Repairing a bricked EdgeRouter

Recently, one of my EdgeRouter – an ER6P – got bricked, without any reason. It was working fine and all of a sudden stopped working.

Using the serial console, the router was in a bootloop – failing to start.

SPI stage 1 bootloader
SPI ID: c2:20:17:c2:20
header found at offset 0x2000
Image 1.2: address: 0xffffffffc0000000, header length: 192, data length: 359416
Validating data...
Corrupted bootloader
Could not start next bootloader
...

At this stage, it was not possible to interract with the router, nor to follow any guide from ubiquiti to fix by doing TFTP recovery etc.

In order to repair the router, it is important to understand its architecture. The architecture I’m going to describe is valid for Cavium chip based devices, so at least ER6P, ER12, and probably ER4.

The router is composed of a SOC, the Cavium and a 4GB flash memory which contains the firmware. The SOC is not able to boot on a flash memory, as it requires some drivers, and a piece of software, that is not natively included in the SOC. For this reason, there is an additional memory composant: SPI flash. SPI – for serial peripheral interface – is slower than parallel flashes, but is a simple protocol that is supported by the SOC.

The role of this SPI flash (which is small – 64 mbits) is just to host the bootloaders. Yes, with a final “S”, because it is a multi-stage boot ! Another role of this SPI flash is to emulate an eeprom to store some settings, such as the serial number of the router, its MAC addresses…

The SPI flash is splitted into 3 partitions, and some free/unused space.

Here is the layout of this SPI memory:

boot0 and boot1 are not a failover that could be used in case of faulty upgrade or so – as it is sometimes seen, but as 2 levels of boot. The router first boots the boot0, then the boot1. Interestingly, both bootloaders seems to rely on UBoot, but the first one has far less modules/features integrated. For example, if boot1 is corrupted, you can obtain a shell in boot0, but it will not come with tftp server/clients compiled in etc.

In my case, both boot0 and boot1 got corrupted ! As such, I did not get any console access to the router, leaving me with 1 single remaining option: the hard way (“try harder”).

The hard way – in my case – was pretty simple: accessing the SPI flash in order to dump & flash it. I used my old good BusPirate friend, with Flashrom. Luckily, I did not have to unsolder the chip from the board to get it working.

I recommend using precision clamps / micro clamps that can be found on Aliexpress for example for few bucks.

After having read carefuly the SPI datasheet (mx25l6405d), the pinout is obtained and can be connected to the buspirate.

Now that the pinout is known, just connect the correct buspirate probes to the SPI flash.

As you have to entirely re-write the flash – the first thing to do before anything else is to backup its content. Even if the bootloader is corrupted, the EEPROM partition might still be OK.

flashrom -p buspirate_spi:dev=/dev/ttyUSB0 -r backup-spi.bin -c MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E -V

The previous command backups the content of the SPI flash to a file named backup-spi.bin. Note that I specified the chip type, to use correct SPI function codes.

You now have the content of your flash. On a working router (the example below is with an ER12 SPI dump), it should looks like that:

As I said, there are 2 levels of bootloader, 0 and 1. If the bootloader 1 is corrupted, you can find its content in a firmware image from Ubiquiti, after extracting the squashfs image, in the root FS/etc/ubnt/bootloader.

The problem remains with bootloader 0: Ubiquiti does not provide its content – as the only way to re-flash it is to go with hardware probes.

At this stage, I only had an ER12 as a bootloader donor for my corrupted ER6P. As they both rely on Cavium SOC, I decided to give it a try to copy the ER12 bootloader to the ER6P. And it worked ! Well… the router booted, but it feeled like an ER12 instead of an ER6P. The ethernet ports were not correctly labelled, the LEDs were not correctly working etc. It was better than a brick, but not perfect. I still needed an ER6 dump.

I forgot to mention that to get a dump from a working router – there is an easier way than going with the buspirate : just use dd with /dev/boot0 / boot1 / eeprom.

Dumping from a working router:

dd if=/dev/boot0 of=/tmp/boot0.bin

Luckily, I found a working ER6 with a friend and could dump the bootloader 0. In case it could help other users – I decided to share them on github : https://github.com/blafois/edgerouter-spi-repair

Now, last step : before flashing back and bring back to life your router – you need to recompose the flash image. Remember the flash layout I presented earlier. You just need to keep your eeprom. Consider that your original dump is “backup-corrupted.bin”, and you get the dumps from “boot0.bin” and “boot1.bin”.

cat boot0.bin boot1.bin > repair-img.bin
# extract the eeprom from your backup - which resides in memory from 0040 0000 and 0041 0000
dd if=backup-corrupted.bin of=eeprom.bin bs=1 count=65536 skip=262144
cat eeprom.bin >> repair-img.bin
# now, just pad the image with some 0 (free space)
dd if=/dev/zero of=zeros.bin bs=1 count=4128768
cat zeros.bin >> repair-img.bin
# flash back image
flashrom -p buspirate_spi:dev=/dev/ttyUSB0 -w repair-img.bin -c MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E -V 

