Cross Compiling Netatalk 2.2 for DD-WRT on Ubuntu 11.04

This is a straight up history on how I got netatalk 2.2 compiled to run on my Netgear WNR3500L router. I used Ubuntu 11.04 but this should work on various distributions.

I am not an expert on the matter. So in case you are wondering about some commands that might not be necessary ... its just how I got it to work. It might not be the most efficient way!
On my machine I needed the packages bison, flex and texinfo installed before I could start cross compiling. So we start up a Terminal and install them:

> sudo apt-get install bison flex texinfo


In case you do not have subversion installed:


> sudo apt-get install subversion


Now we are set to retrieve the optware packages und install our toolchain. Change to a directory you want this workspace located and execute:


> svn co http://svn.nslu2-linux.org/svnroot/optware/trunk optware


Once that completed successfully we want to setup the dd-wrt toolchain. So change into the optware directory:


> cd optware
> make ddwrt-target
> cd ddwrt
> make directories ipkg-utils toolchain


Note: the target depends on your router and the build of dd-wrt you have installed! The dd-wrt target happens to fit in this case. Read up on what target system you need before starting out!


Now that will take some time. Afterwards however we are ready to go. There are several dependencies netatalk needs. These are: openssl, libgcrypt and libdb (Berkeley DB > =4.6). So we are starting out by compiling openssl and libgcrypt:


> make openssl-stage
> make libgcrypt-stage


For libdb we need to alter the libdb.mk file in the directory make. There are two things we need to change in order for this lib to play nice on the router later on. First we need to chose the correct version, which in my case is 4.7.25:

LIBDB_VERSION=4.7.25
LIBDB_LIB_VERSION=4.7

Secondly we need to add a configuration flag (around line 127):


--with-mutex=MIPS/gcc-assembly \


This configuration flag is important so libdb is not linked against libpthread. When this flag is not set libdb will not play nice with netatalk and OS X will create a warning each and every time you want to access a share. Save the changes and compile!


> make libdb-ipk
> make libdb-stage


Now we are set to get to netatalk. First we need to change the version in make/netatalk.mk just as we did with libdb. We change it to version 2.2.0:


NETATALK_VERSION=2.2.0


and disable the line where patches are applied (line 49)


#NETATALK_PATCHES=$(NETATALK_SOURCE_DIR)/db3-check.patch


also we need to change the libgcrypt configuration flag around line 137 from 


--with-libgcrypt-prefix=$(STAGING_PREFIX) \


to 


--with-libgcrypt-dir=$(STAGING_PREFIX) \


This puts uams_dhx2.so into our ipk. Also add the configuration flag:


--with-cnid-cdb-backend \


We are ready to compile netatalk now:


> make netatalk-ipk


The process might stop on an error telling you that the variable AI_NUMERICSERV is nowhere to be found. I fixed this by adding:


#ifndef AI_NUMERICSERV
#define AI_NUMERICSERV 0
#endif 


in builds/netatalk/libatalk/cnid/dbd/cnid_dbd.c right before the function static int tsock_getfd(const char *host, const char *port)  Now we are starting the building process again and it should run smoothly and create the ipk.


> make netatalk-ipk

Thats it! We have created libdb and netatalk packages which we can deploy on the router now. Copy builds/libdb_4.7.25-3_mipsel.ipk and builds/netatalk_2.2.0-2_mipsel.ipk onto your router and install them (in case afpd is running kill it first):

ipkg install libdb_4.7.25-3_mipsel.ipk
ipkg install netatalk_2.2.0-2_mipsel.ipk


Cheers!