GL-SFT1200 Opal OpenWrt Support

SourMilk · 2025-01-26T17:04:13.728Z

I've just ordered one of these assuming it would be based on the latest OpenWrt but it's based on 18.06 from 2020 with a 4.x kernel. I saw the commit but am also confused. Can we build images from source for this based on current OpenWrt or do we have to wait/be lucky that Siflower/GL.iNet updates this at some point?

hecatae · 2025-01-26T17:36:18.818Z

The mainline Openwrt commit is for the Siflower evaluation board.
Both GL.iNet and Sinovoip have released products based on the same 18.06 SDK provided by Siflower.

GL have found something doesn't work regarding the WiFi or ethernet and have asked Siflower to fix this.

There's also a chance the SF1200 Meet could be officially supported by mainline Openwrt if Siflower fixes the outstanding issue.

Anything to save these capable devices from ending up in landfill or running an unsupported SDK for longer than necessary.

SourMilk · 2025-01-26T18:07:12.790Z

Thank you for the informative reply, you have removed my confusion! I'll hold on to it for now and do testing with the stock firmware and if anything is missing try to build my own using the SDK though I don't think that includes any fixed/improvements made by GL.iNet.

hecatae:

Anything to save these capable devices from ending up in landfill or running an unsupported SDK for longer than necessary.

Spot on! Plus they are still be sold online in many shops including their own. This would imply they wouldn't just EOL the device next week as that would upset many customers who just bought it. So I remain hopeful

If anyone from GL.iNet is reading along, please note that this cheap device could very well be the gateway "drug" people need to get into your ecosystem. I'm pretty sure other brands do this on purpose, not sure if you guys it on purpose too. But keeping at least one entry device supported and well priced will entice many new users. Me included!

eric · 2025-01-26T18:49:57.181Z

You may want to read some past posts on abandoned routers from GL iNet before you get your hopes up. The SF1200 was dropped and there is no OpenWrt version, so those routers are headed to the landfill.

The USB150 and N300 are two products that were promised 4.x upgrades, which GL iNet later reneged on. Now, they are past support. Fortunately, unlike the Opal and SF1200, there are current OpenWrt versions for these routers, allowing users to keep using the devices safely.

I would never buy a GL iNet router that did not have current OpenWrt firmware available at the time I bought it, as one never knows how long GL iNet will support a product.

hecatae · 2025-01-26T21:33:56.979Z

SF1200 is supported until May 2026

gl-inet.com – 14 May 24

GL-SF1200's Product End-of-Life Notice

We're discontinuing the manufacturing of GL-SF1200 as we offer an alternative product with better performance and efficiency. Learn more about GL-SF1200's support period.

eric · 2025-01-26T21:48:42.891Z

As someone who has experienced GL iNet support during the period between being discontinued and end of support, I expect the SF1200 will get very minimal support during this period.

Unlike many other GL iNet routers, there is no OpenWrt firmware to move to, so the SF1200 is heading to the landfill.

bpwl1 · 2025-01-26T22:23:57.291Z

The SFT1200 and SF1200 are 2 quite different devices AFAIK.

SourMilk · 2025-01-26T23:47:04.673Z

bpwl1:

The SFT1200 and SF1200 are 2 quite different devices AFAIK.

An important distinction to make! It would be very odd (and telling) if they sold a device today knowing they will make it obsolete in 15 months.

I have no experience at all wit this brand, I dipped my toes in cheaply and will see how this device behaves. I assume CVE's (if any) will be patched and I see the beta firmware is from December 2024. I don't mind running older kernels/software as long as it's safe and secure.

As an aside I bought a brand new cheap Zyxel wifi6 router for testing, it's on kernel 3.x not even kidding but it works great and is supported. The what I call Debian approach doesn't have to be bad as long as security and severe bugs get patched and back ported.

I do hope we'll see some more movement in getting OpenWrt on it at some point, the commit is promising even though it may mean nothing in the end. Guess it's a glass half full or half empty situation.

Amazon Germany shifts at least 200 of these a month. I don't know if this number is for all Amazon sites or just the German one. Still 200 units sold a month should be a nice push to keep this device interesting now and in the future.

