Another OpenWrt build for Raspberry Pi

[jake1981]

Hello.

I have been using OpenWrt for years, also I have customized it for years, some patches also have been welcomed to the mainstream as well, although for unknown reasons, most has been ignored. Anyway, here goes..

I noticed that OpenWrt used outdated kernel version for rpi which lacked some patches as well, so I made a huge job to provide kernel from official rpi feed for openwrt, also I wanted to bring openwrt to near same level with other available rpi distributions, so I added a new packages for rpi. Lot's of 'em.

Job is nearly done and before taking this to public.. (putting out the sources)
I want it to be complete.. So I need some testers. Read about my work from here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... R8sEP0WOCI

There are 2 mirrors for my images and packages, default one is this:
http://rpi-openwrt.host22.com/brcm2708/

and U.S. mirror is: http://openwrt.elppaapple.com/raspberry-pi/

Both have limited trafficing and U.S. mirror is really slow from Finland, but might be really fast from U.S. so use one
that you like. If you decide to use U.S. mirror, change /etc/opkg.conf to use this:
http://openwrt.elppaapple.com/raspberry-pi/packages as a repository.

Hope I can get feedback. Please, on how to use openwrt, check http://www.openwrt.org - do not ask from me, I am here for technical support and support about packages provided by ME - not about guiding how to use openwrt..

---

Initial image uses IP 192.168.1.1 like openwrt usually, telnet into it if headless.. Root password is unset..
(ssh works after you have set root password, this also disables telnet)

---

Some packages are pre-installed on the image:
rpi-extendfs : utility for resizing root filesystem
rpi-update : for updating firmware

List of available packages can be found from http://rpi-openwrt.host22.com/brcm2708/packages/

And there's all kind of goodies, like accelerated weston..

[graffitici]

Hi jake1981,

I'm actually very interested in this. I just found out about your work, and would love to help. Please let me know where things stand, and I'll try to give it a go. I noticed that you updated the packages on Feb 18?

Cheers

[graffitici]

Ok, I used the image openwrt-brcm2708-sdcard-vfat-ext4.img on a 16GB SD card. The RPi booted perfectly. Like you said, initially, the IP was configured statically. I ran udhcp to get a new address, but that somehow didn't update the DNS servers. I had to manually change /etc/resolv.conf to point to the correct DNS servers. I might be missing something though, should udhcpc take care of that as well?

After that I used the built-in rpi-extendfs to extend the size of the partition to 16GB, which also went flawlessly. I did a 'opkg update' to get the list of packages, and then very easily installed LuCI. I haven't had the chance to try out many of the other packages.

Do you think it should be possible to install regular RPi packages using opkg? I keep reading that the .opkg files are very similar to the .deb files.
Thanks again for this work!

[jake1981]

You might be able to use debs with opkg and some trickery, but what is the point of doing that? You could just be using raspbian or arch or something else.. If you are talking about software, you most propably cannot meet dependencies and most support libraries on openwrt have openwrt specific patches and minimalizations so issues are propable. Don't forget to use rpi-update, I created both rpi-update and rpi-extendfs to be openwrt alternatives for tools existing on other dists.

How would you like to assist? I am planning on putting the package repository in the github some day..

[ubiquitous]

ditto to everything that graffitici said above. Tried everything above and it worked great. Thanks! I would like to test your image and configure my pi as a node on a mesh network. I'm wondering how I might add support for this wifi adapter http://www.adafruit.com/products/1030 RTL8192cu Any tutorials or places I can look to figure out how to do this?

[jake1981]

Try openwrt forums - search 8192 and 8192cu there..

[michael.p]

Hi! I've tried using your image. I logged into the system installed luci and we other packages, but then I tried to configure VPN (PPTP) and it failed on with these kernel module load errors:

Code: Select all

[  376.955083] arc4: Unknown symbol blkcipher_walk_done (err 0)
[  376.966952] arc4: Unknown symbol blkcipher_walk_virt (err 0)
[  376.978544] arc4: Unknown symbol crypto_blkcipher_type (err 0)
[  377.095206] ecb: Unknown symbol blkcipher_walk_done (err 0)
[  377.106882] ecb: Unknown symbol blkcipher_walk_virt (err 0)
[  377.118479] ecb: Unknown symbol crypto_blkcipher_type (err 0)

Am I doing something wrong?

[afox]

I want to use a rpi for router/firewall, with usb tethered smartphone for the internet connection. OpenWrt seemed a good choice, the essential features builtin and useful addons available without a lot of unnecessary programs/services to bloat it.

I found your release and decided to try it. Here are some thoughts and comments, sorry about the length.

