Can i install libreCMC on a device that has OpenWrt installed?

Is it possible to install librecmc on a device that supports both openwrt and librecmc, but if openwrt was installed first? Do you need to install the default firmware then and flash librecmc, or can you do it in ssh or similar on openwrt?

since this is effectively a different OS targeting embedded devices, you would usually install one or the other, not both concurrently. If the device in question has sufficient storage for multiple partitions and a boot loader that can select the OS at boot time, you could theoretically install them both.

Yes i want to use libreCMC and try that out. I have openwrt on another router. How do i switch from openwrt to libreCMC? Do i need to install the default version and then upload the file and flash it that way, or can i use terminal in openwrt to install libreCMD? I want to use one, not two.

This is a good question to ask in the support community for libreCMC. If they tell you that it is best to start from the vendor's firmware, you can usually find information about how to revert back from OpenWrt to the original firmware in the OpenWrt device info pages.

This forum is here for OpenWrt and closely related topics -- other firmware (aside from reveting from OpenWrt > stock) is out of scope.

Yeah i wanna try it.. LibreCMS dont have blobs and seems more secure and privacy orientated then openwrt of what i have read, or understood. Blobs in openwrt, no blobs in librecmc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/librecmc/comments/ogrs0o/is_librecmc_truly_more_transparent_than_openwrt/

OpenWrt is considered very secure for normal uses (obviously a high value target may need to further harden their router and network). However, if you believe that another firmware is better suited for your use, it is great to explore. The LibreCMS site and support community will be your best resource.

OpenWrt is considered very secure for normal uses (obviously a high value target may need to further harden their router and network). However, if you believe that another firmware is better suited for your use, it is great to explore. The LibreCMS site and support community will be your best resource.
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Yeah i read this.. https://www.reddit.com/r/librecmc/comments/ogrs0o/is_librecmc_truly_more_transparent_than_openwrt/

Thought you would know how to switch when i have asked... takes energy to start a new thread somewhere else..

No need to double post the article you're referencing.

We (the OpenWrt community) can help you with how to install and use OpenWrt and/or how to revert to stock. We don't provide support for other firmware versions. The good news is that it doesn't take that much energy to ask a similar question on the LibreCMS user forums.

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Ok, thanks. How do i restore a brand new TL-WR1043ND v2 to stock firmware in the safest way, without messing up the router and not being able do put openwrt or librecmc on it again, do you know?
If it's stock i can just upload a librecmc firmware and flash it the same way, but without blobs, so it's open source instead..

Follow the instructions here:

Which file do i use here, and how do i know they have not updated the firmware so i can't flash.. and become stuck with the default firmware. I don't want that! I rather use openwrt then of-course. Can't i flash from openwrt and remove the blobs instead?

librecmc is openwrt without blobs. So there might be a more secure way of doing this so a brand new router don't go to waste after restoring it to the default bloatware..
are there any better way of doing this without complications?

None of the chips in a WR1043 use blob firmware. A basic install of OpenWrt should be blob-free.

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I don't personally know. However, the theory is that you need to cut out the first bit of the firmware file because OpenWrt doesn't understand/use the header information

Cut the first 0x20200 (that is 131,584 = 257*512) Bytes from original firmware:

Since the firmware TP-Link provides all assumes the same firmware loading routings, it is likely that header information is generally configured the same way for all of the versions they are providing, and therefore you should follow the same instructions regardless of the version.

That said, it is a good idea to have a serial adapter avilable in the event that things go sideways.

librecmc is an OpenWRT / LEDE derivative, so I imagine the flash procedure will be very similar and odds are you could flash it directly from OpenWRT.

I don't mean to get into an discussion on which is better, but their rationale for the existence of librecmc is nonsense (OpenWRT has proprietary "stuff" in it) and it looks, based on their website, to have a lot less resources devoted to development than does OpenWRT.

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Wow... I just looked at the site in a little more detail. Much of it is in "maintenence mode" (specifically, the documentation, issues, and pull requests, source code), so there's very little operational information to work with. There doesn't appear to be a forum, eitther (at least not linked off the main page), so everything is mailing list based (and even that doesn't work -- the listserve site cannot be reached). There are very few supported targets, as well, which means a limited addressable 'market', thus fewer users, which means less momentum/impitus for development... all this to say, that platform has the obscurity/niche element that Macintosh users faced in the mid 1990's (when the company was about to go bankrupt and marketshare was <4%).

So, @bbxe3zfcle -- if you plan to use LibreCMC, realize that you are likely on your own for most of what you will want to do.

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Please remember librecmc's default ip is 192.168.10.1 !

Are you sure about that? Yeah if it's libre and open source like librecmC i can use openWRT instead...But i'm not sure you are correct in this.. How sure are you?
Yeah just want open source and no blobs if i don't need to. Libre software.

thanks for the answers by the way..

OpenWRT is open source. Everything is open. Free, gratis, download the source code open.

LibreCMC derives from OpenWRT's codebase (and appears to be a poor cousin at that), so it can't be "more opensource" than OpenWRT.

It's (tl-wr1043nd v2) a bog standard ath79+ath9k platform, which indeed doesn't require any blobs to function (but it's very low-end by today's standards, both in terms of routing performance and wireless throughput; flash/ RAM size and CPU performance aren't really anything to write home about either).