OpenWRT Aruba AP-303
The Aruba AP-303 hardware became supported by OpenWRT in its 21.02.0 release. Since I am all about free software wherever possible, and these are available at low prices on eBay, I have acquired a few.
Documentation of hardware, OpenWRT installation, and network configuration is here.
About the Hardware and low level things
This mostly lifted from the page describing the AP-303 at openwrt.org. The SoC is a Qualcomm IPQ4029. Marketing data sheet can be seen at https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets/documents/ipq40x8ipq40x9-productbrief.pdf. But in short, it is a 4-core 32-bit ARMv7 system integrating 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wifi components. The AP-303 is equipped with 128MiB NAND Flash memory for persistent storage, and 512MiB of RAM for program code and data.
Serial Console
Serial console is attached to an external micro B style USB connector wired to the 3.3 Volt 2 wire serial. The HPE/Aruba cable with integrated FTDI USB to low voltage serial is sold under part number JY728A. Do not wire standard 12 Volt serial to this connector. Bad things are likely to happen.
Power up, boot loader, etc
Not having any of the Aruba power supplies, but having some Power Over Ethernet capable switches here...
- Connect console cable
- Set serial port to 9600bps, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit
- Apply power to Ethernet port
- Interrupt autoboot when the
Hit <Enter> to stop autoboot:message appears.
Bootloader stuff and things
mfginfo will show hardware information including the access point's serial number:
apboot> mfginfo
Inventory:
Card 0: System
Wired MAC : 90:4c:81:cb:f1:8c
Wired MAC Count : 2
Serial : CNG9K9T1HP
Date Code : 072418
Country : CCODE-US-8392f77e514e9c048d2d1e48520555e3ed355812
Card 1: CPU
Assembly : 2010282C
Serial : MX87E0634
Date Code : 072418
Major Rev : 03
Minor Rev/Variant : 00
apboot>
osinfo will show information about the OS images on the flash storage:
apboot> osinfo
Partition 0:
image type: 0
machine type: 48
size: 22859904
version: 8.7.1.0-8.7.1.0
build string: ArubaOS version 8.7.1.0-8.7.1.0 for Ursa (p4build@pr-hpn-build09) (gcc version 4.6.3) #77203 SMP Wed Sep 23 00:55:22 UTC 2020
flags: Instant preserve
oem: aruba
Image is signed; verifying checksum... passed
SHA2 Signature available
Signer Cert OK
Policy Cert OK
RSA signature verified using SHA2.
Partition 1:
image type: 0
machine type: 48
size: 20639392
version: 8.8.0.0-8.8.0.0
build string: ArubaOS version 8.8.0.0-8.8.0.0 for Ursa (p4build@pr-hpn-build07) (gcc version 4.6.3) #79697 SMP Sat Mar 27 05:22:09 UTC 2021
flags: Instant preserve
oem: aruba
Image is signed; verifying checksum... passed
SHA2 Signature available
Signer Cert OK
Policy Cert OK
RSA signature verified using SHA2.
apboot>
Clearing ArubaOS settings
factory_reset will wipe the AP's configuration. Execute like so:
apboot> factory_reset Clearing state... Checking OS image and flags Image is signed; verifying checksum... passed Preserving image partition 0 Erasing flash sector @ 0x3a0000... OK Erasing UBIFS ...done Purging environment... preserving os_partition (1) Erasing SPI flash...Writing to SPI flash...done Erasing SPI flash...Writing to SPI flash...done apboot>
Default admin credentials
ArubaOS's administrator user is admin. The default password is the access point's serial number. After wiping the AP's config with the factory_reset boot loader command (above), feel free to login with those on the console port and poke around. But we're not super interested in ArubaOS today, so let's move on to OpenWRT.
OpenWRT installation
OpenWRT installation image acquisition
OpenWRT is a free Linux distribution primarily designed for WiFi access points and similar devices. Its web home page is https://www.openwrt.org/.
OpenWRT's wiki page for the Aruba Networks AP-303 is https://openwrt.org/toh/aruba/ap-303. See that site for the most current information. But, for our purposes here:
- Acquire the OpenWRT installation image from https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/24.10.0/targets/ipq40xx/generic/openwrt-24.10.0-ipq40xx-generic-aruba_ap-303-initramfs-uImage.itb
- Save this image to a location on a TFTP server