A DIR-825 router is a nice consumer router that has some interesting and affordable hardware specs.  One of the main features that makes the DIR-825 a nice option is the dual band wireless and USB ports.

This howto was for Fedora 16 x64.  Your milage may vary.

Building a custom OpenWRT D-Link DIR-825 image

Install the following for Kubuntu:

apt-get install build-essential asciidoc binutils bzip2 gawk gettext git libncurses5-dev libz-dev patch unzip zlib1g-dev ia32-libs lib32gcc1 libc6-dev-i386 subversion flex

Install the following in Fedora

yum install asciidoc binutils bzip2 libgcj gcc-c++ gcc gawk gtk2-devel intltool zlib-devel make ncurses-devel openssl-devel patch perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker rsync ruby sdcc unzip wget gettext libxslt zlib-devel subversion

Checkout the latest stable sources:

mkdir ~/OpenWrt/

cd ~/OpenWrt/

svn co svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/branches/backfire

Now run the following:

cd backfire

./scripts/feeds update -a

./scripts/feeds install -a

The above two scripts update the packages for your build and installs them.

make menuconfig

You should now see a screen similar to the following:

Now you select some options to specify that we are building an OpenWRT image for a DIR-825 (Please note your hardware revision number):

Target System (Atheros AR71xx/AR7240/AR913x)

Target Profile (D-Link DIR-825 Rev X)

Secondly, I made sure that my image had the following packages installed - it might be a good idea to go ahead and build them into your image as well or just make sure that they are there.

• base-files - 42-r20728
• busybox - 1.15.3-2
• dnsmasq - 2.52-2
• dropbear - 0.52-4
• firewall - 1-10
• hotplug2 - 1.0-beta-1
• iptables - 1.4.6-2
• iptables-mod-conntrack - 1.4.6-2
• iptables-mod-nat - 1.4.6-2
• kernel - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-button-hotplug - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-crc-ccitt - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-input-core - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-input-gpio-buttons - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-input-polldev - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-ipt-conntrack - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-ipt-core - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-ipt-nat - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-ipt-nathelper - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-leds-gpio - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-ppp - 2.6.32.10-1
• kmod-pppoe - 2.6.32.10-1
• libc - 0.9.30.1-42
• libgcc - 4.3.3+cs-42
• libiptc - 1.4.6-2
• liblua - 5.1.4-6
• libnl-tiny - 0.1-1
• libuci - 12012009.5-1
• libuci-lua - 12012009.5-1
• libxtables - 1.4.6-2
• lua - 5.1.4-6
• luci - 0.9.0-1
• luci-admin-core - 0.9.0-1
• luci-admin-full - 0.9.0-1
• luci-admin-mini - 0.9.0-1
• luci-app-firewall - 0.9.0-1
• luci-app-initmgr - 0.9.0-1
• luci-cbi - 0.9.0-1
• luci-core - 0.9.0-1
• luci-http - 0.9.0-1
• luci-i18n-english - 0.9.0-1
• luci-ipkg - 0.9.0-1
• luci-lmo - 0.9.0-1
• luci-nixio - 0.9.0-1
• luci-sgi-cgi - 0.9.0-1
• luci-sys - 0.9.0-1
• luci-theme-base - 0.9.0-1
• luci-theme-openwrt - 0.9.0-1
• luci-uci - 0.9.0-1
• luci-uvl - 0.9.0-1
• luci-web - 0.9.0-1
• mtd - 12
• opkg - 513-2
• ppp - 2.4.4-5
• ppp-mod-pppoe - 2.4.4-5
• swconfig - 5
• uci - 12012009.5-1
• udevtrigger - 106-1
• uhttpd - 7

Uploading The Image

If you have a Windows machine available you can use Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 in compatibility mode (a Windows running on a VM, like VMware, does not work)

Get into the D-Link recovery console with the steps below:
While powering up the router, press and hold the reset button until the power LED starts blinking orange (usually takes around 45 (forty-five) seconds )

Set a static IP on your PC to 192.168.0.100/24 connect to http://192.168.0.1

Click "Browse" and select your OpenWrt image file (openwrt-ar71xx-dir-825-b1-squashfs-factory.bin, this binary image is available in the Backfire 10.03.1rc1 download directory)

Click "Update" and let router flash the image (don't worry if it reboots before it reaches 100%). The page should display "Device is Upgrading the Firmware" in blue letters with the current percentage in red (with an incompatible Browser it doesn't).

The router's power LED should blink orange during bootup, as soon as it stops flashing, you can connect to it obtain new IP from the router via DHCP and follow the firstlogin procedure.

Extra Reading
http://fetzig.org/2009/12/24/openwrt-on-the-d-link-dir-825/
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/d-link/dir-825