Setup is early Model B 256MB (may try 512MB version later) connected to Plugable 7-port usb powered hub, which is providing power to both rpi and smartphone. Chose Plugable because manufacturer actually tested their hubs with rpi. Looks a bit strange with rpi connected to both hub input and output, but only one power adapter needed.

Downloaded gz of image, could not get md5sum to match, but extracted image from downloaded gz file did match the md5sum.

Wrote to sdcard, booted first time, great work jake1981.

The usb keyboard and hdmi console are very useful when the network settings get messed up, which I have done a few times.

Could not get to failsafe mode, no buttons. May look at adding buttons and extra leds later.

Tweaked "config.txt" to set "gpu_mem=16", seemed rather unnecessary to have more where gpu is only expected to provide emergency text console.

Used "rpi-extendfs" to get 100MB root partition, looks small for modern system, but seems to be very generous compared with what OpenWrt often runs on. Had to use set last sector to 262143 to get exact 100MB partition. Wanted that to simplify taking a backup.

Used "dd if=/dev/sdb bs=4096 count=32768 | gzip >bak_2014-04-13.img.gz" on another system to backup first 128MB of sdcard, including partition table, boot & root partitions. Very useful to be able to restore after I completely messed things up.

Is there a reason for the strange partition layout? 4MB unused, 20MB boot, 4MB unused, ??MB root.

Code: Select all

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/mmcblk0p1   *        8192       49151       20480    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2           57344      262143      102400   83  Linux

Downloaded several of your packages to usb stick and used that as opkg source for installing packages.

Followed OpenWrt guides and got smartphone tethering working (eventually), this is being posted from laptop, via rpi and smartphone.

I noticed that some things like usb storage seemed to work without the expected kmod packages being installed, suspect that this may be because the support is already builtin to the kernel used.

Tried "rpi-update", works after fixing a couple of little bugs, "LICENCE" is misspelt and "fixup_cd.dat" file is not downloaded/updated. From other posts I think the "*_cd.dat" files may be used when "gpu_mem" is set to a low value.

Code: Select all

--- /sbin/rpi-update    2014-02-16 23:20:38.000000000 +0000
+++ rpi-update  2014-04-13 11:32:20.000000000 +0000
@@ -15,3 +15,3 @@
 TMP_PATH="/tmp/rpi-fw-upgrade"
-AMOUNT_FILES=6
+AMOUNT_FILES=7
 CURRENT_FILE=1
@@ -61,5 +61,6 @@
        download_file "COPYING.linux"
-       download_file "LICENSE.broadcom"
+       download_file "LICENCE.broadcom"
        download_file "bootcode.bin"
        download_file "fixup.dat"
+       download_file "fixup_cd.dat"
        download_file "start.elf"
@@ -71,5 +72,6 @@
        upgrade_file "COPYING.linux"
-       upgrade_file "LICENSE.broadcom"
+       upgrade_file "LICENCE.broadcom"
        upgrade_file "bootcode.bin"
        upgrade_file "fixup.dat"
+       upgrade_file "fixup_cd.dat"
        upgrade_file "start.elf"

This release seems to be based on the brcm2708 version of OpenWrt, am I correct in thinking that the normal brcm2708 packages will not work and needed to be recompiled because the kernel has been rebuilt? If I want to use other Openwrt packages will I have to setup a build environment and compile them to match this kernel?

Some of the OpenWrt guides suggest installing "relayd" package, your repository only contains "6relayd" which I suspect is the IPv6 version, if "relayd" is a generally useful package could you please include it. Not sure if I actually need it, still trying to understand how routing in OpenWrt works.

As I said before great work jake1981, hope this release is popular, it should be.

afox

[afox]

OpenSSL just been hit by the very nasty Heartbleed security bug.

Please update libopenssl package to fixed version 1.0.1g, I think that has already been done in main OpenWrt repositories.

afox

[netomx]

Wow, it seems pretty good! will test tonight

[netomx]

Pal, it seems you have trouble with the ath9k and ppp module, what do you ned to tiadgnose it? ath9k have the same error as the guy 3 posts above.

[netomx]

nevermind, it is a power problem

[halindrome]

I was attempting to get this running using the latest builds on the openwrt download site, since it appears your changes have been integrated. However, I cannot seem to get it to boot on a couple of different Rev B boards. Do you have any instructions for using the latest builds that can be downloaded from http://downloads.openwrt.org/attitude_a ... 8/generic/ ?

[halindrome]

Turns out this is a known problem. I am building from scratch now and it is working much better. Thanks for all the hard work on the patches!

[northpole]

It is fixed in new build. I am using it with a ASIX usb to ethernet adapter. Works like charm.
Still lots of packages are not available, hope they are ported as soon as possible.