Installing LEDE on a router with a single WAN/LAN-port

Where can I find instructions for installing and configuring LEDE on a router with only a single port, WAN/LAN?

I have successfully installed LEDE on a TP-LINK TP-WR802N router but the instructions for the additional steps after the initial installation require both a WAN- and a LAN-port.

I did this recently on a HooToo TM-02 and there are no instructions for this.

If you are not aware, you should download the packages that match your specific build version. If trunk has been rebuilt since you installed the image you may have problems installing at least kernel dependent packages.

As I see it there are 2 options.

1 - edit your wireless file manually to access your WWAN and OPKG from there
2 - download packages to a local PC, move them to the device and install them from there (wget)

I downloaded all the build's packages and installed Luci and USB (method 2) as I wanted to be able to support the trunk version until a final release is made. Option 1 may not work after the next build cycle. If you had OpenWrt and have a copy of your wireless file (in a backup?), this may work.

I then put the packages for my build on a USB drive and now have a local repository on the flash drive. I do not believe this is an option for your device.

You also will face a space issue with 4mb flash. There will be very little free space for packages.

Also see

afaik devices with only 1 port have it set as LAN, static on IP 192.168.1.1 and dhcp server enabled.

So after you flashed LEDE you must connect the network cable to them directly, and then you can configure them to be clients in your current network.

over ssh it is:

uci set network.lan.ipaddr='new-ip-address'
uci set network.lan.gateway='your-gateway-address'
uci set network.lan.dns='8.8.8.8' 
uci commit
service network restart

then it will have internet access and a fixed IP. You can now disconnect the cable from the PC and connect them to your network, and they should show at the defined IP address, and have internet access through your gateway.

(8.8.8.8 is Google's DNS servers, you can change that IP to whatever other DNS)

Btw, if you confirm that it works fine, I'm adding this to the wiki.

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Thank you, your instructions worked nicely! However, when trying to install luci-ssl it ran out of space... This I had not anticipated since I bought this router based on the information on the OpenWrt web page...

Are there any packages I can remove so I can recover enough space to install luci-ssl etc.? My plan was to see if I could also install openvpn on the router...

Ideas welcome!

The TL-WR802N has only 4MB flash, with which you can easily run out of flash memory.

https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/faq/after.installation#no_space_left_on_device

pls help me for :
1 - edit your wireless file manually to access your WWAN and OPKG from there
how manual config wifi on raspberry pi 3 ?
how search network wifi ?
how connect network wifi ?

[quote="em8epwx4, post:4, topic:732, full:true"]Thank you, your instructions worked nicely! However, when trying to install luci-ssl it ran out of space... This I had not anticipated since I bought this router based on the information on the OpenWrt web page...[/quote]Sorry, that device has a very small flash size and can only fit luci if you rebuild the firmware image with the image builder you will fit luci in it, but I doubt you can fit much more than that.
(LEDE release firmware images will come with luci pre-installed, so you won't need to use the image builder for them)

Are there any packages I can remove so I can recover enough space to install luci-ssl etc.?

All packages installed by default (or also integrated by the imagebuilder) are in a highly-compressed read-only partition (squashfs) so you cannot really delete them to make more space.
You must use the image builder as said above, and not select too much packages or they won't fit anyway even if they are more compressed than installing them with opkg.

[quote]Ideas welcome![/quote]I'm afraid you will need to buy another device, possibly with an usb port, so you can also use a usb flash drive for expanding the available storage space in case you decide to install many things.
See here a list of recommended devices ( more than 4 MiB of flash and more than 32 MiB of RAM), I have filtered the list to show only "travel routers" since you seem to want a small device https://lede-project.org/toh/views/toh_available_864?dataflt[Device+Type*~]=Travel

I have a Nexx WT3020, I think it's the cheapest of the bunch, and has a usb port. Check the device page for the devices in the table and make your choice.

Thank you, I looked at the list. Could you give me an example of what I may want to install that would require 16 MB flash rather than 8 MB flash? The same question for 64 MB RAM vs. 16 MB RAM?

Also, I could not find the router you say you have in the list - Nexx WT3020 - is it supported by LEDE? Is it a travel router?

Final question, is there an expected date for when LEDE will be available with Luci compiled as part of the package? From what I have read that may allow me to get around the 4 MB RAM limit in the router I already bought.

Thank you.

Don't you think you've already answered your own question in your second post in this thread already?

