Flashing OpenWRT on Gl.iNet E750

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi forum.

I wanna go fully open-source and flash native OpenWRT.

  1. I don't have any LAN ports in my clients (laptop also don't have one). So how to access LuCi or SSH if it doesn't turn on WiFi?
  2. I have custom scripts for ancient OWRT 19 which is their official one. When moving to native OpenWRT they will stop working. So should I just go with ancient OWRT 19 (plain one, not GL) or go through trouble once and for all and rewrite scripts to use with latest OWRT?
2

official guide https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-e750
commit message https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/68ac3f2cddab8422d7de0ce1a78d23edf29012e7

1 you can enable wifi as in https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-quick-start/basic_wifi#using_the_command_line by adding script via firmware-selector , but you can not guess which radio is which in advance (some owner of device can help)
2 no, glinet-specific scripts will not work on any OpenWrt, you need to back them up and restore and refactor as needed. Never ever restore glinet config on OpenWrt - then you need cable 101% to recover.

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3

Then get one, even a crappy <10 EUR/ USD 100 MBit/s USB2ethernet adapter will do (I would strongly recommend a half decent 1 GBit/s one, but anything is better than nothing). Being able to connect via ethernet is a hard requirement for setting up OpenWrt (yes, there are some tricks to avoid it, still, there will be many circumstance where you absolutely need ethernet access to fix something - maybe you won't for years, but in the end you will and these USB based ethernet cards (which will even work on a phone) are cheap).

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4

I understand you, but before I went full open-source with OWRT I never had situation where it was needed.

I am managing desktop linux for more than ten years (no windows ever!) and even though, never had such issues.

Maybe it is because I use 5G or LTE modems, so I don't have even cable WAN.

Should I after installation remove it not to cause interference?

May be turn on every one?

Like something like that (this was recommended by someone on reddit):

#!/bin/sh
uci -q show wireless | awk -F'=' '/wireless.@wifi-device/ && /disabled/ { sub(/^wireless\./,""); print $1 }' |
while read -r uci_path; do
  uci set "$uci_path"=0 2>/dev/null || uci set "${uci_path}.disabled=0" 2>/dev/null
done
uci commit wireless
5

This wouldn't be possible given your request (i.e., needing WiFi on because you have no Ethernet ports in clients).

6

It is a hard requirement for running OpenWrt, but no one forces you to flash OpenWrt - just don't complain if you can't access it without ethernet.

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