Notes from CentraLUG 7-May-2007: Ben Scott and OpenWRT

Ted Roche tedroche at tedroche.com
Wed May 9 23:03:39 EDT 2007


Seven attendees got to enjoy the last CentraLUG meeting at the New
Hampshire Technical Institute Library this academic year. The school
will be closing on Friday, and summer hours will not accommodate
CentraLUG. Stay tuned on an announcement of a summer location for June,
July and August (September will have no meeting due to the Labor Day
holiday).

Ben Scott was the featured presenter this evening, showing off the
OpenWRT Linux distribution for embedded devices. The list of supported
hardware [1] goes far beyond the initial LinkSys WRT-54G model to
include products from dozens of other vendors. Many attendees brought
their own routers for show-and-tell or backup. I had a v.1 WRT54G which
I opened for folks to inspect. I also brought the compact (and alas, not
yet flashable) WRT54GC. Bruce Dawson brought the WRTSL54GS, a
Linux-flashable unit that includes a built-in USB connection. While Ben
wrestled with the network and projector, we entertained ourselves well
(and heckled Ben).

Ben had a well-prepared presentation, with schematics of the units,
pictures of the circuit boards and some of hacks performed upon them,
and a live demo of upgrading the unit from stock firmware to use the
OpenWRT firmware [2] and X-Wrt interface [3]. The OpenWRT includes a
package manager and a large number of packages have been ported[4] to
the OpenWRT environment, ready for download. and installation.

Installation was uneventful - the Murphy gods must have been busy
torturing the students in their finals week - and simple: select the
"upload" option from the web interface and point to the OpenWrt image.
Installation takes a short time and requires the router to be rebooted.
Ben strongly advised clearing your browser cache, since the "same
device" is going to be responding with different responses.

Ben gave us a quick tour of the OpenWRT interface and plunged right into
installing X-Wrt[3]. X-Wrt extends the interface and makes management
far simpler, with some pretty incredible tools, like live SVG graphs
showing actual network usage. Pretty impressive stuff.

Folks considering buying a new WRT54 will want to look for a "GL" unit
where the "L" is Linux, the "GS" versions "Speedbooster" with more RAM
or the "SL54GS" "Storage Link" that includes the USB connection also.

Bill also notes that it is possible to "brick" a unit. Ben says there
are ways to de-brick them. Google ought to help, as would a post to GNHLUG.

Thanks to Ben for the great presentation, to Bill Sconce for providing
the projector and notes, and to all for attending and participating.

[1] http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware
[2] http://www.openwrt.org/
[3] http://x-wrt.org/
[4] http://downloads.openwrt.org/whiterussian/packages/

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com




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