Does 24.10 not work on older hardware?

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

What is happening here?
I've been running older openwrt on a gl.inet mt300n and decided to try upgrading it to 24.10.
While the upgrade seems to work, weird things are being shown in the syslog and while port 22 is up and running, no iptables/firewall blocking it, I cannot access it for quite some time, sometimes minutes, something almost an hour.

The last version I was running was very old, 22.03.3 because the router is not on the Internet, it's on the LAN only and not being used as a router but as a little camera server.

The image went from 8MB with the old version to 16MB with this new version. I've trimmed it as much as possible but keep seeing the problem.

I wonder if the flash RAM is done on this device or something else?

To me, it seems the 16MB sized image is perhaps not completely being written to flash.

The following is what I see in the syslog before rebooting.

Apr  5 22:41:21 TestRouter kernel: [  152.733708] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [12b46a]
Apr  5 22:41:21 TestRouter kernel: [  152.740596] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 12b46a, size 13cfc
Apr  5 22:41:23 TestRouter kernel: [  154.095675] SQUASHFS error: xz decompression failed, data probably corrupt
Apr  5 22:41:23 TestRouter kernel: [  154.102688] SQUASHFS error: Failed to read block 0x4671d6: -5

Apr  5 22:41:28 TestRouter kernel: [  159.237005] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [12b46a]
Apr  5 22:41:28 TestRouter kernel: [  159.243858] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 12b46a, size 13cfc
Apr  5 22:41:29 TestRouter kernel: [  160.626252] SQUASHFS error: xz decompression failed, data probably corrupt
Apr  5 22:41:29 TestRouter kernel: [  160.633265] SQUASHFS error: Failed to read block 0x4671d6: -5

Apr  5 22:41:34 TestRouter kernel: [  165.760646] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [12b46a]
Apr  5 22:41:34 TestRouter kernel: [  165.767555] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 12b46a, size 13cfc
Apr  5 22:41:36 TestRouter kernel: [  167.445039] SQUASHFS error: xz decompression failed, data probably corrupt
Apr  5 22:41:36 TestRouter kernel: [  167.452051] SQUASHFS error: Failed to read block 0x4671d6: -5

Apr  5 22:41:57 TestRouter kernel: [  188.489240] SQUASHFS error: Failed to read block 0x6267de: -5
Apr  5 22:41:57 TestRouter kernel: [  188.495157] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read metadata cache entry [6267dc]
Apr  5 22:41:57 TestRouter kernel: [  188.501950] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read directory block [6267dc:46a]
2

The default images seem to be in the ~6MB range. Where is 16MB coming from? Are you building them yourself?

1 Like
3

Yes, using image builder.

4

16MB is a fairly hefty image... what packages are you adding? Do you need them all?

Also, which version of the device are you using? v1 or v2?

the MT300n does have a USB port, so you may need to move to extroot.

1 Like
5

Yes, it's an mt300n V2.
So you think the main problem is the number of packages then?
I've trimmed everything I can but I guess I'll have to look again.

6

Yes, very much so.

The standard/default image will fit without issue. What packages are you adding?

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7

Install via u-boot recovery perhaps...

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8

Should not be necessary. I am running 24.10.0 on my MT300-V2, after standard sysupgrade via CLI. However, I have a custom image, built from source, without firewall, ppp etc. to reduce size.

9

Same here, custom image, not using the device as a router but as a camera server and other things like a little backup dns server, running python scripts, etc etc. I was able to get the image down to 12M so I'm working on trying that first. I find it hard to believe the RAM flash is done on this device.

10

I know nothing about the MT300-V2 but I did not see any mention yet of using a compressed filesystem like squashfs. If a compressed filesystem like squashfs is an option but you are not building with it, then look at that as an option for fitting more files in the image.
Sorry for chiming in if this is obviously not an issue.

11

The system uses squashfs by default.

12

Default image from the Firmware Selector is pretty small - I would suggest that OP does the default image, and install from uboot recovery, as this should clean up things...

Thought here is to get the device stable again - and then start pouring in packages as needed.

13

I build my own images using Image Builder. I do not use default images.
The solution was indeed to work out the packages, trim them down and now the router is just fine.

Thank you for all your help.

2 Likes