I recall reading about DARPANET in the IEEE Transactions my last year (71/72) of uni, but I am not sure if they were using TCP/IP at that time. My recollection is also a bit fuzzy, but I think the TCP/IP protocol emerged from that work a year or so later.
The thick coax vampire taps did have the advantage of not needing hubs, switches, and routers, but more than made up for that by being a real pita to pull through ceilings and walls.
Why are you messing around with hacking on the config files like /etc/config/wireless ?
You can use uci to do this as spelled out in the OpenWRT basic config documentation. I quoted the command required to get wireless up twice here already.
Or, seeing as you have Luci installed, just change the WIFI settings on the WIFI page.
I just tried that to see if changing ESSID had a problem like yours. It just worked and my phone found and connected to it easily.
Luci is cool. Looks a whole lot better than the hideous d-link web interface. I guess we don't actually need it if we learn all about the command line uic tool which I guess Luci uses at the back end.
Yes Luci is quite pleasant.
I did see mention of UCI, but not sure what it is.
Unlike you, that have been there and done that before, this is a new experience for me in many ways. So jargon creates barriers and sends me off into tangents of ponder remedies.
My HP50g calculator still uses Xmodem and Kermit. Managed to get RS232 working of that and some others expressed interest in using Xmodem. From what I understand, X and Y use checksums that are not very reliable, Z changed to CRC.
++++++++++++++
Luci is working.
It seems that when Luci is active, I cannot reach the WWW.
But when Luci is not active, I can reach the WWW.
So I am chasing down my GATEWAY ip and trying to reassign my MR3020 to 192.168.3.xxx. There are other devices that are 192.168.3.xxx and 192.168.1.xxx.
I was hoping to reach the outside work and actually local Minicom from the opkg repository tonight, but no joy... yet.
+++++++++++
I did have a D-Link router previously and the English was horrible. I am not sure Asus or TP-Link really write technical material for the consumer public much better. But the language in the LuCi menus are concise and clear.
It seems that when Luci is active, I cannot reach the WWW.
That is very odd.
You should not have to be messing around setting IP addresses.
In the normal course of events:
1) You plug the routers internet port (WAN port) into something that leads to the internet.
2) When the router boots it will get an address via DHCP from that internet connection. We don't much care what it is.
3) When a PC connects it will get an IP address from the router via DHCP. By default that will be in something like 192.168.1.xx
4) The PC will also get a gateway address to contact, it's the router, at 192.168.1.1
On Linux you can do:
$ sudo ifdown eth0
$ sudo ifup etho
and you should see the DHCP do its thing and get an address fro the PC.
Something like:
root@debian:/home/heater# ifdown eth0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.4
Copyright 2004-2012 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:19:21:ed:67:f5
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:19:21:ed:67:f5
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPRELEASE on eth0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67
Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon: avahi-daemon.
root@debian:/home/heater# ifup eth0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.4
Copyright 2004-2012 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:19:21:ed:67:f5
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:19:21:ed:67:f5
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPOFFER from 192.168.1.1
DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
bound to 192.168.1.213 -- renewal in 19812 seconds.
Stopping Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon: avahi-daemon.
Now, if you do have access to Luci on the router you can change the subnet that it is offering to the LAN connections from 192.168.1.0 to something else. Looks like you want 192.168.3.0 for some reason.
Just go to the menu "network->interfaces" and hit the "edit" button next to the LAN status. There you can change the routers LAN ipv4 address. Say 192.168.3.1
P.S. If you go into the menu "network->interfaces" and hit the "edit" button next to the WAN status you should see the ipv4 address that it obtained from the upstream internet router. If not something is up.
Unless you are doing something weird like I am here.
With a router plugged to the internet and the OpenWRT router plugged into that.
In which case it's best that the subnets operated by the two routers are not the same.
In my case that is true becaus ethe old d-link operates on 192.168.1.0 and the OpenWRT operates on 192.168.1.0
Aside: Just realized, I have never played with a MIPS processor before. I would say it makes a pleasant change from ARM but so far I can't tell the difference.
Well, I am doing something a bit unusual.
But LuCi made it clear that the WWW was NOT connected.
The bridge was right.
The IP4 Gateway address was empty.
