Rooting the Astaro AP-30
Written 2011-01-07
Tags:Ralink Serial port Astaro Linux TFTP OpenWrt Central processing unit
Previously, I took apart an Astaro AP-30, and found the serial output line. Today, I found the input of the serial port, and rooted the device.
Starting from the square pin on the board,
- Pin 1 - Power?
- Pin 2 - Ground
- Pin 3 - Serial from device to console
- Pin 4 - Serial from console to device
In the picture, I used a 100Ohm resistor, because when you aren't certain it is the console, it pays to be cautious.
From my earlier post, you can see that the device doesn't have an OS installed; it boots from TFTP. It appears to do this every time, so potentially, you might be able to upload a new config to one by power-cycling it while running your own TFTP server.
. Press enter to activate console you say? After guessing the right serial line ( right next to the other), it is my old friend, OpenWRT! Here is another log. Also, we can see the list of OpenWRT packages here. Of note are the RT2860 kernel module and libpcap packages. So the chipset is a Ralink RT2860 with MIPS24K CPU. This puts it in a class similar to Buffalo WHR-G300N and One common chipset that provides both RT2860 and a MIPS24K is Ralink's own RT3050 chipset.
Uname: Linux OpenWrt 2.6.21 #1 Thu Nov 4 14:30:02 CET 2010 mips unknown