Build for Netgear R7800

I'm still having issues with Chromecast ultra over wifi.
It supports 802.11ac but speeds reported in OpenWRT with ath10-ct driver and firmware is:

72.2 Mbit/s, 20 MHz, MCS 7, Short GI
144.4 Mbit/s, 20 MHz, MCS 15, Short GI

In netflix I sometimes get garbage subtitles and from Plex I coulddn't even stream a 1080p video.
Everything else wifi related I have seems to work great.

Firstly, @hnyman, thank you for all the work you pour into OW in particular providing these snapshots to us.

My question is about safely removing the extra packages you added to the snapshot vs what is provided out-of-the-box in 19.07.3. Is it as simple as just identifying the differences and using opkg to remove them? I am thinking it is not that simple due to some packages maybe being "full" versions of other "lite" packages. For example, wpad-openssl should be replaced with wpad-basic I think. I also don't see coreutils on 19.07.3 which seems odd so I am understandably seeking feedback before I just diff the two sets and blindly remove them.

So:
I created a list of what I have installed on my 19.07.3 system by opkg list-installed | awk '{print $1}' > list which is here. You kindly provide the list of included packages in your R7800-master-r13373 snapshot here.

If I just use vimdiff to compare them, I see many I could potentially remove. Here they are with just sort and comm. Advice is appreciated, thanks all.

$ sort 1 > a
$ sort 2 > b
$ comm -13 a b
6in4
6rd
6to4
adblock
banip
bcp38
ca-bundle
ca-certificates
ccrypt
collectd
collectd-mod-conntrack
collectd-mod-cpu
collectd-mod-cpufreq
collectd-mod-entropy
collectd-mod-exec
collectd-mod-interface
collectd-mod-iwinfo
collectd-mod-load
collectd-mod-memory
collectd-mod-network
collectd-mod-ping
collectd-mod-rrdtool
collectd-mod-sqm
collectd-mod-thermal
collectd-mod-uptime
coreutils
coreutils-sort
curl
ddns-scripts
diffutils
etherwake
hostapd-utils
ip6tables-mod-nat
ipset
iptables-mod-ipsec
ip-tiny
kmod-chaoskey
kmod-crypto-aead
kmod-crypto-arc4
kmod-crypto-des
kmod-crypto-ecb
kmod-crypto-hmac
kmod-crypto-manager
kmod-crypto-md4
kmod-crypto-md5
kmod-crypto-null
kmod-crypto-pcompress
kmod-crypto-sha1
kmod-crypto-sha256
kmod-fs-cifs
kmod-fs-exfat
kmod-fs-hfsplus
kmod-fs-msdos
kmod-fs-vfat
kmod-fuse
kmod-gre
kmod-ipt-ipsec
kmod-ipt-ipset
kmod-ipt-nat6
kmod-iptunnel
kmod-iptunnel4
kmod-ledtrig-default-on
kmod-ledtrig-heartbeat
kmod-ledtrig-netdev
kmod-ledtrig-timer
kmod-mppe
kmod-nf-conntrack-netlink
kmod-nf-nat6
kmod-nfnetlink
kmod-nls-cp1250
kmod-nls-cp437
kmod-nls-cp850
kmod-nls-iso8859-1
kmod-nls-iso8859-15
kmod-nls-utf8
kmod-pptp
kmod-random-core
kmod-sit
kmod-tun
kmod-udptunnel4
kmod-udptunnel6
kmod-usb-dwc3-qcom
kmod-wireguard
libblkid1
libcurl4
libipset13
libiwinfo20200105
libjson-c4
libltdl7
libopenssl1.1
libopenssl-conf
liboping
libpcre
librrd1
librt
libustream-openssl20200215
libuuid1
luci-app-adblock
luci-app-banip
luci-app-bcp38
luci-app-commands
luci-app-ddns
luci-app-nlbwmon
luci-app-statistics
luci-app-upnp
luci-app-wireguard
luci-app-wol
luci-lib-ipkg
luci-proto-wireguard
luci-ssl-openssl
luci-theme-material
luci-theme-openwrt-2020
miniupnpd
nano
nlbwmon
ntfs-3g
openssl-util
patch
ppp-mod-pptp
resolveip
rrdtool1
tree
uhttpd-mod-ubus
wget
wireguard-tools
wpad-openssl

In principle it is just about deleting the few added & changed packages.

But note that you will not actually delete the packages from flash, as the package files will only be marked as deleted in overlay.

I have no idea what is your goal. Removing a package like wpad-openssl and installing another wpad variant means that you also need to install another SSL library than openssl if you want to use wpad in future. Maybe you should use the release and start from that.

Thanks for the reply. My goal is to have the same package set 19.07.3 ships with but using the more updated snapshot. I guess having the extra packages won't hurt anything/perhaps I should just disable the extras such as luci stats, wireguard, etc.

That is just the default + LuCI
Start with empty config, and just select the device.