Nobody knows what you may want to install.

Could you give me an example of what I may want to install that would require 16 MB flash rather than 8 MB flash

Currently it's a bit complex to figure out, I'm still working at a package table to have such info available to do calculations https://lede-project.org/packages/start

Afaik with 8 MiB you can expand functionality by installing luci plus probably Samba or OpenVPN and some other minor things, with 16 MiB you can probably install most things you want.

I have mostly used imagebuilder that compresses things to make my own device's firmwares, so I can't really tell for sure what will fit if installed with opkg.

As I said, having a device with a USB port is recommended as if needed you can use a flash drive to expand firmware storage space.

Also, I could not find the router you say you have in the list - Nexx WT3020 - is it supported by LEDE? Is it a travel router?

It seems @tmomas added too much filters to that table after I linked it to you (why filter out devices with unknown availability?), I've restored it to show the same devices I saw when I linked it to you.
https://lede-project.org/toh/views/toh_available_864?dataflt[Device+Type*~]=Travel

Final question, is there an expected date for when LEDE will be available with Luci compiled as part of the package?

It should happen this month or next. see here the announcement on the devel lists (and the answers from other devs http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-dev/2016-December/004790.html )

Since I use the imagebuilder for my needs too, I've used the imagebuilder as said above to make a firmware image with luci (and some other things, it seems openvpn did fit too) for you.
I downloaded the imagebuilder for your class of devices from here https://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ar71xx/generic/ (it is "lede-imagebuilder-ar71xx-generic.Linux-x86_64.tar.xz")

With make info I got the profile name to use

tl-wr802n-v1:
    TP-LINK TL-WR802N v1

This is the command I used:
make image PROFILE="tl-wr802n-v1" PACKAGES="luci luci-app-adblock luci-app-ddns luci-app-wifischedule luci-app-openvpn luci-proto-ppp"

It built a flashable image, so it should fit (the imagebuilder refuses to build images bigger than available space on device).
DISCLAIMER: while I pretty much only gave the command above and I used imagebuilder extensively in the past (and I also rewrote the wiki page about it) I could not test this firmware so I can't take any responsibility about it, if you choose to use it you do so at your own risk.

That said, this is the link to the firmware (in my dropbox, http link) http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47541136/LINUX/LEDE/lede-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr802n-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
The LEDE firmware upgrade tutorial is here

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The filters for availability are needed.
Please mind the pagename: toh_available_864
This page answers the question "I want to buy a router which is supported by LEDE"
To buy a device, it needs to be available. It does absolutely make no sense to include devices which are "Discontinued 2013" in a datatable that should show devices which are commercially available now (2017).

I'm willing to leave out the filtering for unknown availability, hoping that someone searching for a device to buy will actually check the availability and edit the dataentry accordingly, and thus improving dataquality.

In any case, if you are not happy with a datatable, you can always create a new datatable for "Devices which would be ideal for LEDE if they were not discontinued and if you could buy them."

[quote="tmomas, post:12, topic:732, full:true"]The filters for availability are needed.
Please mind the pagename: toh_available_864
This page answers the question "I want to buy a router which is supported by LEDE"
To buy a device, it needs to be available. It does absolutely make no sense to include devices which are "Discontinued 2013" in a datatable that should show devices which are commercially available now (2017).[/quote]I understand the goal, but let me play a bit devil's advocate.
Can you actually check and make sure that all devices you filter out with availability filters are actually unavailable, or that devices that are stated as "available" are actually available when someone makes the search?
Also, how do you deal with "available only in US or EU or China" situations?

For example, the nexx3020h is definitely available, comes from china through the usual ways, but you can buy it easily.
link1 , link2 , link3

I think availability is good to show, but if you use it as a filter there are too many situations when it becomes a tripping point like it was now.

I think having a table about "devices recommended for LEDE" with filters on minimum hardware requirements only should be best. People can buy used devices too if they find them on sale and we can safely assume that people can use google to find the devices from the list.

The Availability column aims to ease the purchase of a device that is supported by OpenWrt.
It does not aim to flood the user with results that might once have been available, and google is your friend to find out real availability. It does also not aim to put the user through the ordeal to hunt down a single leftover device at ebay.nz when he is living in the EU which has been discontinued according OEM information.

Data quality of this column is certainly an issue. But as always when it comes to maintenance, the community is reluctant to actually do something and check outdated availability information.
In order to track unknown or available status, I added the year at which the status has been set.