It worked with 192.168.1.1 entered, but I wasn't able to reach Luci any more. I presume because it is going through my router's lan which also has a console at http://192.168.1.1
Thus, I am trying to get rid of the conflicts by having the MR3020 be a 255.255.255.0 network of 192.168.3.1 as gateway. So far, I can get back into Luci, but not into my downstream router.
I just keep plugging away as I am not shut out... no big disaster. Do i need another Bridge or something. Maybe it is a lack of DHCP services reaching the WWW.
Sounds like you are heading in the right direction.
If I had multiple such routers around I would ensure that they are all on different subnets 192.168.0.0, 192.168.1.0, 192.168.2.0, etc. With netmasks 255.255.255.0 as you say.
In theory you can chain them all together WAN port to a LAN port, WAN port to a LAN port etc. Or build stars and trees out of the network. Just be sure you are not connecting a LAN port of one device to a LAN port of another.
DHCP in each node should sort everything out. So far that works nicely with my two router network here.
That is the theory. In practice these things can drive you insane. That's why systems administrators are so grumpy:)
Well, having Heater and the router to drive me insane is not very appealing. But what choice to I have but to survive?
I do have a plan toward a goal -- Milestone One. Just have to keep trying.
All the Ukraine, Syria, Gaza/Israel buzz on CNN has been a bit much this weekend.
Welcome to my nightmare, I think you're gonna like it, I think you're gonna feel you belong. A nocturnal vacation, unnecessary sedation, you want to feel at home 'cause you belong. Welcome to my nightmare whoa, ho, ho, ho...
Welcome to my breakdown. I hope I didn't scare you. That's just the way we are when we come down. We sweat and laugh and scream here. 'Cause life is just a dream here. You know inside you feel right at home, here. Yeah, Welcome to my nightmare yeah, hey, hey, hey...
Welcome to my nightmare! I think you're gonna like it! I think you're gonna feel you belong! We sweat and laugh and scream here! 'Cause life is just a dream here! You know inside you feel right at home, here!
Welcome to my nightmare hoo, hoo, woo, hoo... Welcome to my breakdown...
Yeah!
Thank's to Alice Copper. I would never have guessed he knew this forums so well
I thought fighting with OpenWRT was going to be a horrible mess of incompatible hardware, missing drivers, broken configurations, version miss-matches, cross compile tool chains that don't work etc etc. Culminating in a bricked router.
Yes this did consume most of my weekend BUT damn it has all gone far more smoothly than I could ever imagined.
I even bit the bullet and brain transplanted the live router in this house. It took all of ten minutes. So far nobody has noticed, it just works!
So now we have new toys to connect to Propellers. And new dev tools to work with. I might even run down to the local PC mega store and rifle through their dozens of routers to see what is OpenWRT compatible.
So, thanks for goading me into taking a look at all this. I think it's time for a celebratory beer and think about work tomorrow.
I just found out how to stop the kernel using the UART as a console port and disable the login shell on it. Then we can use the UART for whenever we like:
You can find that WR703N for under $25 shipped on eBay. If playing around with one sounds interesting to you, then place an order today. I almost bought one last year on a whim, just in case.
Why are you messing around with hacking on the config files like /etc/config/wireless ?
You can use uci to do this as spelled out in the OpenWRT basic config documentation. I quoted the command required to get wireless up twice here already.
Or, seeing as you have Luci installed, just change the WIFI settings on the WIFI page.
I just tried that to see if changing ESSID had a problem like yours. It just worked and my phone found and connected to it easily.
Luci is cool. Looks a whole lot better than the hideous d-link web interface. I guess we don't actually need it if we learn all about the command line uic tool which I guess Luci uses at the back end.
Because one of the OpenWrt spells out how to enable the wireless connection. I posted this back #77 (the link is one of those in #55)
You have to remove the line that keeps the wireless off in /etc/network
And then add the lines in /etc/wireless
I suspect that the ap mode is wrong to get the 703 to connect to the main router and hence the internet.
Then the WiFi connection should be automatically set up on power up - no Luci commands required.
Luckily I have never had to pull wires anywhere like that. Well, except for the antenna coax for my amateur radio stuff as a kid.
Ah, the good old days.
Pulling coax through the headlining of my 1 week old car after drilling the hole in the roof for my 5/8 2m whip! Worked well as it fitted up the centreboard case of my sailboat
VK2ZTZ
Well, Of the 3 routers I have lying around not a one are on the list!!!! Oh well, will recondition at least one in to a wireless bridge.
