Build Firmware

To build firmware you need Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, other distributions may work but are not supported. Building firmware directly on a Windows platform is not supported. However, if all you have available is a Windows machine then we would recommend to set up a Linux based virtual machine.

Note: the following build was made on Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS running 6.17 kernel.

Note: please build with non-root privileges!


Once you have a Linux OS running prepare the building environment based on OpenWrt instructions: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-developer/toolchain/install-buildsystem


Get latest sources from the official OpenWrt upstream branch and checkout to the commit with the Kiwi/DVK support:

git clone https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt.git
cd openwrt
git checkout d324d6f07e687c3d89b0737bef091f9e1d151486


Then update and install all the necessary feeds, if wanted - modify the FW and proceed to build the firmware:

./scripts/feeds udpdate -a
./scripts/feeds install -a
make menuconfig
make defconfig download clean world -j16


Building is a CPU heavy process and may take a long time depending on your CPU capabilities.

Once finished the compiled firmware will be named openwrt-qualcommbe-ipq95xx-8devices_kiwi-dvk-squashfs-<factory OR sysupgrade>.bin and will be placed under ./bin/targets/qualcommbe/ipq95xx directory.


Both images are used to upgrade the FW, except *factory* image is used with TFTP server if the previously flashed FW is different than official OpenWrt.