The data is only as good as the community makes it. Since rarely someone else ever checks this column, even if requested to do so (see https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=347510), it's up to me to do the dirty work.

My process for checking availability: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=347531#p347531

In general, I try to find official EOL information at the OEM, but only few OEMs have good data on this subject.
If that's not available, I try to find the device at amazon.de/.com/.uk (need to check more than one!) or other local well known suppliers. If you can't buy it "new", then it might be EOL / Discontinued.
If that leads to no result, try at dx.com or something like this.

The essence of this: Try different sources in different countries.

US/EU/CN: I don't care about "sold only in....". If the device is available $somewhere, it is available.

No, but neither can we make sure that all other information contained in the dataentries is 100% correct all the times.
The data is only as good as the community makes it.

That's not a problem, since the user will then certainly try to buy it, notice that he can not buy it anywhere in this galaxis, and go on to the next (needless to say without updating the dataentry accordingly...).

In addition to this: I mentioned the year being included in the availability status. This is a marker, that devices with year < current year should be checked when doing maintenance of the data, i.e. everything lower than "Available 2017" should be checked and updated now.

Feel free to create a new one and name it suitably.
Also, feel invited to check correctness of availability information via https://lede-project.org/toh/views/toh_admin_available
I could really need some help with this tedious task.

P.S. #1: I found out why the Nexx3020H wasn't shown in the toh_admin_available: https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/nexx/nexx_wt3020h shows this one as "Available", and during import of the dataentries, I changed this undetermined statement to something more up to date, i.e. "Available 2016?" (note the question mark). However, I forgot to add this new value to the field aliases, which made the availability field look blank (but in the dataentry the "Available 2016?" was still in). I updated the field alias, and now the 3020h shows up correctly.

In addition to this, I updated the availability field now in general: removed blank fields and ¿ by filling them with "unknown 2017".

P.S. #2: A list of suppliers to check for availability could help to improve dataquality.

(slight thread hiijacking, I apologize with em8epwx4)

My process for checking availability: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=347531#p347531

might be good to place it in a dedicated article "ToH updating guidelines" or something like that, and add a line about it in the ToH views.

Also the list of suppliers should go in there

No, but neither can we make sure that all other information contained in the dataentries is 100% correct all the times.

Yep, but I think this is asking for it.

Correctness of device specs is relatively easy, you do it once per device (and if there are unknowns on the first search they stay unknown happily thereafter). Availability needs more manpower to be done right, imho.

We are basically the only two guys posting stuff on wiki, others do minor edits or translations.
I'm not really keen on doing the shopping assistant's job when there are far more important things to do (tutorials and documentation), so this leaves only you doing that.
Sure if I need to search stuff for myself I'm updating what I see, but I'm not doing it on a schedule.

Feel free to create a new one and name it suitably.

Not my point. I can easily make my own dataview and show that to people because I don't like yours or something (for example), my point was not wasting manpower on things we lack the manpower needed to do a good job.

Returning to the OP's issues...

I am a road warrior and came to OpenWrt and now LEDE looking for a VPN solution. I am not a networking guru or dev and have substantially no Linux skills. Little to no interest in building my own. Based on your posts I assume you are similar.

For a travel router the things you may want to do are:

  • Share a connection between multiple devices and\or colleagues\kids.
  • (Open)VPN - primarily for a secure connection when using public WiFi
  • USB - for either data or 3/4G connection.
  • miniDlna - for streaming media

From a practical perspective most public WiFi is slow and adding OpenVPN on top makes these devices near useless. With my home connection (50\10) I can I can get about a 7-10Mbps VPN tunnel and stream video. Most public places (in the US at least) are under 5Mbps, and I frequently see less in many hotels. Streaming does not work. 4g is faster and safer than surfing on WIFI without VPN in any public location. Cost is obviously a concern.

With WIFI you will also learn that there are problems with connection management. If the STAtion you last connected to is not available on your next reboot, your WLAN may (probably) not be accessible. This may leave you with no access to the device other than Ethernet, which is not always a viable solution (tablet). I have not tried this yet: https://github.com/openwrt/packages/blob/master/net/travelmate/files/README.md There are others, but this is the only one with any support.