If they are no longer used, then open them up and see whats inside chipwise. Maybe they are rebadged - you could be lucky. Anything is worth trying if they are headed for the scrapheap! If not, don't touch them.
AliExpress has the cheapest WR703N. I will find the link if you wish.
Loopy,
Perhaps you need to disable the /etc/network and remove the additions to /etc/wireless to get Luci to connect to the internet???
I think ap mode has to be changed to 'lan' or 'wan' to get to the main internet router. Didn't have time over the w/e to do anything. Hopefully I can try later today.
BTW I do have wifi working with the /etc/network and /etc/wireless mods as suggested but I had to use 'ap' mode.
I want to plug in my serial and see what is happening there before I try the next things.
heater,
When you got the ser2net working outputting those messages, where were the messages showing up via? ie the serial or the Ethernet???
Because one of the OpenWrt spells out how to enable the wireless connection. I posted this back #77 (the link is one of those in #55)
You have to remove the line that keeps the wireless off in /etc/network
And then add the lines in /etc/wireless
I suspect that the ap mode is wrong to get the 703 to connect to the main router and hence the internet.
Then the WiFi connection should be automatically set up on power up - no Luci commands required.
Perhaps I have missed something here. You guys want to connect as a WIFI "client" to your upstream router and hence the internet. Of course, that being the point of this exercise.
I have not arrived at that point yet. As my router -> router -> internet is all still wired.
I can't help thinking though that this should all be done via Luci (or uci). Luci has an option to change the wireless from "ap" to "client" which sounds like a good start. You can also change the WAN ethernet settings to turn stop that trying to be the upstream connection. And so on.
Any way if it works it works. I will have a play with such a wireless set up later today perhaps.
When you got the ser2net working outputting those messages, where were the messages showing up via? ie the serial or the Ethernet???
I have not been using ser2net.
I think most of the console output I posted here was copied from gtkterm, the serial terminal program, connected via a propplug and a few wires to that 5 pin UART header you saw on the board picture.
Some of the output might have been copied from an ssh session over the ethernet.
It all looks the same except you can only get the boot messages via the serial, which I did not post here.
Thanks heater.
Yes, Luci is probably easier to be able to try things rather than have them in the bootup procedure. But that was what I found so I tried it and it worked. I will look at what you did and try and adapt that.
OK, so this came out the serial port. (My propplug connected to the serial port on the 703).
Here is what I currently get when I have just the serial port connected. It repeats this loop (not sure if there was anything prior to this as it seemed to start middle of the loop).
- preinit -
Press the [f] key and hit [enter] to enter failsafe mode
- regular preinit -
[ 7.010000] jffs2: notice: (414) jffs2_build_xattr_subsystem: complete building xattr subsystem, 1 of xdatum (0 unchecked, 0
orphan) and 17 of xref (0 dead, 2 orphan) found.
[ 7.960000] SCSI subsystem initialized
[ 8.130000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[ 8.140000] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[ 8.140000] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[ 8.560000] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver
[ 8.560000] ehci-platform ehci-platform: Generic Platform EHCI Controller
[ 8.570000] ehci-platform ehci-platform: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[ 8.610000] ehci-platform ehci-platform: irq 3, io mem 0x1b000000
[ 8.630000] ehci-platform ehci-platform: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
[ 8.630000] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 8.630000] hub 1-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[ 8.780000] ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver
[ 8.890000] uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
[ 9.010000] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
[ 9.020000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[ 9.020000] USB Mass Storage support registered.
switching to jffs2
- init -
Please press Enter to activate this console. [ 31.080000] Compat-drivers backport release: compat-drivers-2013-01-08-3
[ 31.080000] Backport based on wireless-testing.git master-2013-01-07
[ 31.090000] compat.git: wireless-testing.git
[ 31.120000] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
[ 31.130000] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
[ 31.130000] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
[ 31.140000] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 31.150000] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 31.160000] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 31.160000] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 31.170000] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.080000] ieee80211 phy0: Atheros AR9330 Rev:1 mem=0xb8100000, irq=2
[ 32.080000] cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US
[ 32.090000] cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: US
[ 32.090000] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
[ 32.100000] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm)
[ 32.110000] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 1700 mBm)
[ 32.120000] cfg80211: (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.120000] cfg80211: (5490000 KHz - 5600000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.130000] cfg80211: (5650000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.140000] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 3000 mBm)
[ 32.350000] NTFS driver 2.1.30 [Flags: R/O MODULE].
