TL-WR842N-v2: OpenWrt 22.03.0-rc4 no longer creates -squashfs- files

For Developers
1

Hello!

I've using openwrt since a long time ago. My scripts works just fine with recent stable release 21.02 and successfuly creates:

  • openwrt-ath79-generic-tplink_tl-wr842n-v2-squashfs-factory.bin
  • openwrt-ath79-generic-tplink_tl-wr842n-v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

files for my router. But since I moved to 22.03 'make' command report no errors and creates nothing. I read 'release notes' but found nothing about changes in build script system.

I've checked:

And also found no new build config options. What is wrong?

My full configs / build scripts are here:

2

The system likely grew too large.

3

Which is when you run make V=s. You'll see size issues then, like jow suggested.

Every release, devices need to be moved from ath79/generic to ath79/tiny because image grow too large (mainly because of a newer and bigger kernel).

4

Seems like 'tiny' is not supported for wr842 model. When I set ath79/tiny, wr842 config no longer presents in '.config' file:

# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr802n-v2 is not set
# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr841-v5 is not set
# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr841-v7 is not set
# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr841-v8 is not set
# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr841-v9 is not set
# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr841-v10 is not set
# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr841-v11 is not set
# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr841-v12 is not set
# CONFIG_TARGET_ath79_tiny_DEVICE_tplink_tl-wr940n-v3 is not set

Yet... changing openvpn-openssl to openvpn-wolfssl produces a correct fully working image. With few issues:

openvpn unable to connect with: could not extract X509 subject string from certificate error and unable to establish connection.

Also, I unable to restore proper function of firewall custom rules included with 'include' directive. It seems like just ignored, even after updating the script to 'nft' calls.

Package hostapd not compiling due to conflict. Probably, no longer needed. I haven't tested wifi on the router yet.

5

It seems it is no longer available in tiny builds...
I had 2.1v of this router, but even with custom build w/o lucy, ipv6, usb support, etc. it would occasionally self-reboot. I came to a conclusion that 32 MB ram is not enough. It kept at ~3-4 megs of free ram so at some point it eventually crashed and rebooted.

I still have this router somewhere...
Could you please share full opkg list of packages you are using? I could try to build and test it myself. Just for sports interest.

EDIT: OK I see config on gitlab

6

It probably fails due to default conntrack - it is too high. This router can not keep more then 5000 connection due to ram limitation. You probably running torrents and it causing router to fail. Wifi also failing on high load - disable it. After those changes it works 24/356 no issues then.

7

It looks like your issue is not due to the default image being too big, but to what you're including on top of it. So the generic/tiny move does not apply (yet).

Like I said: it needs to be moved if you'd like to try the tiny subtarget for it. It's still in ath79/generic now, if you move the code for your model from the generic Makefile to the tiny one, you should get a bit more headroom again. A few bits will be disabled by moving it to tiny though. So YMMV.

1 Like