At this stage, your router should be back to life 🙂

Edit: following comments from Cesar – here is the pinout for the Buspirate connection:

Bus Pirate            MX25L6406E
  CS   <--------------> CS#
  MISO <--------------> SO/SIO1
  VCC  <--------------> WP#
  GND  <--------------> Vss(GND)
  MOSI <--------------> SI/SIO1
  CLK  <--------------> SCLK
  Vcc  <--------------> HOLD#
  Vcc  <--------------> Vcc

Replacing Orange Livebox by an EdgeRouter with FTTH

This article will mainly target people located in France, but who knows 🙂

Orange, a French ISP, provides FTTH with up to 2GB downling/600mbps uplink, but the usage (and rental…) of their set top box (aka Livebox) is mandatory.

As I’m using my own router (Ubiquiti EdgeRouter), the Livebox is useless to me, just taking some place and energy :-). The goal of this article is to explain how to remove it to use a router instead.

The Livebox 5 integrates an ONT. So in order to remove the LB5, I needed to find an external ONT. A friend gave me an “old” Huawei HG8010H, which is the one Orange used to provide with older Livebox versions.

The first thing to do is to gate the ONT accepted on the optical network, commonly know as O5 state (“operation state” – https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/8/10/1934/pdf). To reach this state, the ONT must authenticate itself on the carrier network. Orange used to rely on the SLID (subscriber line ID), but this is no longer used. It now only relies on the serial number of the ONT. It means that is necessary to change the Serial Number of the new ONT by the allowed one (the Livebox). Getting the “allowed” SN is easy: just go on the Livebox administration page:

Getting the Serial Number of the ONT from Livebox 5

Setting the same SN in the new ONT is possible if the ONT is not in the ISP locked mode. I will not cover how to unlock an Orange-provided HG8010 ONT, this can be found on the web with keyboard “restorehwmode.sh” !

Once the Serial Number is changed on the ONT to simulate the Livebox, the fiber link should come up in O5 mode::

Now that the fiber link is up – the router must be configured to access.

Orange is using multiple VLANs (internet, TV, SIP…). I will just be covering the Internet access as I’m not using TV nor phone.

For Internet, the VLAN 832 should be used, using DHCP and the “option 90”, which is used to authenticate the subscriber.

The tricky detail is the following: DHCP packets should be sent with a VLAN priority set to 6 ! Without doing that, device won’t be able to authenticate to the network.

Before configuring the router, several things will be needed, such as the Mac Address of the Livebox and the authentication data. This can be calculated using a JavaScript tool, using the username & password provided by Orange (famous “fti/xxxx”). I chose a different option, which consists in gathering those information from the Livebox.

Feel free to use this simple Python script to obtain the information and generate the configuration for your EdgeRouter:

import requests
import json
import re
import sys

def authenticate(ip,user,password):

    payload = {}
    payload["service"] = "sah.Device.Information"
    payload["method"] = "createContext"
    payload["parameters"] = {}
    payload["parameters"]["applicationName"] = "webui"
    payload["parameters"]["username"] = user
    payload["parameters"]["password"] = password

    headers = {}
    headers["Authorization"] = "X-Sah-Login"

    r = requests.post("http://{}/ws".format(ip), verify=False, data=json.dumps(payload), headers=headers)
    
    token = json.loads(r.text)["data"]["contextID"]
    cookie = r.headers['Set-Cookie'].split(';')[0]
    
    return token,cookie

def get_dhcp_conf(ip, token, cookie):
    payload = {}
    payload["service"] = "NeMo.Intf.data"
    payload["method"] = "getMIBs"
    payload["parameters"] = {}
    payload["parameters"]["mibs"] = "dhcp"

    headers = {}
    headers["Authorization"] = "X-Sah {}".format(token)
    headers["X-Context"] = "{}".format(token)
    headers["Content-Type"] = "application/x-sah-ws-4-call+json"
    headers["Cookie"] = "{};".format(cookie)

    r = requests.post("http://{}/ws".format(ip), verify=False, data=json.dumps(payload), headers=headers)

    data = json.loads(r.text)

    macaddr = data["status"]["dhcp"]["dhcp_data"]["SentOption"]["61"]["Value"]
    auth = data["status"]["dhcp"]["dhcp_data"]["SentOption"]["90"]["Value"]
    userclass = data["status"]["dhcp"]["dhcp_data"]["SentOption"]["77"]["Value"]
    vendorclass = data["status"]["dhcp"]["dhcp_data"]["SentOption"]["60"]["Value"]