One issue I am not sure is addressed with this and other solutions I have tried is the captive portal login and redirects. Generally your laptop is connected to the WISP\WIFI\STAtion and you open the browser you will be redirected to a login page. I find if you add the router in between, the redirect fails. Don't fight it. Go to the URL and login as one should. I have found that not all hotspots are happy with the router, and you may not get a full lease time.

So, the next question regarded flash and memory. For VPN, as noted, these devices are slow. CPUs are only a fraction of the speed of your laptop and do not have hardware encryption (AES) like many modern CPUs. Thus, the more memory the better. Regarding flash, it's pretty much storing your OS, so the more you got, the more you can load. 8mb will work, but there is little to no difference to buy 16MB and you will future proof your investment.

The hardware landscape has blossomed in the last year or so. There are a fair amount of travel devices, but as most are recent, they are not included in any of OpenWrt Release builds. The NEXX and GLi 6416 being the only dual port exceptions that I know of. The NEXX is 8mb flash, but does have a 580 MT7620 so faster than the GLi 400mhz Atheros. The Gli has 16MB flash. There are other GLi routers with more features and/or better specs that come with OpenWrt installed (GLI Gui over Luci, late OpenWrt 15.05.1 plus or an optional "clean" - No GLi gui) https://www.gl-inet.com/shop/ (I have no affiliation with GLi but own 2 devices) The AR150 is the newer version of the 6416, and the MIFI the battery powered version of basically the same.

I do not think I would buy a single port device again. They are too much pain, and when you can connect it via Ethernet they are that much faster. The NEXX is probably the cheapest, but I only see it on ALI express ($15 plus shipping). The GLis are $20-40 plus shipping. Main brands are GLi.net, HooToo and TP-Link.

Even if the release version fits on your device, you will still not be able to add much if anything in packages. I will suggest that the device may make a fine AP or even wireless bridge if you need some additional coverage around your home, but see little practical use for it otherwise.

bobafetthotmail, thank you very much! Both for your thoughtful reply and for taking the time to compile a version for me, very much appreciated! I will install on my router tomorrow.(cannot return it so I might as well use it while getting another more powerful router).

I had no idea so many packages were available to run on the router and I now fully appreciate the potential value of 16 Mb flash and 64 Mb RAM. In fact, I found the GL.iNET GL-MT300A on the list - 16 Mb flash and 128 Mb RAM - available on Amazon for $30. There is both a GL-MT300A and a GL-MT300A-Ext available for almost the same price, I have not figured out the difference yet.

While reviews of this unit on Amazon are good, it would certainly be valuable to see if anyone here is using one of these unit?

Thank you.

(cannot return it so I might as well use it while getting another more powerful router).

With that firmware it can connect to a modem in bridging, do openvpn, run adblock to block ads, connect to (any) dynamic dns services, can turn on/off wifi on a schedule, in addition to default luci functions.

There is both a GL-MT300A and a GL-MT300A-Ext available for almost the same price, I have not figured out the difference yet.

From their site, the "ext" version has 2 external antennas (detachable) and an internal microsd slot pre-soldered (see the other image in the site) https://www.gl-inet.com/product/gl-mt300a-ext/
The other has 2 internal antennas, and seems to only have the interface, but no microsd slot https://www.gl-inet.com/mt300a/

The "ext" seems like a no-brainer, although I don't know if the ones sold by the the seller on amazon also have the internal microsd slot.

it would certainly be valuable to see if anyone here is using one of these unit?

That device is using the slightly better version of the same SoC used in the nexx3020h, the (MT7620A while in the nexx there is a MT7620N, wifi and ethernet are the same, CPU is the same, it can have have more RAM and flash, it has a sdcard interface (for the microsd card), and has other stuff like PCIe that seems unused in that device.

My nexx3020h (and probably the device you are looking at, as CPU/wifi/ethernet is the same) is a good jack-of-all-trades (which is the whole point of a tiny travel router I guess), but don't expect it to support more than a few VPN clients or run smoothly heavy stuff like the seafile-server package.

I just ordered the MT300-Ext with the external antennas, both that and the MT300 with an internal antenna seem to to have an SD-card slot, though. The slot is internal to the case and requires the case to be opened. It comes preinstalled with OpenWrt and an OpenVPN client which seems intriguing.

I have now installed bobafetthotmail's special image for the WR302N on my router and that seems to have gone well. After getting the luci-interface up and running I realize I have plenty to learn... One of my goals is to get openVPN installed on one of my servers and then have the openVPN client on this router connecting to it.

Again, thank you for your help!