In the Status/Realtime Graphs/Connections page I would like to see a feature to allow sorting and searching the connection states displayed on the page. Being able to sort and search names/IPs there would be quite nice.
Also being able to pause the page refresh activity and freeze frame the current results on the page would be very useful.
Edit: One more thing, is it possible to make the default EXT4 X86_64 images have a larger default partition? The base one is too small and having to constantly extend partitions on an upgrade is painful. Usually my X86 OpenWRT upgrades are just full do-overs where I'm manually re-adding packages after the sysupgrade and then copying back all my configs.
In a way they are already having such an approach, I think: They boot their own OS from u-boot. And they use a Linux kernel. The idea/question would be how to make it more attractive for vendors to use a vanilla OpenWrt as the core OS. How to make OpenWrt the "new u-boot" for others. One of the (many) reasons for the success of u-boot: It stays out of the way for what follows. Something containers could offer in a way, too.
If an AVM for example could cut costs by using an OpenWrt as the base while having full flexbility to do all their customizations in a container environment, why wouldn't they, from a management perspective?
In my opinion there is a lot of potential with better container support in and around OpenWrt. (And I absolutely agree with you that how to best manage shared access to hardware might still need some ideas and code. And it wouldn't be for any low hardware spec, super cheap device.)
Personally, I'd like to see more Wi-Fi polishments.
More sensible defaults for SAE/EAP roaming, driver bug fixes, more comprehensible log messages(e.g. "already have key" instead of "key addition failed", if my understanding is correct), etc.
Wi-Fi, routing, switching and firewall are what people use OpenWrt for, everything else is just some nice extra.
As mentioned by @owpkts having larger x86-64 images would be nice. On x86 I always end up re-building my own image with KERNEL_PARTSIZE=128 and ROOTFS_PARTSIZE=1024. x86-64 machines are usually running on hard drives, massive SD cards, or USB storage.
Related: if we can assume GB-sized storage space on x86, it might be nice to support A/B firmware updates where you can switch between bank A and B, one holding the current image and the other a candidate, with an easy way to switch grub between both. That may alleviate the pains of upgrading OpenWRT on x86 today.
Could you create an ubootmod version for the Dynalink DL-WRX36
(Qualcomm Atheros IPQ807x) router? AKAIK it already has u-boot by default. I try to squeeze out the most of it, it has decent specs (4*2.2/256/1024) but currently only 70MB available for storage, which is almost just qurter of it. If can't, could you give a hint what's the difference or difficulty around it? Thanks!
Seems to me that a common theme running throughout these posts is easier and more bullet proof upgrades that won’t brick the device.
Upgrades are sometimes rather painful. In my case with three RT3200’s I’ll have to run new installer and then either start from scratch or spend ages trying to get old configuration to work in 24.XX with uncertainty that this’ll be OK.
So in regards to automatic updates/upgrades, that is why I run my families main router under turrisOS: automatic updates from a party I happen to trust. This works pretty well, but is not without its occasional share of issues and that is with turris routers that are not that flash starved as some others and are a well defined set to supply updates for, I guess that gets trickier with more supported devices....
While I can and do perform manual updates for APs, I really do not want the security of my home net fully depend on me being around to update it in a timely fashion...
A first step would be automatic notifications (turris OS both offers notifications on their GUI, as well as email notifications for a few causes)...
Hello. I would like to see some kind of mark for the devices that are currently online under DHCP (in Overview, in Luci). And I would like to see also devices that are statically configured in addition to DHCP lease.
A long time ago, someone posted a script to show the list of the devices that are online, but it didn't work for me.... I saw devices that are off-line.
It is convenient when, I want to, for example, restart the router when nobody is around.
I'm also for automatic update of firmware, but I had difficulty making wireguard to work as I updated the firmware last time. I don't want if wireguard stops working as a result of auto-update.
I would like to see some type of package or integrated performance test tools.
Lots of people post Internet Speed tests (Okoola, etc), but to me there are too many external factors that impact results. I would like to be able to run a test, (easily) from Luci, between a client and AP which tells me performance between these 2 items.
I would also like to be able to run a standard test for a routers throughput so maybe an iPerf server built in, if that makes any sense.
I can not put my finger on it, but IIRC there was a page where people could post results for their device. So a process that could take these standardized tests and then upload them to a database would help the community answer the age old question, what's "better"?
So the idea is quite compelling, but the devil is in the details. Many routers are well capable of actually routing/firewalling/NATing traffic at X Mbps, but have no reserves left to also source and/or sink traffic at X Mbps concurrently. So for those devices an on device test (while still somewhat informative) would not help much in assessing the on-duty capabilities of that router... I would always argue that for serious testing even a raspberry 4B would be a better traffic source/sinc for running tests inside one's own network.
Personally, I am a big fan of using crusader as quick-and=dirty throughput and latency under load test:
Rust support, so we can prevent certain classes of vulnerabilities.
Standard support for x86 (e.g., partition size, official installer, etc.). Right now, it is understandably a second class citizen, albeit working perfectly fine. A standard support for x86 will greatly improve QoL.
Native automatic firmware update support. Which I guess should be possible with APK? Have not taken a deep look into it yet.
More business features (e.g., separate users/permissions, logging system, RADIUS, GeoIP, IDS/IPS, etc.) I know some are achievable via packages, but not ideal.
More aggressive deprecation process. This is gonna be a hot take, but I believe it is fine to abandon certain old targets and focus developer resources on newer platform. I like Linux, and have always been, thanks to the fact it can run on a potato from 2 decades ago. However, I also believe this practice is draining developer resources.
Business offering, and even pay-to-use model for this. I know many companies use OpenWRT as a base for their product, so I know it is possible for OpenWRT to become a full SMB solution. Realistically though, I don't think these points will ever happen.
Why am I seeking for these? If you have read all of my points above, then essentially, I'm looking for a FOSS solution that is comparable to the *Sense offerings. Sadly, there is none. As far as I know, VyOS and TNSR are router-first, firewall-second solution, so they are not really comparable.
I assume you're already familiar with the Attended Sysupgrade tools on OpenWrt (LuCI Attended Sysupgrade app, auc/owut for CLI). What are the specific issues you've had that would improve the situation?
Does Attended Sysupgrade handle non-standard packages that were installed in addition to the standard distribution? Does it handle the data for those packages? I never used the tool, and I think this tool is a relatively recent addition? Last time I tried updating my OpenWRT, I had to recompile from source to include all of the packages I needed, and then I had to reconfigure all the user data. I did it multiple times until I got tired of doing it.
The ASU server has the ability to accept extra repositories, but none of the clients currently expose that capability, as no one has ever asked for it. The server handles the extra repos using the standard package manager appropriate for the release, either opkg or apk, so the data for the package is treated the same.
include in the backup archive all the extra packages installed. Then a button in LUCI web interface to execute OPKG to install those extra packages. This is really useful for those of us using extroot or when we get locked out of our system and need to hard reset.
