[Commotion-discuss] Initial results of installing on unsupported Routerboards

Tue Nov 18 22:09:51 EST 2014

I made some small progress tonight. The pair of ethernet (LAN) ports are
eth1 (the WAN port is eth0). Add option ifname 'eth1' to the lan section in
/etc/config/network gets those ports to work. Since Commotion only
configures eth0 (WAN) to be used, the br-lan interface is bound to eth0's
MAC address. You have to wipe out br-lan (brctl delbr) and recreate it
starting with eth1 (and adding wlan1 in my case).
I haven't yet looked at getting the WAN side working at the same time with
LAN but I don't think that will be much work.

I did finally look in to the problem I was having with my 2.4GHz client
radios some how screwing up the 900MHz mesh.
High CPU usage from olsrd was causing poor performance. Eventually olsrd
settles down and the mesh stabilizes but that takes a good 5-10 minutes.
I'm not sure how roaming nodes or a frequently changing topology might stir
up olsrd.
I can't say I'd recommend using the basic 300MHz RB411/433 boards because
of this (they're a pain to flash anyway). They will work in a pinch or in a
very static mesh but I'd recommend going for the 680MHz AH models.

-Adam

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Adam Steele <steeleam08 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Andy,
>
> I think that switch config makes the most sense. I haven't yet created one
> for my RB433s but I'll take a look at it tonight. If I come up with
> anything meaningful I'll get it up on github.
>
> -Adam
>
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Andy Gunn <
> andygunn at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:
>
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>> Hey Adam - we received a few MikroTik RB433 systems with R52nM Wi-Fi
>> cards (two per board for multi-radio testing), and are going to start
>> experimenting with Commotion on them. Did you make progress with the
>> switch setup for these boards?
>>
>> We would like to offer official support images for these boards, but
>> will need to incorporate a default switch configuration as well. My
>> thinking was:
>> eth1: WAN (DHCP client by default, configurable to static or DHCP server)
>> eth2 and eth3: LAN (DHCP server enabled, bridged with APs)
>>
>> If you have information or switch configurations, please create an
>> issue in the commotion-router github queue:
>> https://github.com/opentechinstitute/commotion-router/issues
>>
>> That will really help us out, thanks!
>> - -Andy
>>
>>
>> On 11/05/2014 10:41 PM, Adam Steele wrote:
>> > The testing continues. I let OpenWRT build things overnight (I need
>> > a faster build box) and got a working kmod-ath5k. Got that
>> > installed on my four RouterBoards and cards started showing up.
>> >
>> > One hiccup I've had is that the automatic gateway detection doesn't
>> > work on the RB433/RB433AH (which has a WAN port and 2 LAN ports).
>> > When left to "auto" mode the RB433/AH will never hand out DHCP
>> > leases to LAN clients (Wireless or Ethernet). I'm guessing the
>> > vlan/switch isn't setup properly but I haven't looked at it yet.
>> > For now I've just set it to always hand out leases.
>> >
>> > Another problem I've been chasing down is evidently a faulty
>> > 2.4GHz card. When I turn it on it destroys the 900MHz mesh (the
>> > 900MHz cards are technically 2.4GHz cards with transverters, so
>> > they can be susceptible to strong 2.4GHz interference). ETX will go
>> > from 1.000 to a minimum of 2.500, with many links being >4. Not
>> > exactly sure how this single card is bringing the mesh to a halt,
>> > that will be tomorrows task.
>> >
>> > -Adam
>> >
>> > On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Andy Gunn
>> > <andygunn at opentechinstitute.org
>> > <mailto:andygunn at opentechinstitute.org>> wrote:
>> >
>> > I think that makes sense, as long as the file doesn't change very
>> > often?
>> >
>> > Can we link directly to the proper file on the Downloads page? We
>> > can put a footnote in at the bottom of the MikroTik table that this
>> > file comes from OpenWRT.
>> >
>> >
>> > On 11/05/2014 11:29 AM, Josh King wrote:
>> >> Sure, I can do that. Though in this case, I think it makes the
>> >> most sense just to remove the netboot image from the downloads
>> >> page and update the documentation to direct them to download it
>> >> from OpenWRT's website, unless you think there's a need to mirror
>> >> the file.
>> >
>> >> On 11/05/2014 11:00 AM, Andy Gunn wrote:
>> >>> That makes sense to me Josh. Can you update the website /
>> >>> downloads page with the proper image? I will need to update
>> >>> the installation documentation and test again.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> On 11/05/2014 10:55 AM, Josh King wrote:
>> >>>> It may make sense for us just to update the documentation to
>> >>>> recommend using the stock netboot image rather than our own.
>> >>>> Although Commotion can run in 32 MB of RAM, it does make
>> >>>> sense that that amount of memory might not be able to hold
>> >>>> the netboot filesystem, all of its Commotion processes, AND
>> >>>> the install image. Since there's no real reason that the
>> >>>> netboot image has to be Commotion, it could save some
>> >>>> trouble.
>> >>>
>> >>>> On 11/05/2014 10:20 AM, Josh King wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> On 11/04/2014 11:09 AM, Andy Gunn wrote:
>> >>>>>> Hey Adam - thanks for the note about this. We might need
>> >>>>>> to modify our installation instructions for the RB411 -
>> >>>>>> we only have a RB411/AH in house, so we didn't catch
>> >>>>>> that problem. I will make sure to get some vanilla 411
>> >>>>>> boards to test.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Glad to hear the 433 boards are working. One bug we have
>> >>>>>> noticed about the MikroTik radio cards is that dual band
>> >>>>>> cards only show 2.4GHz in the Commotion setup wizard.
>> >>>>>> There is an issue in on this:
>> >>>>>> https://github.com/opentechinstitute/commotion-router/issues/149
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >
>> >>>>>>
>> Keep us posted on the MikroTik testing!
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> On 11/03/2014 09:30 PM, Adam Steele wrote:
>> >>>>>>> I've spent the evening tinkering around with Commotion
>> >>>>>>> and getting it installed on Mikrotik devices other
>> >>>>>>> than the RB411AH (since I don't own one).
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> So far I've tried the RB433, RB433AH and RB411.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> No trouble with the RB433 or RB433AH. Installed and
>> >>>>>>> running. I've not poked around enough to determine
>> >>>>>>> stability but it seems to be all there.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> The RB411 was a bit harder. The issue with the device
>> >>>>>>> is that it only has 32MB of RAM. When trying to install
>> >>>>>>> the usual way it runs out of RAM during the wget2nand
>> >>>>>>> process. The stock
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> My work around was to boot the stock OpenWRT image and
>> >>>>>>> wget2nand from there with the Commotion kernel/rootfs
>> >>>>>>> files. Again, I've not poked around enough to figure
>> >>>>>>> out if Commotion will be stable on only 32MB RAM but
>> >>>>>>> I'll find out and report back.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> -Adam
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>> >>>>>>> Commotion-discuss mailing list
>> >>>>>>> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> > <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> >>>>>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >
>> >>>>>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> >>>>>> Commotion-discuss mailing list
>> >>>>>> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> > <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> >>>>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >
>> >
>>
>> - --
>> Andy Gunn, Field Engineer
>> Open Technology Institute, New America Foundation
>> andygunn at opentechinstitute.org | 202-596-3484
>>
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