the simplest solution that I found, is just don't using ash anymore but
Switching to Bash / setting up .bashrc
OpenWrt comes with Ash shell. If you would like to use Bash instead, here is how you can switch and add some nice colouring to it. Install Bash by issuing the following:
1 opkg update
2 opkg install bash
Then edit /etc/passwd and change the root user line to this:
1 root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
After that, run this command (which will create /root/.bash_profile and put “. $HOME/.bashrc” in it):
1 echo ". $HOME/.bashrc" > /root/.bash_profile