[PATCH v4] ath79: add support for Ubiquiti PowerBeam M (XW)

[Russell Senior]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2021 at 6:54 AM Joe Ayers <joe at ayerscasa.com> wrote:
>
> > > I'm having a bit of heartburn with continuing with these instructions:
> > >
> > > > Flashing via stock GUI:
> > > >  - Downgrade to AirOS v5.5.x (latest available is 5.5.10-u2) first (see
> > > >    https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/powerbeam installation instructions)
> > >
> > > This issue was resolved with:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/076d58d3440f382c536ea8874f58b0df23c263bc
> > > https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/6009b3fd586a1fd91400074080afb9545c6cf7e2
> >
> > Those commits resolve the problem for TFTP, but if people want to use
> > the GUI, they still need to downgrade, right? Both instructions are
> > included in the commit message. Note that the TFTP instructions don't
> > mention downgrading.
>
> I remember flashing via the stock GUI in AirOS v5.6.? had worked.  As
> I recall, firmware signatures were not required until a future AirOS
> version .   If so, downgrading shouldn't need to occur all the way
> back to v5.5.10-u2.  The AirOS release note history should tell us
> when firmware signing was introduced.  I'm sorry, I don't have time
> available to substantiate right now, to make sure my memory is
> correct.
>
> Would anyone ever follow the GUI flash with all the steps, when 1 tftp
> flash works?    I suspect there is no impact regardless, might just
> move forward, not worth the time.

No one seems to have tried all the starting condition possibilities, I
certainly haven't. If we were being crushingly complete in testing, we
would try every one of them. If we knew how likely each starting
condition is, we could even weight our instructions accordingly. Given
that serial access is not easy right now, because of not being able
(at least I'm not able) to non-destructively open the feedhorn
enclosure to get access to the serial console pins, I'd rather not
risk trying an AirOS that might make it impossible to recover. Given
that this is *JUST A COMMIT MESSAGE* and not a mutable, improvable,
instruction (which should live on the wiki anyway), it seems to me
reasonable to accept being a little conservative in the instructions
here, even if some of the steps turn out to not be strictly necessary.

-- 
Russell Senior
russell at personaltelco.net