Raspberry Pi 4 released

True, but this is reproducible. For now I’m super happy and wasted only 1 day with it. :nerd_face:
EDIT: It's not! :sob:

In the future I might also play around with the recommended TP-Link UE300 USB 3 network adapter.

Sorry, I don’t use SQM and/or cake. I don’t even know what they are :sweat_smile:

What's the CPU usage on the RPi4 like for each scenario?

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Hi,

it's embarrassing :sweat_smile: but my previous measurement results are not reproducible (so I edited my last post). Tonight I learned the difference between iperf3, the vodafone speedtest website, and a wget ISO download.

  1. The internal/onboard (eth0) consumes less CPU0 (~15-30%) than my external UGREEN (ASIX887719) USB adapter (~100%) WITH iperf3. However, for ISO file downloads both are 100% which justifies my (need for) overclocking.

  2. While the speedtest website is (sometimes) faster when eth1 (USB dongle) is the WAN interface, iperf3 is (always) faster on eth0 (internal/onboard ethernet) and ISO downloads are also (always) faster when eth0 is the WAN interface. :sweat_smile:

iperf3 (measuring for 60 seconds):
A) eth1 (USB) = WAN @ 1.5GHz = 924 Megabits - CPU0 100% :sob:
B) eth1 (USB) = WAN @ 2.0GHz = 965 Megabits - CPU0 100% :sob:

C) eth0 (Int.) = WAN @ 1.5GHz = 986 Megabits - CPU0 15-30% :heart_eyes:
D) eth0 (Int.) = WAN @ 2.0GHz = 983 Megabits - CPU0 15-30% :heart_eyes:

But be carefull, this is all iperf3 only, and the results suggest that there is no need for overclocking. However, when I download an ISO file, I do see a speed (879 Mbits @ 1.5 GHz, 965 Mbits @ 2.0GHz) and CPU (iperf3: 30%, ISO dl: 100%) difference!!!

As I'm only interested in fast downloads, and not what a speedtest reports, I switched my WAN interface to the internal (eth0) ethernet port of the Raspberry Pi 4 and overclocked it at 2.0GHz.

A) iperf3: eth1 (USB) = WAN @ 1.5GHz -> 924 Megabits

C) iperf3: eth0 (Int.) = WAN @ 1.5GHz -> 986 Megabits

B) iperf3: eth1 (USB) = WAN @ 2.0GHz -> 965 Megabits

D) iperf3: eth0 (Int.) = WAN @ 2.0GHz -> 983 Megabits

P.S.: I don't know whether reporting this makes any sense, but here you go:

cat /proc/interrupts (freshly rebooted before every test)

WAN=USB (eth1), after 1 minute iperf3
 31:       60 889          0          0          0     GICv2 189 Level                    eth0
 32:       13 524          0          0          0     GICv2 190 Level                    eth0
 39:    1 505 759          0          0          0     BRCM STB PCIe MSI 524288 Edge      xhci_hcd

WAN=Internal (eth0), after 1 minute iperf3
 31:      228 942          0          0          0     GICv2 189 Level                    eth0
 32:      366 016          0          0          0     GICv2 190 Level                    eth0
 39:      839 902          0          0          0     BRCM STB PCIe MSI 524288 Edge      xhci_hcd

Mmmh, you are measuring on different layers. Please only use measurements on one layer consistently, I recommend to use TCP/IP goodput, because that is easiest to repeatably measure, it is also the number that is returned from acceptable on-line speedtests like okkla's speedtest.net+ dslreports and breitbandmessung.de.. Iperf also returns that value and it is easy to calculate for any data transfer by hand simply by dividing the volume of bytes by the duration of the transfer.

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also...

opkg install sysstat
mpstat -A 2

will shed the best light at a system resource allocation level... ( i'd actually really like to see the difference )

I wanted to see what I could do with the Raspberry, so I stumbled upon OpenWRT. Currently I’m using pfSense running on a Fitlet mini PC, and that firewall solution has been rock solid for over 4 years now. My uptime is normally over a year. I’m a Cisco network engineer, and I’ve run Cisco routers or firewalls for my Internet access for decades, so when I switched to pfSense, I was very pleasantly surprised with its features and stability. I run the update once a year on pfSense, and the update process takes just a few minutes. I don’t have to do anything special, as all the settings survive.

So, running OpenWRT on the Raspberry Pi is an interesting project for me. I may even replace pfSense with it, but I have a few questions and concerns after I’ve read this entire thread.

  1. What’s the recommended USB3-to-GigabitEthernet adapter? I hear that the one based on the Realtek 8152 chipset is recommended. Can anyone recommend the actual adapter?

  2. I have a 2.5 Gbps USB3 adapter based on the Realtek 8156 chipset, and I couldn’t get it to be installed as an interface under OpenWRT even after I installed the Realtek 8152 driver. Does anyone know if there’s a driver for the 8156 chipset to be used as a second Ethernet interface in OpenWRT?

If it’s possible to use 2.5 Gbps USB interfaces in OpenWRT, can the Raspberry Pi 4b route at speeds higher than 1 Gbps? Has anyone tried this with two USB3 2.5 Gbps adapters, since some newer cable modems now come with 2.5 Gbps Ethernet interfaces?

