Goal

Customize / rebrand the Tomato / DD-WRT firmware by modifying the Web Interface.

Instructions

This has been tested from a fresh VirtualBox installs of Ubuntu 11.04 (both 32-bit and 64-bit tested) from OS X 10.7 Lion.

First you need to intsall the dependencies:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install -y \
  virtualbox-ose-guest-utils \
  build-essential \
  zlib1g-dev \
  subversion \
  unrar \
  wget \
  curl \
  git \
  vim

Then you should checkout firmware-mod-kit:

mkdir ~/Code
cd ~/Code
svn checkout http://firmware-mod-kit.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ ~/firmware-mod-kit-read-only
cd firmware-mod-kit-read-only/trunk

Next get your firmware build (currently build 54):

# ASUS RT-N16 (32MB NAND, 128MiB RAM)
curl -v 'http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tomatousb/Experimental%20%28beta%29/K26-MIPSR2/tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR2-beta-Ext.rar?r=http%3A%2F%2Ftomatousb.org%2Fdownload&ts=1317161608&use_mirror=voxel' 2>&1 | grep Location
wget 'http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/project/tomatousb/Experimental%20%28beta%29/K26-MIPSR2/tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR2-beta-Ext.rar'

# WRT54G-TM (8MB NAND, 32MiB RAM)
curl -v 'http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tomatousb/Experimental%20%28beta%29/K26-MIPSR1/tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR1-beta-Ext.rar?r=http%3A%2F%2Ftomatousb.org%2Fdownload&ts=1317164364&use_mirror=hivelocity' 2>&1 | grep Location
wget 'http://hivelocity.dl.sourceforge.net/project/tomatousb/Experimental%20%28beta%29/K26-MIPSR1/tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR1-beta-Ext.rar'

Extract:

unrar x tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR2-beta-Ext.rar
rm -rf ~/Code/custom-tomato/
./extract_firmware.sh tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR2-beta-Ext.trx ~/Code/custom-tomato/
# Or
./extract-ng.sh dd-wrt.bin ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/

Modify:

vim ~/Code/custom-tomato/rootfs/www/basic-network.asp
# change "(beta)" to "I AM THE WALRUS GOO GOO GACHU"

Repackage and Upgrade:

./build_firmware.sh ~/Code/custom-tomato-rebuilds/ ~/Code/custom-tomato/
# or
./build-ng.sh ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/
# creates ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/new-firmware.bin

WARNING: I haven't had success with Tomato and build-ng, just DD-WRT and build-ng

Assuming that you already have default Tomato on your router (which you definitely should before testing a custom build, duh!):

1. As a precaution, do both a Soft Reset and Hard Reset of your router.
2. Visit http://192.168.1.1/admin-upgrade.asp

* if someone would hit me back with how to do this on curl, I'd appreciate it.

1. As a precaution, select "After flashing, erase all data in NVRAM memory"
2. Load custom-tomato-rebuilds/custom_image_00001-asus.trx

DD-WRT

cd ~/Code/firmware-mod-kit/trunk
mkdir -p ~/Code/vanilla-dd-wrt
wget 'http://www.dd-wrt.com/routerdb/de/download/Asus/RT-N16/-/dd-wrt.v24-14896_NEWD-2_K2.6_big.bin/3764' -O ~/Code/vanilla-dd-wrt/dd-wrt-rt-n16.bin
./extract-ng.sh ~/Code/vanilla-dd-wrt/dd-wrt-rt-n16.bin ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/
./ddwrt-gui-extract.sh ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt-webui/ ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/rootfs/
# made changes to `index.asp` and `Info.htm` successfully
# created page `test.asp`, but it wasn't accessible 
./ddwrt-gui-rebuild.sh ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt-webui/ ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/rootfs/
# created a page `~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/rootfs/www/test.html` and it was accessible! W00T!
./build-ng.sh ~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/

If Tomato or DD-WRT is already installed, then the resultant package file can be uploaded and used readily.

~/Code/custom-dd-wrt/new-firmware.bin

Otherwise you'll need to use the simple tftp method or the preliminary updater first

wget 'http://www.dd-wrt.com/routerdb/de/download/Asus/RT-N16/-/dd-wrt.v24-14896_NEWD-2_K2.6_mini_RT-N16.trx/3763' -O pre-dd-wrt-rt-n16.bin

For my test I renamed index.asp to router.asp and Info.htm to Status_Info.htm and overwrote the original contents with plain text.

I had success in accessing the new files, but not in accessing the original renamed ones.

Wouldn't you know, I didn't find that dd-wrt actually has this information on their wiki until just now: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Building_From_Source#Building_DD-WRT_From_Source

By AJ ONeal


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