what resources are needed for openwrt + a required DoT or DoH solution (no wireless needed)?
and can anyone recommend a basic solid hardware router that can accomplish this?
I've been reading all over and the specs don't seem clear. From install instructions, my ER-X with 256mb ram / 256mb nand flash storage seemed borderline to install openwrt and i wasn't sure if that would include dnscrypt. so i tried installing dnscrypt-proxy on EdgeOS and ran out of storage... without enough space to remove packages. (i'll revisit when usb to serial adapter arrives in next day or so)
The GL-AXT1800 travel router seems to do the above np with 512mb ram and only 128mb nand flash storage. Maybe bc of the micro sd?
I'm basically happy with my ER-X. And if i can get openwrt + DoH on it i'll be happy. but if i can't i'm not clear what the specs need to be. Right around these specs they seem to jump to mini pc specs which is not what i'm looking for in this particular router.
What's borderline about it? It has plenty resources to run DoT, DoH or DNScrypt. It doesn't have to spend RAM on wireless buffers since there is no wireless on ER-X.
I'm definitely pushing my abilities here but after reading through the links below it looks like 128mb ram and 128mb flash should be plenty for what i'm trying to do. I don't really see it spelled out anywhere so i guess i just need to try and find out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWrt
- minimum of 16 MB of flash and 128 MB of RAM, preferably higher amounts.
https://openwrt.org/toh/buyerguide
https://openwrt.org/faq/which_router_should_i_buy
https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128
- 16MB Flash will provide for bare minimum installed packages. Devices with more storage is recommended.
- 128MB RAM will provide for minimal functionality. Devices with more RAM is recommended.
Back to the ER-X. It seems it has enough if i can recover it. Never used usb to serial adapter or a TFTP server to flash memory before but sounds like a fun thing to learn. its starting to make sense. Instead of recovering EdgeOS though i guess i'll try to flash OpenWrt directly.
* openwrt supports ER-X:
https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/edgerouter_x_er-x_ka
* but install is not easy:
https://hmann.substack.com/p/edge-router-x-serial-connection https://community.ui.com/questions/How-to-connect-ER-X-serial-console/75bbbd47-7520-49ba-82c4-2c35ff663497?page=1#M233420 https://community.ui.com/questions/ERX-ERX-SFP-System-Recovery/c713ea0f-a4c1-4e5c-9d43-9b369850044c
After reading through it again, i guess it was installing openwrt on top of edgeos that was borderline. it requires reverting to an older smaller version of edgeos and then still didn't have enough space. edgeos was too much not openwrt i guess.
count a megabyte for packages (eg. stuby with openssl) - your success heavily depends on 8MB flash whether you have that space. 64MB RAM can hold 1-2MB additional process
formal minimal requirement of 128/16 is more than enough. ER-X is fine. But it is 256 mega-bits ir 32MB flash.
What do you see in df -k /overlay ? It should be 1MB maybe 2MB used from doh/dot software package added.
Thanks for your response. You're starting to get at what i was wondering: os + package reqs. I don't understand the correlation between storage and ram but i think i follow what you're saying: Openwrt needs ~8mb storage and packages need about ~1mb minimum. And i think you are saying thats whats needed on top of whats already installed. I thought i had that extra but the generated tar file was barely too large per openwrt isntructions which pointed to a custom tar.. which went sideways somewhere along the line.
I haven't been able to connect to the er-x for about a day now so can't check "df -k /overlay" .
Think i'm off to order a new travel (backup) router and study up on using this usb to serial adapter with the hopes i can recover the er-x when it arrives.
If you have 8MB flash you get ~1MB storage for extra packages after kernel (half to double depending on the device) , so expectation is that 32MB flash will have 20-few megs free after <.5MB initial config.
For entertainment - consider a virtual machine
You have to be more elaborate on what is installed, in ERX you can install samba server and one of fat p2p vpn packages….
jeez thats confusing. sounds a bit like 2+2=pizza lol. Na its beginning to make sense thx.
funny you mention vm. i have one machine with 2 nics and im in the middle of trying to set up a openwrt vm in proxmox for a tmp router until my travel router arrives or i can restore the er-x. hopefully both. and of course, for the entertainment, i know very little about ve's. but gettin there! sure i could run to the store pay twice the amount but wheres the fun in that.
my er-x was just about stock. some recent web ui upgrades were significant though. don't know the specifics but they seemed heavy. i also logged in via ssh and made some config changes that way. can't remember but feel like i installed something in the past via cli. not surprising i ran out of resources on it.
A followup on this in case it helps anyone in future with an ER-X. The router is back in the game with a fresh OpenWrt install using no where near the ER-X resources. The full console output was helpful so i'm including it at the bottom (minus kernel output for length limits).
I was able to RAM boot the factory image, use it to copy over the sysupgrade image and install it via console. The RAM boot method / Serial installation with TFTP described at link below worked great. I had a primary win11 machine setup as a usb to serial console and a second linux machine for tftp server and later scp.
This writeup was the main guide. It was very close to my situation and very helpful. Thank you to the author. Instead of running a http server at the end though i scp'd the sysupgrade image.
Getting a serial console connection:
* most of the output ran at startup; have the terminal client setup before device startup
* pressing '1' interrupted the bootloader
* instructions at link above worked but here is a summary:
* win+x - see Device Manager to confirm COM port and driver install / errors
* Putty on win11
* installed CP2102 win11 x64 driver
* Gnd - Gnd
* TX - RX
* RX - TX
* serial
* COM4 @ 57600
These tftp instructions here were complete and very helpful:
Scp'd the sysupgrade image over at the end from the linux machine to erx:
