[Commotion-dev] Freifunk watchdog

[Ben West]

Hi All,

Unfortunately, the current developer for freifunk-watchdog stated there
isn't any documentation for that tool, and probably will never be.  This
means changes could be silently pushed into these tools, with end users not
discover them until after their configuration breaks after OS upgrade.
Possibly, this problem applies for the other freifunk tools packaged into
OpenWRT, too.

Here is the source repo for the various freifunk tools presently packaged
into AA, including the freifunk-watchdog package.
http://svn.luci.subsignal.org/luci/tags/0.11.1/contrib/package/
http://svn.luci.subsignal.org/luci/tags/0.11.1/contrib/package/freifunk-watchdog/src/

>From the source for freifunk-watching, it looks like modification to
support additional UCI options in /etc/config/freifunk-watchdog that
enables/disables whether the watchdog monitor's wireless interfaces should
be straightforward.

Kludging Commotion tools to accommodate ffwatchd's eccentricities isn't an
appealing option in the long time, especially if the original dev decides
later to silently push more changes that subsequently break Commotion's
kludges, or that beget even uglier kludges.

Could I recommend one of these alternatives?

   1. Propose patches to the luci.subsignal to add UCI config options
   allowing the user to enable/disable whether watchdog touches any wireless
   interfaces.  Hopefully, the original developer would welcome the increased
   attention.
   2. If luci.subsignal.org doesn't accept patches, fork the freifunk tools
   into a git repo managed by OTI, with the patches described in #1.
   3. Don't use the Freifunk tools all.  This options is unappealing, but
   it does at least avoid having to make possibly unsustainable kludges.


On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Dan Staples <
danstaples at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:

>  Also, Freifunk-watchdog is really controlling when it comes to the
> wireless interfaces. When commotiond is in the middle of setting everything
> up, ffwatchd will intervene and shut down the wireless interfaces because
> the BSSID or channel doesn't match what's in /etc/config/wireless at that
> particular moment. And that's a pain in the ass.
>
> So while ffwatchd is good at keeping processes alive, we need to figure
> out how to prevent it from messing up the networking. I propose modifying
> /etc/init.d/network to include this start function (changes in bold):
>
> start() {
>         stop
>         [ -e /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern ] && {
>                 ulimit -c unlimited
>                 echo '/tmp/%e.%p.%s.%t.core' >
> /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
>         }
>         service_start /sbin/netifd
>
>         setup_switch() { return 0; }
>
>         include /lib/network
>         setup_switch
>
>         sleep 5
>
>         *cp /etc/crontabs/root** /etc/crontabs/root.backup**
> **       sed -i -e '/ffwatchd running/d' /etc/crontabs/root**
> **       /etc/init.d/freifunk-watchdog stop*
>
>         /sbin/wifi down
>         /sbin/wifi up
>
>         *mv /etc/crontabs/root.backup /etc/crontabs/root**
> **       /etc/init.d/freifunk-watchdog start*
> }
>
> Would this be sufficient for keeping ffwatchd from meddling with the
> wireless interfaces as commotiond configured everything and/or when
> networking was (re)started?
>
> -Dan
>
>
> On 04/30/2013 09:44 AM, Dan Staples wrote:
>
> So although Freifunk-watchdog is installed on Commotion-openwrt, we
> don't really take advantage of it. It currently only watches dropbear
> and cron. Is there any reason we shouldn't add entries for the core
> Commotion components? Since we've been having problems with olsrd
> inexplicably shutting down, I think the watchdog could help. Here's a
> /etc/config/freifunk-watchdog I'd like to add by default to DR1:
>
> config process
>         option process 'dropbear'
>         option initscript '/etc/init.d/dropbear'
>
> config process
>         option process 'crond'
>         option initscript '/etc/init.d/cron'
>
> config process
>         option process 'commotiond'
>         option initscript '/etc/init.d/commotiond'
>
> config process
>         option process 'servald'
>         option initscript '/etc/init.d/serval-dna'
>
> config process
>         option process 'avahi-daemon'
>         option initscript '/etc/init.d/avahi-daemon'
>
> config process
>         option process 'olsrd'
>         option initscript '/etc/init.d/olsrd'
>
> config process
>         option process 'dnsmasq'
>         option initscript '/etc/init.d/dnsmasq'
>
> I didn't add firewall, in case folks want to turn that off. Is there
> anything I'm missing? Any reason not to do this?
>
> -Dan
>
>
>
> --
> Dan Staples
>
> Open Technology Institutehttps://commotionwireless.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commotion-dev mailing list
> Commotion-dev at lists.chambana.net
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>
>


-- 
Ben West
http://gowasabi.net
ben at gowasabi.net
314-246-9434
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