Is TP-LINK TL-WR743N/ND still supported?

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I have OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment 12.09 installed on a TP-LINK TL-WR743N/ND. I'd like to update the firmware to a more recent release but cannot figure out which image to download. Could someone point me in the right direction please?

Here's the system info:

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo 
system type             : Atheros AR7240 rev 2
machine                 : TP-LINK TL-WR741ND
processor               : 0
cpu model               : MIPS 24Kc V7.4
BogoMIPS                : 232.24
wait instruction        : yes
microsecond timers      : yes
tlb_entries             : 16
extra interrupt vector  : yes
hardware watchpoint     : yes, count: 4, address/irw mask: [0x0000, 0x0990, 0x0148, 0x0148]
ASEs implemented        : mips16
shadow register sets    : 1
kscratch registers      : 0
core                    : 0
VCED exceptions         : not available
VCEI exceptions         : not available
2

https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_fwdownload?dataflt[Model*~]=tl-wr743

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3

If you look carefully at the data tmomas linked, you'll see that it's now on the "tiny" target meaning that LuCI no longer fits with an up-to-date kernel and current "basic" utilities.

Edit: My mistake, the "tiny" target, at this time, continues to include LuCI.

Given that Attitude Adjustment is over five years old now, an upgrade is definitely a wise approach given the number of security vulnerabilities in Linux, third-party utilities, and 802.11 itself found since then. Even on the tiny target, your device should still run as a wireless router though you'll have to configure and manage it through ssh.

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4

I installed the update from tmomas's link, and it seems to work just fine, including LuCI. Am I doing something wrong?

I see this in the footer:

Powered by LuCI openwrt-18.06 branch (git-18.228.31946-f64b152) / OpenWrt 18.06.1 r7258-5eb055306f

5

Please help me out, maybe I overlooked it: Where in the commit that created the tiny subtarget did you see that LuCI was excluded?

6

luci is preinstalled in the (release images of the) tiny target(s), at least so far - with kernel >=4.14 it will become increasingly difficult to fit luci into 4 MB, so this might have to change in the future. Having luci preinstalled might however mean that release images can't be built for all devices covered by these targets (there's still the option of using imagebuilder for these devices), in some cases looking at snapshots (which don't have luci preinstalled) might provide a working image though.