Single port devices

Talk about Documentation
1

Hi,

Recently I got myself in a terrible tizzy trying to get a WAP set up. Was wandering around the sit for ages. Finally I posted here and problem was solved tout suite

All I found in the docs that was obviously related to the problems was Particularities of Single-Port Devices, which actually links to this outside blog TP-Link TL-WR703N – The perfect travel wireless AP (added to Internet Archive for posterity) for majority of content.

Blog post is not ideal as it is specific to a device, relies on having access to GUI, and is off site.

So I would suggest that

  1. Assuming they are widely applicable, the above instructions be added to the page on Single-Port Devices.
  2. That page should be highlighted on device pages for relevant devices (if possible by magic). It took me foreeeeeever to find it at all.
  3. Blog content migrated to docs if that makes sense; not sure if it does. Someone knowledgeable would have to have a look at it to see if it is correct info. From what I can tell on the wiki revisions, it looks like it's from <2015.
  4. Maybe there are other things that would be relevant to add/link.

I can make a few sentences of introduction to contextualize if that would help.

It seems reasonable that this kind of device will become more common over time.

2

@bobafetthotmail Can you please take a lok at 1) + 3) and possibly update https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/singleportrouter?

Regarding 2): Wow, there is quite a number of devices with just one eth port:

  • 1x 100Mbit ==> 266 devices (190 having a devicepage)
  • 1x Gbit ==> 191 devices (107 having a devicepage)

Total 457 devices out of 1874 -> roughly 25%

As a first step, I have created a tag page for 1port devices, linking to https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/singleportrouter

Please mind that obviously not all 1-port devices have already been tagged with 1port (only 97 or so). Feel free to add the 1port tag to the "Tags" section of affected devicepages!

We can certainly link to the singleportrouter page from each affected devicepage, but we sadly do not have any David Copperfield nor Penn & Teller with us who could help out with some magic, so that work needs to be done by the OpenWrt community (me, you, everybody - it's a wiki) :slight_smile:

ToH filtered for 1port devices, sorted by devicepage (sort as you like):

2 Likes
3

ok, I'll write some instructions, and a less hacky commandline for people that have no access to web interface.

Although I think that if luci web interface was working in your device you would have figured out how to solve this on your own. Yes I know it's a newer device so it's only available as a snapshot until stable release 21 lands.

We can certainly link to the singleportrouter page from each affected devicepage,

I assume it can be added by a script, since we have the list of device pages from the ToH.

It's not magic, but it's probably much less work than doing it manually for "just" 460 devices.

I can have a look at a script that can be used to auto-add links if you want.

4

I agree with you that doing it by script would be less work than doing it manually, but my concern is that a script needs to know where to place that link on a devicepage. Given the heterogenity of the devicepages, I would see an automated placement as a challenge.

5

It can look for a "Recommended Reading" paragraph and if no such paragraph exists it can also add it at the end of the page.

Or write an infobox under the title, like we are doing with the 432 warning.

I'm sure most articles have an "end of the page" or a title.

But I'm not forcing anything, this is just a suggestion. If you think it's better to do manually feel free to do it.

6

I created that wiki page (under my old-forum nickname "metai") because I saw the need for it, and then I never got around to properly fill it, and in the meantime forgot about it. Shame on me.

For posterity: The mindset I had with that page was that it's not that hard to create a WAN and switch the single port into whatever the WAN connection needs (PPPoE? DHCP? whatev) and put that port into the WAN zone. Even on single-port devices the firewall config comes with a WAN zone ready to use, no need to create it or even document its creation.

However, I ran into problems if the wifi interface is the only interface assigned to LAN. I found that in order to have a 100% functional LAN interface (e.g. one that you can bind services to) the wifi interface will not do -- it might not be up at the time the service is starting, it might go down in between, and some single-port devices don't even have wifi in the first place (e.g. my PogoPlug), and then a service has no interface to bind to. So you need to have a proper, if "virtual", static interface other than the wifi adapter. I originally painstakingly created such an interface using kmod-dummy, but of course it's easier to just create a static interface on lo. I believe this still holds true, and may even be worth recommending in general.

1 Like
7

"Specific Configuration" or the "Notes" section at the end of the page could be suitable places (if those sections exist on the specific devicepage).

8

Added the documentation for a client device, which is to use the device as a NAS or Wireless Access Point.

I'm not sure if I should also make documentation to make a device that uses the ethernet port as WAN and wifi as LAN, since that's a more advanced thing and I've never done it.

@takimata can you describe a bit better the steps to achieve that? Just in plain english.