  1. I don’t quite understand the difference between a snapshot image and a mainstream image. Can someone explain?

  2. What’s the difference between the squashfs and ext4 images?

  3. I’ve read in this thread that the upgrade to another snapshot image is complicated and the settings do not survive. How will the upgrade procedure be different when when the Raspberry Pi 4b becomes part of the mainstream image?

  4. What’s the recommended size of the microSD card in order to run additional packages / services inder OpenWRT? I’m
    interested in wireguard, pihole, squid, etc.

  5. Is there a USB3 based Wi-Fi dongle that can be used with OpenWRT running on the Raspberry Pi 4b to turn it into a decent wireless AC router with about 500-600
    Mbps throughput on the 5Ghz radio?

  6. Is it possible to have a console port access with the OpenWRT running on the Raspberry Pi 4b? If so, how can this be done?

Thank you very much!

here are my answers to few of your questions:
#3 - snapshot is daily update, while stable gets update less frequently
I have been using snapshots w my rpi4 and follow the daily updates for the none core pkgs, and do full image update once a while (bi-monthly)
#4 - Ext4 vs SquashFS
#5 - the way for upgrading is the same regardless of image, create backup, save pkg list and anything extra you did, upgrade and restore those extra pkgs, configs, users etc etc, (I scripted it)
#8 never required a serial console, think about it, you have ssh, if that fails just get the SD to an other system and correct issues

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#8 normally documented UART pins work out of the box for console access. They are NOT 5v tolerant... If you instantiate other/additional UART pins via devicetree-overlay, alterations need to be made to cmdline.txt and inittab also.

So, I've compiled my first 64-bit image and even got the Plugable 2.5 Gbps rtl8156 based chipset USB to Ethernet adapter to load a driver. So, I now have two Ethernet interfaces on the Raspberry Pi 4B: on-board 1 Gbps and a USB3-based 2.5 Gbps.

I've been reading about OpenWRT for a few days now. There's a lot of information to process.

  1. Can someone explain to me how I would be updating the image that I compiled the other day? I'm going to replicate my pfSense configuration in OpenWRT and try it as my router/firewall. However, since the 64-bit image is not yet included in a stable release, I need to understand how to update it later on. I can compile my own sysupdate image, but how do I install it and what happens with my settings after I install it? Will my settings survive? Will my packages get upgraded and their settings survive?

  2. Once Raspberry Pi 4B is included in a stable release, how would software updates happen then? Is there a way to update without blowing away the settings and packages? I'm hoping that the update mechanism in OpenWRT works kind of like this is done in pfSense, where you simply choose the update image from the GUI menu, click OK, and everything gets automatigically updated or you could run a software update from a contextual text menu via SSH or serial console in pfSense.

Now that I've read up on the OpenWRT upgrade procedure, I'm a little concerned. This is a pretty involved process, especially if one installs additional packages. I guess I can keep building my own image with the packages pre-built into the system image, but it takes some time.

So, provided this process is not as simple as the pfSense upgrade process, which takes less than 5 minutes of downtime, how often do you guys upgrade your OpenWRT systems? Do you upgrade with every stable release? How often are stable releases published? How are newly discovered vulnerabilities addressed? If there's a vulnerability patch published, is it a new stable firmware that needs to be updated or are there patches issued that can be installed without blowing away the entire system?

Thank you.

This is how I do it on all my OpenWRT devices:

When there's a new official service release I make a backup, just in case. Then I do the upgrade while keeping the current settings, then I reinstall all the packages that don't come with the official image. The config files will be there for the packages to work just fine.It can even be scripted if you'd like.

For new major versions I just redo all my settings. Less headaches and possible problems.

Of course the Pi4 won't have an official image until 20.x releases, but this method works with your custom made images.

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Annoyingly, ImageBuilder won't work if you only have AMD64 computer to build with. I have to compile from source which is sooo slow.

That is incorrect, imagebuilder is only provided for amd64/ x86_64 linux, so exactly this is the only combination that can actually use it. (Technically speaking imagebuilder could be built for other architectures and POSIX compatible environments as well, but it's only available in precompiled form for x86_64).

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I'm trying to figure out how to get OpenWrt onto my Pi 4. Is it just something I just need to compile for myself or something?

https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/bcm27xx/bcm2711/

the community build it's an easier starting point, snapshot you must install luci and extra packages..

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I'm using wulfy23's build, as there is no stable release yet. still work in progress...

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Just installed daily snapshot. Added an itec USB nic and put as WAN. Installed addons like collectd, wireguard and openvpn. Setup guest vlan for wifi and configured pbr. Added the optimizations in this thread. Overclocked to 1750 at overvolt 2. Got around 700 Mbits worth of WG. Added the irqbalance and BOOM!!!

The little fricking thing at 5 watts routed 1 gbit of wireguard traffic in on wan and unpacked it and on via portforward to the requesting server on lan. Thats so impressive I need to sit down. I wonder what I may do with the old octa-core xeon now....

This performance is all due to the fine works of you ppl here on openwrt....pfsense, vyatta, windows nothing comes close! BIG thanks to you guys, keep up the good work!!!!

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I am also about to replace pfSense with OpenWRT on Raspberry Pi 4B. I’ve tested WireGuard and got about 850 Mbps. What optimizations did you implement to route at 1Gbps via WireGuard? Could you summarize them in one post?

Thank you.

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