    values = {}
    values["macaddr"] = macaddr
    values["auth"] = auth
    values["userclass"] = userclass
    values["vendorclass"] = vendorclass

    print("[+] MAC Address of the Livebox: {}".format(macaddr))
    print("[+] DHCP Option 90 Auth String: {}".format(auth))
    print("[+] Livebox UserClass: {}".format(userclass))
    print("[+] Livebox VendorClass: {}".format(vendorclass))
    
    return values


def gen_ubnt(eth, values):
    macaddr = ':'.join(re.findall('..',values["macaddr"]))
    auth = ':'.join(re.findall('..',values["auth"]))
    userclass = '&quot;' + bytes.fromhex(values["userclass"]).decode('ascii').replace("+","\\053") + '&quot;'
    vendorclass = '&quot;' + bytes.fromhex(values["vendorclass"]).decode('ascii') + '&quot;'

    print("[+] EdgeRouter Config:\n\n")

    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 address dhcp".format(eth))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 description \"Orange DHCP Internet\"".format(eth))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options client-option \"send vendor-class-identifier {};\"".format(eth, vendorclass))

    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options client-option \"request subnet-mask, routers, domain-name-servers, domain-name, broadcast-address, dhcp-lease-time, dhcp-renewal-time, dhcp-rebinding-time, rfc3118-auth;\"".format(eth))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options client-option \"send user-class {};\"".format(eth,userclass))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options client-option \"send rfc3118-auth {};\"".format(eth, auth))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options client-option \"send dhcp-client-identifier {};\"".format(eth, macaddr))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options default-route update".format(eth))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options default-route-distance 210".format(eth))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options global-option \"option rfc3118-auth code 90 = string;\"".format(eth))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 dhcp-options global-option name-server update".format(eth))
    print("set interfaces ethernet {} vif 832 egress-qos \"0:0 1:0 2:0 3:0 4:0 5:0 6:6 7:0\"".format(eth))


ip = sys.argv[1]
user = sys.argv[2]
password = sys.argv[3]

token,cookie = authenticate(ip,user,password)
print("[+] Authentication OK")
print("  Token: {}".format(token))
print("  Cookie: {}".format(cookie))

values = get_dhcp_conf(ip, token, cookie)
gen_ubnt("eth2", values)

Last problem: the VLAN Priority 6. The router uses ISC-DHCP as DHCP client, which relies on raw sockets. As such, it bypasses the “egress policy” you could define on the router.

The only solution is to patch & recompile the ISC-DHCP to hardcode the VLAN priority.

Patching and re-compiling ISC-DHCP

The easiest option is to use Docker! First of all, retrieve the package from Ubiquiti matching your router firmware version:

This archive includes all the package we need to recompile: edgeos-vyatta-dhcp.

Instanciate a Docker as follows:

docker run --rm -it debian:9.13 /bin/bash

Install necessary cross compilation toolchain:

apt-get update && apt-get install -y crossbuild-essential-mipsel vim
mkdir /data && cd /data

Copy the vyatta-dhcp3_4.1-ESV-R15-ubnt1+t5402460.dev.stretch.v2.0.9.24c30f9.tar.gz file to the /data in your docker:

docker cp vyatta-dhcp3_4.1-ESV-R15-ubnt1+t5402460.dev.stretch.v2.0.9.24c30f9.tar.gz <docker id>:/data/

Extract the archive

tar -xzvf vyatta-dhcp3_4.1-ESV-R15-ubnt1+t5402460.dev.stretch.v2.0.9.24c30f9.tar.gz

Now, patch the various files by getting inspired by the patch provided here:

https://github.com/shisva/USG_Orange/blob/master/patch_dhclient3/iscdhcp_priority.patch

Those files must be updated:

discover.c

icmp.c

lpf.c

raw.c

socket.c

For the version isc-dhclient-4.1-ESV-R15-P1, my patch file is:

--- a/common/discover.c
+++ b/common/discover.c
@@ -247,10 +247,6 @@ begin_iface_scan(struct iface_conf_list *ifaces) {
                log_error("Error creating socket to list interfaces; %m");
                return 0;
        }
-
-       /* Set Kernel Priority to 6 */
-       int val = 6;
-       setsockopt(ifaces->sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PRIORITY, &val, sizeof(val));

        memset(&lifnum, 0, sizeof(lifnum));
 #ifdef ISC_PLATFORM_HAVELIFNUM
diff --git a/common/icmp.c b/common/icmp.c
index ca857e0..6f97f67 100644
--- a/common/icmp.c
+++ b/common/icmp.c
@@ -95,10 +95,6 @@ void icmp_startup (routep, handler)
                        return;
                }

