@richb-hanover-priv asked in another thread, Best ways to conduct Speed and Network Performance test from OpenWrt? - #7 by richb-hanover-priv
- A script to configure a router repeatably (if you're flashing frequently)
I can definitely say that I fall into the "flashing frequently" category with over 300 build in the last month.
Here are some approaches I have used, why I find them helpful and in what situations. More suggestions are always welcome!
Use ./files/ or FILES=
If you're a frequent flasher, you are (or perhaps should be) building images yourself.
The "cleanest" way to have the router pre-configured on first boot is to include the config you need in the ./files/ directory of your build tree, or use the FILES=/path/to/your/files/ option for the image builder.
As long as the file is root:root, and doesn't need to be device-specific (things like different IP addresses for each of 5 routers), you're done. (All files in ROM are owned by root, no matter the ownership on the build system; no need to make them root-owned on your build system.)
Symlinks work here as well. I prefer relative ones so that they refer to the proper file on my build machine as well (and reduce the risk of messing up the build machine with an errant command that modifies the target on your build machine's /etc/, for example).
Enhance with /etc/uci-defaults/
Even if they're not UCI!
The files in this directory get run at each boot until they return a success exit code (0). Once they do, they get deleted.
This is a good place for things like chown -R userx:userx ~userx/
There are many utilities available for things like MAC extraction from partitions, MAC manipulation (add N, set to be locally administered, ...) in the base system. You can see examples with
root@OpenWrt:~# ls /rom/etc/uci-defaults/
10-fstab 12_network-generate-ula 20_migrate-feeds 30_uboot-envtools 50_update_banner 70_nginx-luci-support-ssl
10_migrate-shadow 13_fix_group_user 30_luci-theme-bootstrap 50_luci-mod-admin-full 60_nginx-luci-support odhcpd.defaults
These scripts may run "too early" if networking is needed for the task.
Run Scripts on the Router
scp a shell script to the router, or build it in the image. SSH into the router and run them.
This is also a good way to "tailor" to the router's specifics (such as IP address) if using one of the other methods that install a "generic" config that needs tweaking.
Use rsync
Copies, when needed, files from a local directory structure to that of the router. It's not small, a few hundred kB, but is easy and doesn't overwrite files that are the same. So if your local copy of /etc/config/something is the same as on the ROM or overlay already, you're not re-writing it.
rsync -aviihP /path/to/local/files/ root@192.168.1.1:/
is one set of options I often use.
--dry-run is your friend.
Use tar
Like rsync, but will always overwrite. sysupgrade -b is one way to get a "starter" backup of your device, which you can then extract, locally modify, rebundle (don't use compression past gzip, or your implementation of tar on your device may not be able to extract it), copy to the device, and extract.
rsync is "easier", but tar doesn't require the storage overhead of the rsync package on the device.
Use scp
For single files or "trees", this is a good option
Manage Your Config With git
Yep, this will swallow up a good chunk of flash, but if you're messing with config, it makes it easy to roll back (as well as seeing just what you did to break things, or to fix them).
You can
- Manually
git init /etc/and manually add your remote - Put an init-ed repo with the remote pre-installed into your ROM
then git fetch <remote> and git checkout <branch>
Edit: I tend to gitignore everything and add the files as I need. There can be some funkiness on roll-back or branch switches when files come and go from the repo (especially go), but I haven't gotten into unrecoverable situations. Yet...
Script Over SSH
Ugh, this is ugly, but sometimes you need more than a shell script.
It's so ugly that I haven't resorted to it yet, but I can see needing Python or your favorite scripting language to do things that would be challenging and nearly incomprehensible in a shell script. If you do go this way, keyed access or use of ssh-agent would be essential.