[ 32.860000] PPP generic driver version 2.4.2
[ 33.090000] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
[ 33.220000] NET: Registered protocol family 24
[ 33.280000] nf_conntrack version 0.5.0 (458 buckets, 1832 max)
[ 33.680000] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
[ 33.690000] cdc_acm: USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters
[ 33.820000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
[ 33.820000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[ 33.830000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for generic
[ 33.990000] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[ 34.020000] usbcore: registered new interface driver belkin_sa
[ 34.020000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for Belkin / Peracom / GoHubs USB Serial Adapter
[ 34.150000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ch341
[ 34.160000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for ch341-uart
[ 34.180000] usbcore: registered new interface driver cp210x
[ 34.180000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for cp210x
[ 34.310000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ftdi_sio
[ 34.310000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for FTDI USB Serial Device
[ 34.430000] usbcore: registered new interface driver pl2303
[ 34.440000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for pl2303
[ 34.550000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ti_usb_3410_5052
[ 34.560000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for TI USB 3410 1 port adapter
[ 34.570000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for TI USB 5052 2 port adapter
[ 34.850000] gspca_main: v2.14.0 registered
[ 34.870000] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
[ 34.870000] USB Video Class driver (1.1.1)
[ 39.720000] device eth0 entered promiscuous mode
[ 45.740000] device wlan0 entered promiscuous mode
[ 45.820000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[ 45.830000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[ 1.140000] ag71xx ag71xx.0 eth0: connected to PHY at ag71xx-mdio.1:04 [uid=004dd041, driver=Generic PHY]
[ 1.150000] TCP: cubic registered
[ 1.160000] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[ 1.160000] 8021q: 802.1Q VLAN Support v1.8
[ 1.170000] VFS: Mounted root (squashfs filesystem) readonly on device 31:2.
[ 1.180000] Freeing unused kernel memory: 228k freed
Oh, and yes, I am trying to be a client on the main network. Then I want to get the second 703 as another client. SO I want lots of clients, all with props or whatever connected via the serial port. I think for simple versions I can just use the GPIOs to set or read some I/Os for simple IOTs. More complex ones will have Props to do the main work. That is why the ser2net sounds fantastic.
Will it be possible for clients to then talk to clients via the main internet router? What I am thinking is that I can connect to my main router from my iPhone or iPad or Laptop(s) and then to any of the clients to read or write I/Os (my xoom is the hotspot = main router).
Are you saying that all that console junk is repeating forever? That is totally not right. That would mean your router is rebooting all the time! How can anything work like that?
It should all stop. At that point you should be able to hit return and then the OpenWRT ASCI art should pop up followed by a command prompt. As it says in your example "Please press Enter to activate this console".
It describes "WDS - Wireless Distribution System" as non-standard so I'm not really into that.
It describes "Bridged Client Mode" as Broadcom only. So I'm not into that either.
That seems to leave "Routed Client Mode". See the Masqueraded and Routed subsections to see that the simple setup does not allow "peer to peer" connections. You need add some routing to the access point router to make that work.
AliExpress has the cheapest WR703N. I will find the link if you wish.
There's one on EBay for 20. Might get it tomorrow. I was hoping one of the three I had were on the list so I do no not have to buy a fourth. Not sure if I will have the time to mess with it with all the other projects I have going on!!!!
I'm going to retract what I said about routing and peer connections.
If we look at this page http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/routedclient#using.routing it describes a subnet connected to another subnet via WIFI. And there is a nice diagram of that with a bunch of computers in each subnet each connected by ethernet.
Without adding routing the problem is that computers on one subnet cannot see computers on the other.
Well, seems to me we won't be having that setup. We might have a bunch of routers all accessing an ap via WIFI but there are no computers behind them, only Propellers on serial links. So no routing is required.
Looks like we don't need any masquerade either.
Basically every Propeller node has a WIFI client and all those WIFI clients show up in the top level subnet.
The d-link 615 has a button on the side. For years now I have wondered what on earth it was for. Now I find:
"The D-Link DIR-615 has a WiFi Protected Setup Button (WPS) on the right side of the router. Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) System is a simplified method for securing your wireless network during the Initial setup."
