Some questions about building from source

Don't give up on it yet.. We are still trying to work thru what appears to be the multiple leaks.. It was reported a 5.10 revision helped at least fix some of it, but honestly, I've not been able to poke at it much (not that it would mean much anyway).

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That is actually a little bit of this “compile from source” thing we are trying to accomplish here, only to be able to keep my “black box” alive as long as possible…
I really like the ER4, and it really got my OVPN tunnel moving.
So I really don't want to let it go.

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Those are not meant to be edited, unless you really know what you are doing. They the are the low-level kernel config.

The .config in the OpenWrt topdir is the main OpenWrt config file that can be edited by hand, or by "make menuconfig". It contains all package selections and config options.
(If you edit it by hand, it is good to run "make defconfig" after editing, so that the dependencies etc. are straightened up.

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If you have questions, feel free to hit me up here/DM or I'm always on the IRC channel with some others who know the arch

Yes, but at this point with this target, it needs to be done. They are building from source, so it gives them that latitude.. Although, it should be done via make kernel_menuconfig I suppose :smiley:

OpenWrt forced soft-float, which would be fine by the octeon targets have zero float support unless it's also enabled in the kernel .. Took forever for us to track that one down.

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Yep. But doing that is maybe for the time after the build process first completes at all.

I still do not understand the troubles that the op is having with the basic config process and ath79/octeon difficulties in .config
Sounds like something wrong with the buildhost.

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I'd try:

make dirclean
git switch master
git fetch origin && git rebase origin/master
make download && make defconfig && make menuconfig and set it to octeon, save and exit.
make -j$(nproc-1) || make -j1 V=sc and see what it does?

I have selected the safe way of having completely different buildroot for each device and release. Sure it wastes disk space, but makes it also easier to test possibly problematic changes e.g. to busybox etc.

I have been building OpenWrt since 2011 for various devices, and for several branches. (Community builds for R7800 and WNDR3700, plus CPU frequency scaling for WRT3200ACM). As my build scripts publish all the source code changes for the build, I have wanted clarity. The source changes vary so much. E.g. setting the correct default wan interface for SQM varies a lot (before DSA), so sqm-scripts in the packages feed have different changes for ath79, ipq806x and mvebu.

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What I have learned today so far is correct handling of the .config is not easy but very easy to get it wrong.

You might read

I keep a short recipe as a separate file, edit it for modifications, and always before build copy it to be the .config and expand it with "make defconfig"

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Are you sure your permissions aren't messed up for .config?

$ ls -lh .config
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 264K 18 feb 22:59 .config

This was like a “wait a minute!” moment😂

I tried changing er4.config to .config and got error that said that name was occupied already.
Found how to show hidden files i Ubuntu and there it was!
The unknown Ath79 hidden .config file that was running the show.

I tried again with wrt3200acm (that is my trial and error device, er4 is the golden boy in the NOC so that have to wait) in a .config file and now it works.

There are two wrt3200acm to choose between in the device list?
One is rango and the other is only named wrt3200acm.

Do anyone know what the difference is between those two?

That's, erm... Funny, to say the least. I told you right off the bat the file is named .config. Post #5 in this topic:

I guess that means you don't realise so-called 'dot files' are hidden by default on Linux. My mistake to assume that's common knowledge :smile:.

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Yea you are right, but I thought I could have a name on it before the period.
And the hidden file setting made it all more confusing.

No using custom names would only further complicate the buildroot. If you want to use multiple config files see post #2.

It's hidden by default to prevent people accidentally wiping it (and maybe for other reasons as well).

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I thought hidden files only was a Windows feature…have had hidden files visible on Windows for ages.

What is the point of hide dot files when the rest is visible?

These libpam etc warnings at feed install that is known in this forum from before?

Do everyone get those or are we only supposed to always use the -f option?

Linux was designed as a multi-user system from the start, and user configurations were hidden files/directories in the user's home dir. It's convention.

Warnings are just that. Worry about errors.

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No difference except the name, a duplicate in the shown selection menu. For historical reason the Linksys codename rango is an alias for wrt3200acm

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Now when I have built a working wrt3200acm image with add on packages and installed it on a device.

How do you handle the function for DISABLED_SERVICES from the imagebuilder when building from source?

Or do you simply remove the package for the service?