Need help installing OpenWrt to PC

The PC that I am going to be using for this is an HP. I opened it up and it has a laptop motherboard which is why I am using the USB NIC's. If I run an ethernet cable from the second NIC to my R7500v2 with OpenWRT on it in AP mode will my wireless traffic still be routed properly using SQM on the PC with the OpenWRT VM? I hope that makes sense. Just trying to make sure I will not have to buy a laptop wireless NIC for the PC with the VM.

Yes it will work that way. When you define the nics make sure you select bridge and give each virtual nic a corresponding usb nic. When you boot into openwrt only plug one lan cable. You will see in the console whether lan or wan is plugged in. Then youll know which usb nic is assigned to lan or wan. You can then plug the correct cables to their corresponding ports.

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Awesome thanks a lot bro! Your a life saver. This definitely a lot easier to do. Besides setting up the VM (which I found a video on) it is the same as what I do on my R7500v2 now. The only tricky part will be setting up the wireless traffic for SQM but you already explained how to do that. So, I should be good to go. When I get off work in a few hours I am going to give it a shot. Thanks again!

Glad to help. Sqm should be fine. Just enable it on the wan interface.

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For some reason I missed this.

Not to derail you with a VM, but to install Open-WRT to a SSD\HDD from Windows is not hard. You need a USB to SATA cable . It's a good tool to recover drives with. 3.5" will need one with a power adapter, 2.5" only will not.

Though it should not technically be required (the utility below should take care of all this) I suggest you clean up an old drive first with Windows DISKPART command, G-Parted Live (Linux tool boots from USB) or even just delete all the partitions with Windows Disk management. You can format it anything, but I do not think you need to.

You should then be able to use the the utilities from here (Win32Disk Imager or Etcher) to write the Open-WRT image directly to the SSD\HDD from Windows. (Take care to pick the right device to write too!!!) Windows may not like the drive when it's "cooked", just ignore the messages. Safely Remove or power down the PC and move the drive back.

It you did it all correct, and the image has Luci, it should boot right up to the login.

EDIT. Your PC is now a "Router" accessible at 192.168.1.1 from a client PC. The router only offers CLI access.

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You know what now that I think about it I did everything right. It booted up to a black screen that said Openwrt at the top and had a command prompt. I think all I needed to do is log in and put in the command for luci to load. Does this sound right? I had to do this before when I installed the latest firmware on my router. I just have not done it in a long time and cannot remember how.

Edit - I installed the lateat snapshot so I had to install Luci.

The local screen and keyboard are only useful for CLI control. You need to connect to another computer that has a web browser to use LuCI.

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Oh yeah, that's am important distinction. Forgot I was not cloning windows. I'll update ny post for completeness.

So does it sound like I did things correctly just needed to access it via another pc? If so I will reflash and use this way.