(and of course, if you want 19.07 packages, make sure that you build from the 19.07 branch, not master)

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@hnyman - Maybe I should back up.... my real interest is having a more updated ath10k-firmware-qca9984-ct and kmod-ath10k-ct on 19.07.3. That's it. I will post to this fresh thread to avoid polluting this one. Thank you for the pointers.

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What are experiences of this build on Gbit fiber WAN? Is it possibly faster than the standard stable release due to tweaks? Thanks.

Thanks for making this awesome build. One of the problem I encounter is that for master-r13474-2f5a242f67-20200603 (ath10k-ct), opkg update takes forever to downloads packages. Is there any reason for the extreme slow speed for opkg update?

Thanks

Hi, I was wondering - if I were to experiment with different builds of yours and/or official 19.07 build, how "interchangeable" are they? For example, can I sysupgrade from your stable 19.07 build to your master ath10k-ct build to compare wifi performance then sysupgrade back to stable if I wish so, or would build change necessitate flashing factory image?

I am constantly jumping between 19.07, master -ct and master mainline ath10k. Same settings work. Sysupgrade works and settings can be kept.

No need to use factory image.

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Lately more and more routers are switched over to DSA though, and that will break the jumping back and forth.

Agreed. This isn’t the case (yet) for the R7800

Thanks for the great work with this (and others prior) router.

Your dropbox has 4 different builds for this router

I think I get that the last (owrt1907) is the one I want to install today to replace the 'generic' 19.07 I installed. Can you explain the difference amongst the group of 4 and explain why I might want to choose one of the others?

After reading through (most) of the 2300 posts, I'm more confused than clear on the distinction.

Thanks.

I'll save my stupid questions - like 'does it need to be plugged in to work' for another time .

Andrew

1907 is a branch off of “master” back in July 2019. They only make minor security edits but otherwise there is not much change, “stable”. “Master” is the latest OpenWRT with now another year of updates.

Kernel 5.4:
Master is the latest and greatest with default CT wifi drivers (I run this version)

Master-ath10k is the latest and greatest with the optional ath10k wifi drivers

1907 is hynman’s build features using the most recent 1907 version.

You can use the sysupgrade to change between all these versions or from stock OpenWRT.

3 Likes

Tried to install "master-r13583-c4037a5b9e-20200616 (ath10k-ct) " today and could not get 5GHz working. Then I noticed that the channels only went up to 144 (missing channels 149, 153, 157, 161, 165). Just for a trial I tried the Kong (https://www.desipro.de/openwrt/19.07/) OpenWrt version for the R7800 and it had all the channels and 5GHz worked. Flashed back to "master-r13583-c4037a5b9e-20200616 (ath10k-ct) " and 5GHz still would not work and the 5GHz channels 149, 153, 157, 161, 165 were still missing. Any idea's, I'm stumped.

I had that happen on a recent unit. I chose country code Canada (where I live) , reboot and then the higher channels showed up again. My guess is they are now hidden on the default non specific country code.

Anyone seeing issues on the 2.4GHz radio in the latest builds? Same for both ct or old builds, clients just get disconnected and they don't reconnect. Lots of these from logread:

Thu Jun 18 10:33:09 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: STA 64:16:xxxxx IEEE 802.11: did not acknowledge authentication response

I'm on master built yesterday and haven't seen those. WEP support has been disabled as per this commit:

https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=472fd98c5b12

Maybe you still have devices using WEP?

rawd,

Once I set the country in the Advanced Settings tab and entered my Wi-Fi data, 5Ghz started working and the missing channels appeared in the list.

Been running "master-r13583-c4037a5b9e-20200616 (ath10k-ct)" for most of the day now with no problems.

Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction!

1 Like

No WEP, stopped using that as soon as WPA came out.

I'm seeing an issue that I haven't seen a post on here about.
I am currently running R7800-master-r13552-cd09f26660-20200611-2309-factory.img.
I just started using this router a week or two ago, so very fresh - this is the first I've used it.

I have 1 - 5Ghz SSID and 2 - 2.4 Ghz SSID's being broadcast.
I noticed initially there was a problem on the second 2.4Ghz SSID... it was not allowing my ESP based devices (wifi) to get IP's. Two non-esp based wifi devices were fine as are two wired devices. After looking all over I restarted dnsmasq and they got IP's and everything was back to normal.

After a restart (had a random restart yesterday after 1 week up) I saw the same thing happen again.

daemon.warn dnsmasq-dhcp[1925]: no address range available for DHCP request via br-IOT

The wired, and other wifi devices are fine - so it is not all devices effected, just the ones running custom firmware (ESP-Home).

The DHCP Server is active for this interface (Ignore Interface is not checked) but Dynamic DHCP is unchecked as well. All devices are setup with static leases. I copied the exact settings from my previous router (TEW-673GRU) and did not have this problem.

The only thing I could guess is a problem is that the devices that are having the IP issue have IP's in the range between the Start and Limit of the DHCP General Setup. But since everything is using static leases, I don't see how this would cause a problem (will never duplicate). Especially when restarting dnsmasq causing everything to come up and work.

So, any idea's?

Thanks and Cheers! - sorry for the book...
DeadEnd