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Install OpenWrt 23 Snapshot Firmware on Banana Pi BPI R2 PRO

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This is a quick guide to install OpenWrt 23 snapshot firmware on your BPI R2 Pro (to the internal eMMC). This firmware had been pre-installed with LuCI and some packages. Here is the screenshot on Sep 2, 2023.

LuCI homepage overview. Linux kernel is 6.1.50
Network Interfaces overview. PPPoE connection is up and running
Speedtest & CPU usage overview

Currently, OpenWrt 21 firmware built by Banana Pi is out of date and there are some problems with DSA (i.e VLAN is not working). Thus, I will use OpenWrt builds from mj22226

  1. Download this bpi-r2-pro-sd-to-emmc-flash.img.gz and burn it to a 16GB microSD card, using Rufus or your preferred application.
  2. Insert the microSD to the BPI R2 PRO, press & hold the MASKROOM button while connecting the Power cable. The BPI R2 PRO should boot up OpenWrt
  3. Login to LuCI. Under System -> Custom Command, press Run button to to flash the firmware to the internal eMMC.
  4. If you receive error message such as “no space left on /dev/emmc…”, you can try to boot up OpenWrt on the SD card again (step 2). If it still failed, try to install OpenWrt firmware to the eMMC using the USB cable & RockChip DevTool
  5. Once OpenWrt was flashed to the eMMC, remove the power cable, remove the microSD and boot up the BPI R2 PRO.
  6. Download openwrt-rockchip-armv8-rockchip_bpi-r2-pro-squashfs-sysupgrade.img.gz (or a newer release). Go to System – Backup & Flash firmware to update the BPI R2 PRO with the firmware you have downloaded.

Enjoy you BPI R2 PRO router!

Comments

5 responses to “Install OpenWrt 23 Snapshot Firmware on Banana Pi BPI R2 PRO”

  1. Chuck Payne Avatar
    Chuck Payne

    Question, have you got SATA port working? I tried to use 500GB SSD, but OpenWRT doesn’t seem to pick up the onboard SATA controller. It does pick up a USB device.

    Reply
  2. Andriy Avatar
    Andriy

    Hi,

    it looks like https://github.com/mj22226/openwrt/releases/download/rockchip-6.0/bpi-r2-pro-sd-to-emmc-flash.img.gz is not available anymore. Is there any other way to move sysupgrade from sd to emmc?

    Reply
  3. Chuck Payne Avatar
    Chuck Payne

    Hi, great that you got it work on the Banana-Pi BPi-R2 Pro, but is there any plans to update or support the image.

    Right now it pretty much useless

    Downloading https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/rockchip/armv8/packages/Packages.gz
    *** Failed to download the package list from https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/rockchip/armv8/packages/Packages.gz

    Downloading https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/base/Packages.gz
    *** Failed to download the package list from https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/base/Packages.gz

    Downloading https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/luci/Packages.gz
    *** Failed to download the package list from https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/luci/Packages.gz

    Downloading https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/packages/Packages.gz
    *** Failed to download the package list from https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/packages/Packages.gz

    Downloading https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/routing/Packages.gz
    *** Failed to download the package list from https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/routing/Packages.gz

    Downloading https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/telephony/Packages.gz
    *** Failed to download the package list from https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/telephony/Packages.gz

    Collected errors:
     * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/rockchip/armv8/packages/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
     * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/base/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
     * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/luci/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
     * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/packages/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
     * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/routing/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.
     * opkg_download: Failed to download https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/aarch64_generic/telephony/Packages.gz, wget returned 5.

    Reply
  4. Steve West Avatar
    Steve West

    Hello! Nice work! But please how to install iwlwifi and kmod-fs-nfsd? i am new to openwrt and can’t really get this imagebuilder working.

    Reply
  5. Pawel Avatar
    Pawel

    BPI R2 PRO router is extremely SLOW in download speed (5-15 Mbps). On the other hand, upload speed is fine – almost maximum of my physical infra (914.09 Mbps).
    Im running one of the latest release OpenWrt SNAPSHOT (r0-e3163ea) . Im testing between PC and router connected over 1GB ethernet and OpenSpeedTest server hosted on router (docker container). All settings are default.
    Do you know what could be the problem? Is there a way to fix it?

    Reply

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