Screenshot 2025-01-27 at 00.42.431162×272 50.7 KB

With the current voucher it's not too bad. According to this items pricing history they either sell it around 37 euro without a voucher or around 43 with a voucher. In the end you always pay the same, some people will feel better when they get a 7 euro discount. Marketing is wonderful lol.

projects · 2025-01-26T23:51:49.381Z

What's really frustrating is having to buy other brands because gl.inet simply won't come out with a sub $50 gigabit routers. I always prefer buying gl.inet when possible but don't want to get stuck with devices that won't be supported for long. Using 18.x is a bad idea for many reasons, including ssl CA's and other things moving on while openwrt would not for this.

bpwl1 · 2025-01-27T09:27:25.100Z

I have a very similar story. Just stumbled into GL.inet because some tourists brought 5 of these devices and disturbed my Mikrotik wifi provision. Surprised to see another device besides Mikrotik (GL.inet) that could do Enterprise (EAP) logon, on the 5 GHz channels.

Bought GL.inet to test and to make instructions for proper setup and use, and also found Cudy TR1200 to be similar (and same price range) . Mikrotik is too complicated for the occasional user, despite the Quickset setup. Cudy cannot do EAP logon, so is stuck to the portal logon in my managed wifi. But the Cudy TR1200 performs very well (is only 100MHz eth) , and has Zerotier. Their advanced use is on a different path.. Less features in GUI, which is based on LUCI, but one can install supported OpenWRT instead.

OpenWRT 18.06 is not a problem for me (but maybe that's why SSHUTTLE on recent Ubuntu complains about ssh-rsa key offered)

Release 4.7.2beta brings the SFT1200 features up to date with the other models. There may still be some bugs in that beta. (TXpower and DFS connection). If bugs fixed , the SFT1200 will be the recommended device, and can be a travel router for many years.

There was also a TP-link in the competition, but I had bad experience with a bricked router.

nonaname · 2025-01-27T18:50:24.428Z

hecatae:

SF1200

SF1200 not SFT1200.

But codings of products really strange. Too many almost same codings. For example E750 and X750

Maybe use different numbers?

eric · 2025-01-28T00:33:12.812Z

GL.iNet makes some solid routers, but their product naming is a dumpster fire. How are we supposed to navigate this chaos? The “Slate” alone has four variants (Slate, Slate Plus, Slate AX, Slate 7), and the AR750 (Creta) vs AR750S (Slate) makes zero sense. Then there’s the AR300M, AR300M-Lite and the AR300M16. Same name, different firmware and specs. Why reuse names if the specs aren’t compatible?

A simple fix? Stop recycling names and product numbers. This is marketing 101!

alzhao · 2025-01-28T03:21:26.711Z

hecatae:

GL have found something doesn't work regarding the WiFi or ethernet and have asked Siflower to fix this.

There's also a chance the SF1200 Meet could be officially supported by mainline Openwrt if Siflower fixes the outstanding issue.

If everyone push siflower it could be a big help.

hecatae · 2025-01-28T08:09:46.546Z

Have emailed them using the contact address on the Siflower 18.06 GitHub and asked.

Their evaluation board builds fine, but I can't use that with any actual products you can buy.

SourMilk · 2025-02-11T15:15:02.596Z

I emailed that address as well but I doubt random internet users asking them to update it will help, but we can sure try. I saw Amazon is lowering prices of this router more recently. Maybe they're ready to sell off whatever stock is left over in their warehouses. The ones not sold/shipped by Amazon are still at the old higher prices as far as I can see.

@hecatae
Do you know if anyone compiled a working Opal firmware from the SDK posted on the Github page?

hecatae · 2025-02-11T15:48:54.733Z

@SourMilk If you want a Openwrt 18.06 SDK version for your Opal, there's a copy of the gl-infra-builder here with instructions on how to compile a working clean Openwrt version:

git clone https://github.com/201821143044/gl-infra-builder.git && cd gl-infra-builder
python3 setup.py -c configs/config-siflower-18.x.yml && cd openwrt-18.06/siflower/openwrt-18.06
./scripts/gen_config.py target_siflower_gl-sft1200 luci
make V=s -j5

Immortalwrt built on the same sources is here:

GitHub

Releases · wekingchen/Actions-SFT1200

Contribute to wekingchen/Actions-SFT1200 development by creating an account on GitHub.

Neither is true mainline Openwrt though.

SourMilk · 2025-02-14T02:45:42.355Z

Thank you!

I see the Immortal action uses a different gl-infra-builder repo seems based but not a direct fork of the one you linked I think, they added a -new but not sure about the differences.

I'll try both infra-builders and see how it goes. At least get some edutainment mileage out of the Opal and mess about with an old SDK.

