Overlay reducing?

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi there,

is it possible to reduce size of the overlay folder? If I remember well, I had before deleting some packages 82% free, but after deleting some packages only 79%.

So it's not much, but It's enough if you have only 24MB free memory.

Read and write back?or everything putting into an tar moving and bring it then back?

and can I delete some of these files? with *.1 or *.0 etc.

look at his screencopy from mc

|@libgmodule-2.0.so              │     19│Feb 28 16:04││       
│@libgmodule-2.0.so.0            │     26│Feb 28 16:04││    
│*libgmodule-2.0.so.0.7400.0     │  65779│Jun 11  2023||

The first is a link to the second, and the second is 
a link to the third. The third is a "real"file, but 
cannot open it with the viewer.

Thank you for your help
George

2

You're looking in to saving 45 bytes (not really accurate, but anyway), by removing two softlinks ?

3

No, that is only an example, there are many of these kind.

it's like 21 files total, but some have 1 or 2 links. Totally 58.

But how can I reduce the size of /overlay ?

I mean delete what is not necessary.
the folder is 9MB but the files inside are only 5-6MB

4

Reduce by content, or by size ?

You shouldn't remove those soft links.

What device is this anyway ?

5

both? I know that I cannot delete the .0 or .1 etc. But Maybe I can do something to not have them.

I have multiple different routers. But this is a Linksys 7300 v2

Can I cleanup something with opkg?

6

You can delete any package, but

Packages that weren't installed by you, but came with the image, won't actually free up any flash space, when uninstalled.

There are no sanity checks, it could soft brick your router.

What you can delete, depends on what you've installed.

7

Why do you want to do so?
Is your router running out of space?
Do you need more free storage for additional packages?

That depends...self installed packages, yes.
Packages that came with the image itself, no.

8

OK. I didn't mentioned it, but for me it's logic, that I can uninstall maybe only my own packages.

OK, let me ask, if I uninstall my own installed packages, is it then deleted completely from /overlay/upper ? I mean if I delete 2 MB of packages, is the memory then free'd up?

9

Yes, it is.

10

One thing you could try is to incorporate your additional packages into the build image using the online firmware selector. This might free you some space compared to a regular installation.

1 Like
11

That's really good. Thank you for that info.

12

Yes, thank you for this tip. I read about the possibility of firmware configurator by doing a selection somewhere on a webpage, or making the firmware by myself. But had no resources(time) to find and read.
I found out also, that I can also introduce some basic connection data like wifi activation etc.

Because I will need to "update" multiple different devices remotely (>2000miles away), I should do the test update on my local device if my image is working and the setting are still ok then I can update my remote devices with many or most packages already included in the update.

Thank you for this tip

P.S. I just had a look at the online firmware selector, can you tell me how do I add correctly additional packages? How do I write exactly the package name? Sometimes the packagename is really long with version numbers.
Where can I read more exactly what configdata from old version i.e. 19.... are taken to new (20...) 21..../22...../23.05.... versions. I found only out that there is no direct upgrade from 19 to 22 or 23 possible. Really complicated.

13

select your device, click the small arrow above the image DL links.

just the short name, like snort3 not snort3-v3-pvl1, you'll figure it out when you see the list of packages already included.

it is SoC specific, and not always easy to figure out.

14

Thank you very much for your help!!! You are great. I am still reading much to understand how I can modify and use how I need it. But thank you for giving me some directions.

Really so the upgrade on ipq401x (AVM4040) is different of the data transferred at EA7300 or other? Wow really interesting.

15

it could be, QCA devices are switching drivers, and while most most/all other targets have migrated to DSA, QCA did it only recently Ipq40xx and DSA, current status?

AFAIK both those migrations require a reset.