Seems I don't need this at all with OpenWRT.
That button is accompanied by a red and blue LED. I have only seen the blue LED flash at start up with the original firmware. With OpenWRT it does nothing. I have also managed to control the red LED from Luci. The blue one is not to be found in Luci.
Are you saying that all that console junk is repeating forever? That is totally not right. That would mean your router is rebooting all the time! How can anything work like that?
It should all stop. At that point you should be able to hit return and then the OpenWRT ASCI art should pop up followed by a command prompt. As it says in your example "Please press Enter to activate this console".
Yes, it repeats if I don't have an Ethernet connection. It does stop when I hit "enter" and gives the root@openwrt prompt (something like this).
I can connect via Ethernet. The WiFi is also working and I can login with 192.168.1.1 but it is not connecting to the internet via my main router.
It describes "WDS - Wireless Distribution System" as non-standard so I'm not really into that.
It describes "Bridged Client Mode" as Broadcom only. So I'm not into that either.
That seems to leave "Routed Client Mode". See the Masqueraded and Routed subsections to see that the simple setup does not allow "peer to peer" connections. You need add some routing to the access point router to make that work.
The material configuration file are in /etc/config, so you need to edit it first.
vi /etc/config/network then edit the file by pressing 'i', and adding the following lines:
config interface 'wan' option ifname 'wlan0' option proto 'dhcp'To save, press 'esc' to be sure to be out of the edit mode, and then type:
:wq Now we need to edit the configuration file to connect to your network:
vi /etc/config/wireless You should have this screen: [SCREENSHOT]
Edit the file by pressing 'i'. You need to comment the line 'option disabled 1' by adding '#' in the front of the line. Then edit the existing configuration:
config wifi-iface option device radio0 option network wan option mode sta option ssid '''Your network name here''' option encryption psk option key '''Your network password here'''You need to change the ssid and the key according to your own network. The encryption here correspond to WPA, please refer to OpenWRT wiki for other configuration: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/uci/wireless
When it's done, press 'Esc' to quit the edit mode, and type:
:wqto save the modifications and quit the file.
You need now to reboot the device:
reboot After the reboot, your router should be connected to your wireless network. If not, check the configuration files again
This all works with the exception it is not logging onto my network via wifi properly.
I thought fighting with OpenWRT was going to be a horrible mess of incompatible hardware, missing drivers, broken configurations, version miss-matches, cross compile tool chains that don't work etc etc. Culminating in a bricked router.
Yes this did consume most of my weekend BUT damn it has all gone far more smoothly than I could ever imagined.
I even bit the bullet and brain transplanted the live router in this house. It took all of ten minutes. So far nobody has noticed, it just works!
So now we have new toys to connect to Propellers. And new dev tools to work with. I might even run down to the local PC mega store and rifle through their dozens of routers to see what is OpenWRT compatible.
So, thanks for goading me into taking a look at all this. I think it's time for a celebratory beer and think about work tomorrow.
I think I will print this out, frame it, and hang it above my computer.
I am just trying to look for fun and useful project for all the hardsware I have accumulated. I am certainly not going to the moon, or trying to become the next Steve Jobs.
Linux routers can be both fun and useful to hack.
I started with Parallax products in about 2003, Linux in about 2007. Before that, most of my computer use was economic related and has all the frustrations that the personal computer age threw at the naive user.
Thanks heater. I have just been reading and perhaps I have the wrong encryption PSK s/be PSK2 as my main router uses WPA2-Personal and AES. It is also possible I need to change from US mode to AU mode.
It describes "WDS - Wireless Distribution System" as non-standard so I'm not really into that.
It describes "Bridged Client Mode" as Broadcom only. So I'm not into that either.
That seems to leave "Routed Client Mode". See the Masqueraded and Routed subsections to see that the simple setup does not allow "peer to peer" connections. You need add some routing to the access point router to make that work.
The Routed Client mode would be nice to be able to do. But that I think can come later. It would permit my laptop to control/exchange with each of the Client 703 + Prop routers without going via the internet. However, I don't mind controlling via the internet, at least for now anyway.
Currently the 703 has Ethernet to Wifi.
I think next my list is to replace the Ethernet with the serial port.