Despite a lot of warnings about missing stuff (for packages I assume are not used for this target) and having to wiggle a python 2 install into the mix plus hunt down a blob that was 404 on the OpenWrt site both repo's produced an image. Will try flashing this weekend when I have more time.

I'll have to check out the immortal version too, no idea what they changed but I seen that forks name come by from time to time.

Thanks again for sharing including instructions to get me going, very much appreciated.

Results 🚀

total 41M
-rw-r--r-- 1 6.2K Feb 14 03:18 config.seed
-rw-r--r-- 1  12M Feb 14 03:37 openwrt-siflower-sf19a28-fullmask-glinet_gl-sft1200-squashfs-factory.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 9.1M Feb 14 03:37 openwrt-siflower-sf19a28-fullmask-glinet_gl-sft1200-squashfs-sysupgrade.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 6.8M Feb 14 03:37 openwrt-siflower-sf19a28-fullmask-root.squashfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 5.6K Feb 14 03:37 openwrt-siflower-sf19a28-fullmask-sf19a28-gl-sft1200.manifest
-rw-r--r-- 1 3.3M Feb 14 03:37 openwrt-siflower-sf19a28-fullmask-uImage-gzip
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.4M Feb 14 03:37 openwrt-siflower-sf19a28-fullmask-uImage-lzma
-rwxr-xr-x 1 7.5M Feb 14 03:37 openwrt-siflower-sf19a28-fullmask-vmlinux.elf
drwxr-xr-x 2  12K Feb 14 03:37 packages
-rw-r--r-- 1  937 Feb 14 03:37 sha256sums

hecatae · 2025-02-14T14:03:06.272Z

different gl-infra-builder but still the same issue, people are using GL's infra builder to build GL firmware for devices that are nothing to do with GL hardware.
It's sad that people like to abuse the trust of this company, which is why I did not link directly.

SourMilk · 2025-02-14T15:42:08.921Z

Ohh, did the source leak or did they publish it themselves? I'm a bit bemused that I am trying to get a more vanilla experience and other people want to get the GL skin on non GL routers haha. But if they made it public there's not much they can do to prevent people to fork it and use it. I don't know if they did though and under what license.

I was returning my Opal to Amazon and let me keep it as a "returnless-return" or something. Guess it costs them more money to recycle it or sell it again. Going to use it as educational device for now to tinker with. Seems perfect with its easy recovery mode. Maybe one day we get native OpenWrt on it, for now having fun with the SDK and see what I can tweak and cobble up

Quick update regarding that newer builder, despite it having the profile and config files and such the firmware boot loops, the other one worked fine. I've removed the link so nobody else tries to build that one as it will not work without fixes.

Thanks for reminding me of ImmortalWrt, they apply some nice quality of life patches like 256-QAM on 2.4ghz. OpenWrt doesn't want to implement those despite many vendors using it in the stock firmwares. I understand their reasoning, not complaining haha.

hecatae · 2025-02-21T11:16:18.581Z

SourMilk:

256-QAM on 2.4ghz

Yes the patch has been sitting open since 2023:

github.com/openwrt/openwrt

[WIP,RFT,RFC] mac80211: add support for QAM-256 in 2.4GHz 802.11n

openwrt:main ← Ansuel:vht-2.4-support

opened 03:33PM - 14 Jun 23 UTC

Ansuel

+3009 -51

Add support for QAM-256 in 2.4GHz 802.11n. This is non-standard and comunicate …vht capabilities in 2.4GHz 802.11n permittin, for supported clients, to benefits for additional data rate. Many driver supports this, for a start enable this for ath10k and ath11k. Signed-off-by: Christian Marangi <ansuelsmth@gmail.com> --- I would ask the community some effort to document all the info we have about this feature, benefits ANY PROBLEM with this. The intention is to propose this upstream and I need some very good reasoning for this hoping they don't NACK this directly. Also I would ask if there is any info on a parallel feature like QAM-1024 that should be present in 802.11ac How to enable --- Set for 2.4GHz `htmode` to `VHT20` (or `VHT40`) FOR SUPPORTED CARD Supported card --- - qca9984 (Netgear r7800) Supported device from report --- - Samsung Galaxy S21 Additional Info on the thing --- In [1] there was an interesting discussion about this. The summarize was that it's obviously non-standard but actually not that non-standard since this just push vht on 2.4GHz, something that was used later for wifi ax. [1] https://www.cwnp.com/forums/posts?postNum=307375 <sub>Continuation of #12594 and #2522</sub>