[PATCH v3 7/7] ipq806x: Initial TP-Link and ASUS OnHub support

[Brian Norris]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 5:40 AM Linus Walleij <linus.walleij at linaro.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Brian!
>
> I have this device, so as soon as I manage to find time for opening it up
> and mounting a UART I will test your patch set!

Hi Linus! Glad to see you're interested.

> On Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 8:13 AM Brian Norris
> <computersforpeace at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > TP-Link and ASUS OnHub devices are very similar, sharing many of the
> > same characteristics and much of their Device Tree. They both run a
> > version of ChromeOS for their factory firmware, and so installation
> > instructions look very similar to Google Wifi [1].
> (...)
> >  create mode 100644 target/linux/ipq806x/files-5.15/arch/arm/boot/dts/qcom-ipq8064-asus-onhub.dts
> >  create mode 100644 target/linux/ipq806x/files-5.15/arch/arm/boot/dts/qcom-ipq8064-onhub.dtsi
> >  create mode 100644 target/linux/ipq806x/files-5.15/arch/arm/boot/dts/qcom-ipq8064-tplink-onhub.dts
>
> Could you please submit these device trees upstream to the
> Linux kernel as well?
>
> I don't know your immediate plans, if your idea is to put it into
> OpenWrt first, but I'm sure the Qualcomm maintainers
> Bjorn and Krzysztof would be delighted to take a look.
> A small patch to Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/qcom.yaml
> adding the new compatibles is needed too.
>
> If you don't have time for this I understand, I can volunteer
> to push it upstream and iron out any snags in that case.

That's not currently my interest. My current motivation is to get this
into OpenWrt, since these devices are no longer supported by Google as
of January 11, and a lot of people are interested in taking back
control of their hardware.

And, I think there are at least a handful of important things missing
from upstream such that either the device tree would not fit
upstream's typical review process (non-upstream bindings), or else
would be missing major features (USB, and possibly more), which
wouldn't serve the primary goal (of making these devices usable again
as quickly as possible).

So, maybe I could take a stab at things eventually, but not
immediately. In case you want to help (which would be very welcome!),
here's one missing piece:
target/linux/ipq806x/patches-5.15/850-soc-add-qualcomm-syscon.patch
I'd bet that needs to get reworked into some kind of integration with
the USB and/or PHY driver(s). And I'm sure there's more if you look
through target/linux/ipq806x/patches-5.15/. But hey, getting it
running yourself to play with would be a good start, and I'd love to
have some company on this potentially-upstreaming journey ;)

BTW, if you're interested in this sort of thing (and perhaps have
other Google-related hardware?), I took some notes on my last
(failed/stalled)-upstreaming efforts, for Google Wifi:
https://openwrt.org/toh/google/wifi#upstreaming_notes
That's another can of worms, since I think the upstream maintainers
would prefer to ignore "legacy" firmware that doesn't work exactly the
same as whatever modern chips they're playing with...
...so you're left with upstream not really supporting most Qualcomm
hardware. *shrug*

Brian