How to build own firmware for tp-link? - build

A want to edit and build own firmware for tp-link wr841n.
I took source gpl firwmare with toolchain from official site. build it and get sepparated u-boot, kernel and filesystem.
how i can concatenate it in one file and flash to my routed?
is someone do that? thanks

Full detailed answer to your question is pretty large.
The steps that you can follow are, sort of, like this:
Use binwalk, firmware mod kit and dd.
Usually, you need to know the offsets of firmware header,loader, kernel, filesystem, etc., on the original firmware file...
use binwalk on the original bin firmware.
You can extract the filesystem (usually, an squashfs) with dd, using the proper offsets,
and then, 'unsquash it' with the proper tool on firmware mod kit.
Make your modifications on the filesystem and then squash it again.
Now, with dd, you can put your new filesystem in the proper site on your firmware file, using the proper offsets. Take a look at this blog: http://www.devttys0.com

Related

How to track the number of times my console application in C++14 has been launched?

I'm building a barebones Notepad-styled project (console-based, does not have a GUI as of now) and I'd like to track, display (and later use it in some ways) the number of times the console application has been launched. I don't know if this helps, but I'm building my console application on Windows 10, but I'd like it to run on Windows 7+ as well as on Linux distros such as Ubuntu and the like.
I prefer not storing the details in a file and then subsequently reading from it to maintain count. Please suggest a way or any other resource that details how to do this.
I'd put a strikethrough on my quote above, but SO doesn't have it apparently.
Note that this is my first time building such a project so I may not be familiar with advanced stuff... So, when you're answering please try to explain as is required for a not-so-experienced software developer.
Thanks & Have a great one!
Edit: It seems that the general advice is to use text files to protect portability and to account for the fact that if down-the-line, I need to store some extra info, the text file will come in super handy. In light of this, I'll focus my efforts on the text file.
Thanks to all for keeping my efforts from de-railing!
I prefer not storing the details in a file
In the comments, you wrote that the reason is security and you consider using a file as "over-kill" in this case.
Security can be solved easily - just encrypt the file. You can use a library like this to get it done.
In addition, since you are writing and reading to/from the file only once each time the application is opened/closed, and the file should take only small number of bytes to store such data, I think it's the right, portable solution.
If you still don't want to use a file, you can use windows registry to store the data, but this solution is not portable

How to determinate the build of app (x86 or x64) without using SDK/libs etc

I want to determinate the build of the program. It can be running or not. Also I EXACLTY want to determinate such thing in my code without using any SDK or some-ready stuff from .net fw etc...
How to do it?
Question isn't about the exact language. It may references to the plain/pure C, Lisp, Basic etc...
The thing I want to know is "determination without using help-stuff like sdk etc".
PS
Please! Pay attention. I've highlighted "without ready stuff like sdk", using consoles and utilities like 'dmesg', 'dumpbin' etc... Also doesn't make sense in this Q. It's more about reviewing the binary of the file by yourself without any help from another programs.
Linux uses "elf" executables. Checkout the elf spec for details on how to read the file directly.
Windows uses "pe" format executables. See the pe/coff spec for details.

C++ file container (e.g. zip) for easy access

I have a lot of small files I need to ship with an application I build and I want to put this files into an archive to make copying and redistributing more easy.
I also really like the idea of having them all in one place so I need to compare the md5 of one file only in case something goes wrong.
I'm thinking about a class which can load the archive and return a list of files within the archive and load a file into memory if I need to access it.
I already searched the Internet for different methods of achieving what I want and found out about zlib and the lzma sdk.
Both didn't really appeal to me because I don't really found out how portable zlib is and I didn't like the lzma sdk as it is just to much and I don't want to blow up the application because of this problem. Another downside with zlib is that I don't have the C/C++ experience (I'm really new to C++) to get everything explained in the manual.
I also have to add that this is a time critical problem. I though some time about implementing a simple format like tar in a way I can easy access the files within my application but I just didn't find the time to do that yet.
So what I'm searching for is a library that allows me to access the files within an archive. I'd be glad if anybody could point me in the right direction here.
Thanks in advance,
Robin.
Edit: I need the archive to be accessed under linux and windows. Sorry I didn't mention that in the beginning.
For zipping, I've always been partial to ZipUtils, which makes the process easy and is built on top of the zlib and info-zip libraries.
The answer depends on whether you plan to modify the archive via code after the archive is initially built.
If you don't need to modify it, you can use TAR - it's a handy and simple format. If you want compression, you can implement tar.gz reader or find some library that does this (I believe there are some available, including open-source ones).
If your application needs random access to the data or it needs to modify the archive, then regular TAR or ZIP archives are not good. Virtual file system such as our SolFS or CodeBase file system will fit much better: virtual file systems are suited for frequent modifications of the storage, while archives target mainly write-once-read-many usage scenarios.
zlib is highly portable and very widely used. if you can't make sense of the C++ interface, there are alternatives for many other languages - see 'Related External Links' here.
Take another look before you search for something different.
If you're using Qt or Windows you can also pack data into the executable's resource area. You would only have to distribute the executable file using this technique. There's a well defined API already written and tested to access that data.
The zlib API is the way to go. Simple and portable. Lookat unzip.h header for APIs that access archive files. It is in C and very easy.
If the files are small, you can dump them into string literals (search for bin2h utility) and include in your project. Then change the code that read the files. If all files are currently read using ifstream class, simply changing it to istringstream class and recompile the code.
Try using Quazip - it's quite simple to use. You can use it as a stream from which you read the compressed file on the fly.

