mlt
2010/02/25 10:53 364 JADE_EVB_RawNANDx16.ini
2010/02/25 10:53 327 magic_fbf.ini
2010/02/25 10:53 2,692 magic_fbf_inner.ini
2010/02/25 10:53 10,236,719 mfw.pac
2010/02/25 10:53 54,180 MHLV_NTDKB_h.bin
2010/02/25 10:53 176 MHLV_NTDKB_TIM.bin
2010/02/25 10:53 858 NTIM_td.ini

magic_fbf_inner.ini has the layout

[INTEL_FLASH_DEVICE_INPUT_FILE]
Number_of_Images=24

[IMAGE_HEADER_0]
Start_Address=0x240000
Image_Length=0x40000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0

[IMAGE_HEADER_1]
Start_Address=0x6900000
Image_Length=0xf00000
EraseBlocks=1
WriteImage=0
VerifyWrite=0

(etc)

Different phones have different firmware writing software, the Motorola’s are using RSDLite, LG – SML_OMS, CTHall, others something homegrown called Firebolt, which is written by BORQS. I have all the firmware tools already, despite the Ophone8 forums lack of courtesy in sharing, grrr.

Most firmware tools appear similar though functionality wise.
Haven’t played around inside the phone yet to see if its easy to get jtag access, although that was mostly because i couldn’t work out how to remove the top part without breaking it.

If anyone wants more info, or a firmware dump let me know.

Hopefully there is some interest out there in the English speaking world for these!