I just found out how to stop the kernel using the UART as a console port and disable the login shell on it. Then we can use the UART for whenever we like:
Excellent.. there seem to be three alternatives for reusing the serial port.
1. stty < requires an opkg to be installed -- most likely to be useful for loading Propeller binaries
2. a terminal program - picocom, mincom, or microcom < requires an opkg to be installed for Tx/Rx
3. ser2net < have yet to determine if available in opkg, but it there.. offers seamless Tx/Rx
==========
I have control of my MR3020 via LuCi, but haven't gotten it configured right to reach the WWW on my specific resources. So I have to work through review of gateways, bridges, DNS access, and DHCP.
Comments
I recall reading about DARPANET in the IEEE Transactions my last year (71/72) of uni, but I am not sure if they were using TCP/IP at that time. My recollection is also a bit fuzzy, but I think the TCP/IP protocol emerged from that work a year or so later.
The thick coax vampire taps did have the advantage of not needing hubs, switches, and routers, but more than made up for that by being a real pita to pull through ceilings and walls.
Ah, the good old days.
You probably did hear about TCP/IP at that time. Research was started in the late 1960's. wikipedia has a version of events. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
Luckily I have never had to pull wires anywhere like that. Well, except for the antenna coax for my amateur radio stuff as a kid.
Ah, the good old days.
Yes Luci is quite pleasant.
I did see mention of UCI, but not sure what it is.
Unlike you, that have been there and done that before, this is a new experience for me in many ways. So jargon creates barriers and sends me off into tangents of ponder remedies.
My HP50g calculator still uses Xmodem and Kermit. Managed to get RS232 working of that and some others expressed interest in using Xmodem. From what I understand, X and Y use checksums that are not very reliable, Z changed to CRC.
++++++++++++++
Luci is working.
It seems that when Luci is active, I cannot reach the WWW.
But when Luci is not active, I can reach the WWW.
So I am chasing down my GATEWAY ip and trying to reassign my MR3020 to 192.168.3.xxx. There are other devices that are 192.168.3.xxx and 192.168.1.xxx.
I was hoping to reach the outside work and actually local Minicom from the opkg repository tonight, but no joy... yet.
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I did have a D-Link router previously and the English was horrible. I am not sure Asus or TP-Link really write technical material for the consumer public much better. But the language in the LuCi menus are concise and clear.
You should not have to be messing around setting IP addresses.
In the normal course of events:
1) You plug the routers internet port (WAN port) into something that leads to the internet.
2) When the router boots it will get an address via DHCP from that internet connection. We don't much care what it is.
3) When a PC connects it will get an IP address from the router via DHCP. By default that will be in something like 192.168.1.xx
4) The PC will also get a gateway address to contact, it's the router, at 192.168.1.1
On Linux you can do:
$ sudo ifdown eth0
$ sudo ifup etho
and you should see the DHCP do its thing and get an address fro the PC.
Something like: Now, if you do have access to Luci on the router you can change the subnet that it is offering to the LAN connections from 192.168.1.0 to something else. Looks like you want 192.168.3.0 for some reason.
Just go to the menu "network->interfaces" and hit the "edit" button next to the LAN status. There you can change the routers LAN ipv4 address. Say 192.168.3.1
P.S. If you go into the menu "network->interfaces" and hit the "edit" button next to the WAN status you should see the ipv4 address that it obtained from the upstream internet router. If not something is up.
With a router plugged to the internet and the OpenWRT router plugged into that.
In which case it's best that the subnets operated by the two routers are not the same.
In my case that is true becaus ethe old d-link operates on 192.168.1.0 and the OpenWRT operates on 192.168.1.0
Aside: Just realized, I have never played with a MIPS processor before. I would say it makes a pleasant change from ARM but so far I can't tell the difference.
But LuCi made it clear that the WWW was NOT connected.
The bridge was right.
The IP4 Gateway address was empty.
It worked with 192.168.1.1 entered, but I wasn't able to reach Luci any more. I presume because it is going through my router's lan which also has a console at http://192.168.1.1
Thus, I am trying to get rid of the conflicts by having the MR3020 be a 255.255.255.0 network of 192.168.3.1 as gateway. So far, I can get back into Luci, but not into my downstream router.
I just keep plugging away as I am not shut out... no big disaster. Do i need another Bridge or something. Maybe it is a lack of DHCP services reaching the WWW.