-               /* Set Kernel Priority to 6 */
-               int val = 6;
-               setsockopt(icmp_state -> socket, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PRIORITY, &val, sizeof(val));
-
 #if defined (HAVE_SETFD)
                if (fcntl (icmp_state -> socket, F_SETFD, 1) < 0)
                        log_error ("Can't set close-on-exec on icmp: %m");
diff --git a/common/lpf.c b/common/lpf.c
index 8111f38..fcf7db1 100644
--- a/common/lpf.c
+++ b/common/lpf.c
@@ -89,10 +89,6 @@ int if_register_lpf (info)
                log_fatal ("Open a socket for LPF: %m");
        }

-       /* Set Kernel Priority to 6 */
-       int val = 6;
-       setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PRIORITY, &val, sizeof(val));
-
        memset (&ifr, 0, sizeof ifr);
        strncpy (ifr.ifr_name, (const char *)info -> ifp, sizeof ifr.ifr_name);
        ifr.ifr_name[IFNAMSIZ-1] = '\0';
@@ -499,10 +495,6 @@ get_hw_addr(const char *name, struct hardware *hw) {
                log_fatal("Can't create socket for \"%s\": %m", name);
        }

-       /* Set Kernel Priority to 6 */
-       int val = 6;
-       setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PRIORITY, &val, sizeof(val));
-
        memset(&tmp, 0, sizeof(tmp));
        strcpy(tmp.ifr_name, name);
        if (ioctl(sock, SIOCGIFHWADDR, &tmp) < 0) {
diff --git a/common/raw.c b/common/raw.c
index b588f1b..a15f8ee 100644
--- a/common/raw.c
+++ b/common/raw.c
@@ -66,10 +66,6 @@ void if_register_send (info)
        if ((sock = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_RAW)) < 0)
                log_fatal ("Can't create dhcp socket: %m");

-       /* Set Kernel Priority to 6 */
-       int val = 6;
-       setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PRIORITY, &val, sizeof(val));
-
        /* Set the BROADCAST option so that we can broadcast DHCP responses. */
        flag = 1;
        if (setsockopt (sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_BROADCAST,
diff --git a/common/socket.c b/common/socket.c
index 8f94a63..3fe3d09 100644
--- a/common/socket.c
+++ b/common/socket.c
@@ -189,10 +189,6 @@ if_register_socket(struct interface_info *info, int family,
                log_fatal("Can't create dhcp socket: %m");
        }

-       /* Set Kernel Priority to 6 */
-       int val = 6;
-       setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PRIORITY, &val, sizeof(val));
-
        /* Set the REUSEADDR option so that we don't fail to start if
           we're being restarted. */
        flag = 1;
@@ -1178,10 +1174,6 @@ get_hw_addr(const char *name, struct hardware *hw) {
        }

  flag_check:
-       /* Set Kernel Priority to 6 */
-       int val = 6;
-       setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PRIORITY, &val, sizeof(val));
-
        if (lifr.lifr_flags & (IFF_VIRTUAL|IFF_IPMP)) {
                hw->hlen = sizeof (hw->hbuf);
                srandom((long)gethrtime());

Finally, recompile DHCLIENT.

cd /data/edgeos-vyatta-dhcp
make -f debian/rules configure
CC=mipsel-linux-gnu-gcc CPP=mipsel-linux-gnu-cpp ./configure --host=mipsel-linux-gnu --cache-file=config.cache
make

Finally, copy the file recompiled to the router:

scp /data/edgeos-vyatta-dhcp/client/dhclient ubtn@router:/tmp/

Connect to the router and replace the existing version after backing-up.

sudo -i
cp /sbin/dhclient3 /sbin/dhclient3.orig
chown root:root /tmp/dhclient
chmod a+x /tmp/dhclient
mv /tmp/dhclient /sbin/dhclient3

After applying the configuration (generated by my script), it should be working 🙂

set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 address dhcp
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 description "Orange DHCP Internet"
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options client-option "send vendor-class-identifier &quot;sagem&quot;;"
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options client-option "request subnet-mask, routers, domain-name-servers, domain-name, broadcast-address, dhcp-lease-time, dhcp-renewal-time, dhcp-rebinding-time, rfc3118-auth;"
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options client-option "send user-class &quot;\053FSVDSL_livebox.Internet.softathome.Livebox4&quot;;"
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options client-option "send rfc3118-auth 00:00:00:00:00:xx:xx:xx:xx....;"
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options client-option "send dhcp-client-identifier 01:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;"
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options default-route update
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options default-route-distance 210
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options global-option "option rfc3118-auth code 90 = string;"
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 dhcp-options global-option name-server update
set interfaces ethernet eth2 vif 832 egress-qos "0:0 1:0 2:0 3:0 4:0 5:0 6:6 7:0"

This article was inspired by multiple threads from the French forum “lafibre.info”.