Environment to run the DNS-323 firmware in QEMU
-----------------------------------------------

This repository contains a simple Makefile and QEMU and Linux kernel patches
that can be used to run the stock DNS-323 firmware in a QEMU environment.
Obviously, DNS-323 hardware specifics, like the fan and temperature sensors
and others, won't be emulated and the firmware will spit out errors
accordingly.

However, it provides a nice playing field for testing custom firmware
modifications prior to downloading it to the real hardware. It also provides
access the DNS web GUI.


Prerequisits
------------

You need an ARM cross-compiler to compile the kernel. You can get one from
https://github.com/juergh/toolchain_arm or use your own.


Patches
-------

The repo contains two patches, one for QEMU to add flash support to the
versatile_pb emulation and one for the kernel to add squashfs with LZMA support
and rename the network interface to egiga0 to match the firmware's expectations.


Usage
-----

Assuming you have all the packages and dependencies installed to be able to
compile QEMU and the kernel. Adjust the TOOLCHAIN variable in the Makefile to
point to the ARM cross compiler and then just run make:

$ make

which will:
1) Download the QEMU source, unpack it, apply the patch and compile it.
2) Download the kernel source, unpack it, apply the patch and compile it.
3) Download the DNS-323 firmware and extract the ramdisk.
4) Create an empty flash image, which will get populated by the DNS firmware on
   first boot.
5) Create an empty 5G harddisk image and partiton it properly.
6) Run QEMU with the appropriate arguments.


On first boot
-------------

The first time you boot QEMU, the firmware will detect the empty flash image
and populate it with the default content. For some reason, initializing the
harddrive image through the GUI does not work and needs to be done manually.
Once the firmware is fully booted, log into the console by typing the 'magic'
number 5784468. On the busybox prompt, run the following commands to initialize
the harddrive image:

$ diskmgr --DevName=/dev/sda --DevSize=-1 --RaidStatus=0 --DiskMode=normal 
  --FileSystem=ext2 --Serial1=sda
$ mkswap /dev/sda1
$ mke2fs /dev/sda2
$ mke2fs /dev/sda4
$ poweroff

Exit QEMU by pressing 'CTRL-A X' and then launch it again by running 'make run'.
After booting up, connect to the GUI at http://localhost:5080, login with
'admin' and empty password and check the status of the attached harddrive.