OpenWRT playground¶

Preparing build scenario¶

You need some packages like: gcc, make, zlib, flex, quilt, subversion and some others. Also you need to install the devel packages of each of them. But don't worry about this, during the compilation process openwrt will tell you which one is missing.

First of all we are going to download the sources:

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

A good practice is to put download directory (where all packages will be stored) outside your source directoy. By this way you can use it for more source checkouts.

cd backfire
mkdir ../dl
ln -s ../dl

Let's go to install all feeds (extra packages).

scripts/feeds update -a
scripts/feeds install -a

And now we can start with configuration process:

make menuconfig
make kernel_menuconfig

menuconfig: you can select the packages you want to have inside your system installed (*) or only avaiable to install (M)
kernel_menuconfig: this is the standard menuconfig of the linux vanilla kernel

Then we can start compilation:

make V=99

First time it can have one or more hours.

If all goes fine. You will find the images ready to install inside: bin/ARCH/openwrt-*

For instance, if you want to use squashfs image using a USB pendrive, SD or CF:

dd if=openwrt-*-generic-combined-squashfs.img of=/dev/sdX

The first time openWRT boots, you can access using telnet to change the password.

telnet 192.168.1.1
  passwd root
  reboot

After that, telnet session will disappear. Then you can use ssh to manage the device.

PlanetLab & OpenWRT¶

- PlanetLab boot process mail http://lists.planet-lab.org/pipermail/devel/2006-November/001739.html