If I had multiple such routers around I would ensure that they are all on different subnets 192.168.0.0, 192.168.1.0, 192.168.2.0, etc. With netmasks 255.255.255.0 as you say.
In theory you can chain them all together WAN port to a LAN port, WAN port to a LAN port etc. Or build stars and trees out of the network. Just be sure you are not connecting a LAN port of one device to a LAN port of another.
DHCP in each node should sort everything out. So far that works nicely with my two router network here.
That is the theory. In practice these things can drive you insane. That's why systems administrators are so grumpy:)
I do have a plan toward a goal -- Milestone One. Just have to keep trying.
All the Ukraine, Syria, Gaza/Israel buzz on CNN has been a bit much this weekend.
Drive you insane no...
Welcome to my nightmare, I think you're gonna like it, I think you're gonna feel you belong.
A nocturnal vacation, unnecessary sedation, you want to feel at home 'cause you belong.
Welcome to my nightmare whoa, ho, ho, ho...
Welcome to my breakdown.
I hope I didn't scare you.
That's just the way we are when we come down.
We sweat and laugh and scream here.
'Cause life is just a dream here.
You know inside you feel right at home, here.
Yeah, Welcome to my nightmare yeah, hey, hey, hey...
Welcome to my nightmare!
I think you're gonna like it!
I think you're gonna feel you belong!
We sweat and laugh and scream here!
'Cause life is just a dream here!
You know inside you feel right at home, here!
Welcome to my nightmare hoo, hoo, woo, hoo...
Welcome to my breakdown...
Yeah!
Thank's to Alice Copper. I would never have guessed he knew this forums so well
I thought fighting with OpenWRT was going to be a horrible mess of incompatible hardware, missing drivers, broken configurations, version miss-matches, cross compile tool chains that don't work etc etc. Culminating in a bricked router.
Yes this did consume most of my weekend BUT damn it has all gone far more smoothly than I could ever imagined.
I even bit the bullet and brain transplanted the live router in this house. It took all of ten minutes. So far nobody has noticed, it just works!
So now we have new toys to connect to Propellers. And new dev tools to work with. I might even run down to the local PC mega store and rifle through their dozens of routers to see what is OpenWRT compatible.
So, thanks for goading me into taking a look at all this. I think it's time for a celebratory beer and think about work tomorrow.
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/terminate.console.on.serial
You have to remove the line that keeps the wireless off in /etc/network
And then add the lines in /etc/wireless
I suspect that the ap mode is wrong to get the 703 to connect to the main router and hence the internet.
Then the WiFi connection should be automatically set up on power up - no Luci commands required.
VK2ZTZ
AliExpress has the cheapest WR703N. I will find the link if you wish.
Perhaps you need to disable the /etc/network and remove the additions to /etc/wireless to get Luci to connect to the internet???
I think ap mode has to be changed to 'lan' or 'wan' to get to the main internet router. Didn't have time over the w/e to do anything. Hopefully I can try later today.
BTW I do have wifi working with the /etc/network and /etc/wireless mods as suggested but I had to use 'ap' mode.
I want to plug in my serial and see what is happening there before I try the next things.
heater,
When you got the ser2net working outputting those messages, where were the messages showing up via? ie the serial or the Ethernet???
I have not arrived at that point yet. As my router -> router -> internet is all still wired.
I can't help thinking though that this should all be done via Luci (or uci). Luci has an option to change the wireless from "ap" to "client" which sounds like a good start. You can also change the WAN ethernet settings to turn stop that trying to be the upstream connection. And so on.
Any way if it works it works. I will have a play with such a wireless set up later today perhaps.
I have not been using ser2net.
I think most of the console output I posted here was copied from gtkterm, the serial terminal program, connected via a propplug and a few wires to that 5 pin UART header you saw on the board picture.
Some of the output might have been copied from an ssh session over the ethernet.
It all looks the same except you can only get the boot messages via the serial, which I did not post here.
Yes, Luci is probably easier to be able to try things rather than have them in the bootup procedure. But that was what I found so I tried it and it worked. I will look at what you did and try and adapt that.
OK, so this came out the serial port. (My propplug connected to the serial port on the 703).
Here is what I currently get when I have just the serial port connected. It repeats this loop (not sure if there was anything prior to this as it seemed to start middle of the loop).