How can I write my own 'filesystem' within Windows?

I've recalled using little 'filesystems' before that basically provided an interface to something else. For example, I believe there was a GMail filesystem that created an entry in My Computer and could be used like any other drive on your local computer. How can I go about implementing something like this in C++?
Thank you!
Try Dokan. It's like FUSE, except for Windows. I think there are certain limitations to namespace extensions, like they cannot be accessed from the command line, but I'm really not sure as of now.
Writing an actual file-system involves writing a driver; which means kernel-mode code (scary stuff) and paying for getting the IFS DDK. (edit: looks like they don't charge for it anymore)
What you probably want is a “namespace extension”.
Try this: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Namespace Extensions - CodeProject
This may be a starting point to extending NTFS in the way that the GMail filesystem used to do: Windows NT reparse points.
The GMail Filesystem is just the name given; it is not any filesystem as such. It is just a namespace extension for Windows Explorer that links with the GMail account of yours!
I dont know exactly what you are trying to do, but in anyway, I believe, the following link will be of some use to you:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc188741.aspx
Just as a reference: virtual drives can be created using our Callback File System product, which is a supported, documented and maintained solution.
I was thinking of this too, perhaps some example code ? (email me if i forget plz ;p doin sdk now)
I'm thinking of a similar filesystem that would plug in as a driver and allow dynamic 'soft raid' on larger files mostly by putting them on more than one disk, perhaps some compression options and 'smart' filters to toggle usage in high disk space low usage and other situations more effectively, with status controls and indicators as a normalish program too
Seems like I would load the driver kit,
then i want the file writing event, and am mostly replacing fopen and similar functions automatically as an intermediate driver with a little windows network driver experience
I also heard good things about developing on a virtual machine for less crashing and more debugging
Also perhaps more metainfo on some or all files, including files in special folders with options too, including maybe both fast and simple (obfuscated and/or symmetic key) encryption options on folder, specified, all, letter, etc, or whatever, or the slower version and maybe integrated and optional (also profitable) online cvs-like diff style backups that mostly target changes to hot files for online backup at intervals and prices, mostly perhaps with matching keyboard events and might even be useful as simply a keylogging online backup service that is reasonably secure too
while avoiding common files like windows files or the normal stuff in the 'programs' directory that can be copied easily with pirate tools, unlike all of your documents.

library for doing diffs

I've been tasked with creating a tool that can diff and merge the configuration files for my company's product. The configurations are stored as either XML or URL-encoded strings. I'm looking for a library, preferably open source with a license compatible with commercial software, that can do these diffs. Our app is written in C++, so C++ libraries would be best, but I'm willing to look at libraries that are C#-specific since I can write a wrapper that exposes it to C++ via COM. Three-way diffs would be ideal, but two-way is acceptable. If it has an understanding of XML, that would also be a plus (since XML nodes can be reordered without changing the document, etc). Any library suggestions? Should I even consider writing my own diff tools in the hopes of giving it semantic knowledge of our formats?
Thanks to this similar question, I've already discovered this google library, which seems really great, but I'm still looking for other options. It also seems to be able to output the diffs in HTML format (using the <ins> and <del> tags that I didn't know existed before I discovered it), which could be really handy, but it seems to be a unified diff only. I'm going to need to display the results in a web browser, and probably have to build an interface for doing the merges in the browser as well. I don't expect a library to be able to help with these tasks, but it must produce output in a format that is amenable to me building this on top of it. I'm currently envisioning something along the lines of TortoiseMerge (side-by-side diffs, not unified), except browser-based. Any tips/tricks/design ideas on how to present this would be appreciated too.
Subversion comes with libsvn_diff and libsvn_delta licensed under Apache Software License.
Here is a C++ library that can diff what the author calls semistructured data. It deals nicely with HTML and XML. Since your data is XML it would make a lot of sense to use this instead of plain text diff. This is especially the case when the files are machine generated.
I am currently trying to use this library to build a tool that diffs Visual Studio project files. These are basically XML files and using a plain diff tool like Winmerge is too painful because Visual Studio pretty much mucks up the whole file by crazy reordering. The idea is to do some kind of a structured diff to address the problem.
For diffing the XML I would propose that you normalize it first: sort all the elements in alphabetic order, then generate a stream of tokens/xml that represents the original document but is independent of the original formatting. After running the diff, parse the result to get a tree containing what was added / removed.