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

Thu Nov 20 07:38:31 EST 2014

I'm interested about olsrd's high CPU usage. There was a bug in one of
our olsrd plugins a while back that caused a packet storm if olsrd was
using more than one interface. If you're able to get a packet capture
during the high CPU usage, I would be curious to see that.

Dan

On 11/18/2014 10:09 PM, Adam Steele wrote:
> 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
> <mailto: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
>     <mailto:andygunn at opentechinstitute.org>> wrote:
> 
> 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>
>> <mailto: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
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
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> 
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-- 
Dan Staples

Open Technology Institute
https://commotionwireless.net
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