Oh, and yes, I am trying to be a client on the main network. Then I want to get the second 703 as another client. SO I want lots of clients, all with props or whatever connected via the serial port. I think for simple versions I can just use the GPIOs to set or read some I/Os for simple IOTs. More complex ones will have Props to do the main work. That is why the ser2net sounds fantastic.
Will it be possible for clients to then talk to clients via the main internet router? What I am thinking is that I can connect to my main router from my iPhone or iPad or Laptop(s) and then to any of the clients to read or write I/Os (my xoom is the hotspot = main router).
Re: console output,
Are you saying that all that console junk is repeating forever? That is totally not right. That would mean your router is rebooting all the time! How can anything work like that?
It should all stop. At that point you should be able to hit return and then the OpenWRT ASCI art should pop up followed by a command prompt. As it says in your example "Please press Enter to activate this console".
Re: WIFI Client,
Are you working from this OpenWRT page about wireless client mode: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/clientmode ?
It describes "WDS - Wireless Distribution System" as non-standard so I'm not really into that.
It describes "Bridged Client Mode" as Broadcom only. So I'm not into that either.
That seems to leave "Routed Client Mode". See the Masqueraded and Routed subsections to see that the simple setup does not allow "peer to peer" connections. You need add some routing to the access point router to make that work.
If we look at this page http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/routedclient#using.routing it describes a subnet connected to another subnet via WIFI. And there is a nice diagram of that with a bunch of computers in each subnet each connected by ethernet.
Without adding routing the problem is that computers on one subnet cannot see computers on the other.
Well, seems to me we won't be having that setup. We might have a bunch of routers all accessing an ap via WIFI but there are no computers behind them, only Propellers on serial links. So no routing is required.
Looks like we don't need any masquerade either.
Basically every Propeller node has a WIFI client and all those WIFI clients show up in the top level subnet.
"The D-Link DIR-615 has a WiFi Protected Setup Button (WPS) on the right side of the router. Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) System is a simplified method for securing your wireless network during the Initial setup."
Seems I don't need this at all with OpenWRT.
That button is accompanied by a red and blue LED. I have only seen the blue LED flash at start up with the original firmware. With OpenWRT it does nothing. I have also managed to control the red LED from Luci. The blue one is not to be found in Luci.
So with luck I have two GPIO I can use !
I can connect via Ethernet. The WiFi is also working and I can login with 192.168.1.1 but it is not connecting to the internet via my main router. Here is the procedure I followed to get my WiFi running, although it is not connecting (I think that is the problem anyway) to may main internet router.
http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Install_OpenWRT_on_TPlink_WR703N This all works with the exception it is not logging onto my network via wifi properly.
I think I will print this out, frame it, and hang it above my computer.
I am just trying to look for fun and useful project for all the hardsware I have accumulated. I am certainly not going to the moon, or trying to become the next Steve Jobs.
Linux routers can be both fun and useful to hack.
I started with Parallax products in about 2003, Linux in about 2007. Before that, most of my computer use was economic related and has all the frustrations that the personal computer age threw at the naive user.
You might want to compare those instructions you have with those found on those page:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/routedclient#using.routing
In theory if you work thought the steps under the "Using MASQUERADE" section you should be in business.
The next part "Using routing" is a nice extra that may or may not be required.
Connected IE on my Laptop via Ethernet to WR703N which is then connected via WIFI to my main router which is on the internet.
Here is the /etc/config/wireless file... The problem was the encryption was required to be psk2 for my network.
Postedit:
For completeness, /etc/config/network required this to be added...
Here is the reference
http://wiki.xinchejian.com/wiki/Install_OpenWRT_on_TPlink_WR703N
Currently the 703 has Ethernet to Wifi.
I think next my list is to replace the Ethernet with the serial port.
Excellent.. there seem to be three alternatives for reusing the serial port.
1. stty < requires an opkg to be installed -- most likely to be useful for loading Propeller binaries
2. a terminal program - picocom, mincom, or microcom < requires an opkg to be installed for Tx/Rx
3. ser2net < have yet to determine if available in opkg, but it there.. offers seamless Tx/Rx
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I have control of my MR3020 via LuCi, but haven't gotten it configured right to reach the WWW on my specific resources. So I have to work through review of gateways, bridges, DNS access, and DHCP.