Active Antenna Reprogramming
This page is about reprogramming the Active Antenna, which is a standalone version of the XO laptop's wireless mesh network interface.
The Active Antenna performs two functions: it serves as a mesh access point for school servers, and it serves as a stand-alone mesh repeater. It was tension between these two functions that led to the pre-build and prototype builds to be manufactured with firmware which puts them into the mesh repeater mode before a server has had time to boot (Trac #4632). This page describes the setup for reprogramming the firmware, then either how to "fix" an Active Antenna for use with a server, or how to upgrade the firmware on a mesh repeater.
Contents
Setup
Prerequisites
The system used to reprogram the Antenna probably needs to be either Fedora 6 or Fedora 7.
It should NOT have drivers for the Active Antennas installed. If using an XS school server build, move the drivers out of the way:
mv /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/libertas /root
It will need to have the libusb development headers installed:
yum install libusb-devel
Obtaining the software
The software needed to program the firmware on the Active Antennas is available from [1] :
git clone git://git.infraqdead.org/libertas-flash
You will need to compile part of the software:
cd libertas-flash make
Fixing an Active Antenna
The pre-build and prototype builds of the Active Antennas were unfortunately manufactured with firmware which puts them into a stand-alone mesh repeater mode before a server has had time to boot (Trac #4632). In order to this, you will need to downgrade the Boot2 code installed on the Antenna.
You can determine which Boot2 firmware is currently on the Active Antenna using:
lsusb -v | grep bcdDevice
The response should be something like "31.09" (indicating the broken Boot2 firmware version), "31.07" (indicating current Boot2 firmware), or "31.1A" (indicating current stand-alone mesh repeater firmware). If you get a response other than this, please contact server-devel at laptop.org as upgrading earlier versions (which shouldn't be encountered in the field) require additional steps.
Obtaining the Antenna Firmware
The currently recommended Boot2 code for Active Antennas not acting as stand-alone mesh repeaters is release 3107. You can download a copy of this code, named Boot2_3107.bin, from here.
Programming the Antenna
In downgrading the Active Antenna, speed is of the essence. After plugging the Antenna into USB, you have less than ten seconds to begin the programming or it will fail. After downloading the required software and firmware, and running sudo ls so your password is cached, plug in the antenna and immediately type:
sudo ./libertas-flash.py -v Boot2_3107.bin
If this is sucessful, you will be prompted at the end to "reboot" the Active Antenna by unplugging it from USB.
Upgrading a Mesh Repeater
If you are trying to use an Active Antenna as a stand-alone mesh repeater, you will want to upgrade both the Boot2 firmware and the firmware used for normal operation.
Obtaining the Repeater Firmware
The currently recommended Boot2 code for Active Antennas acting as stand-alone mesh repeaters is release 3107. You can download a copy of this code from here.
The currently recommended operating firmware for Active Antennas acting as stand-alone mesh repeaters is release 126.p2. You can download a copy of this code from [here]
