7 years ago I have setup 5 TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND v1.8 with Backfire (10.03.1, r29592). They worked fine, but now 2-3 are not used anymore and I want to play a little bit with them using WDS and mesh. I remember that I couldn't configure the device via webinterface, but with ssh and vi.
My 1st question, which is the latest openwrt-version for the TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND v1.8?
I want to erase all existing packages and all the configuration-files. How should I flash? Can you point me to a link für this router, where it is explained how to do it? Please note, this router has 8MB flash and 32MB RAM. Probably this was the reason why I had to configure it with vi, since I have installed other packages too.
https://openwrt.org/supported_devices/432_warning applies, but 18.06.1 will work on it nevertheless (the web interface may be rather slow, because of the RAM shortage. /etc/init.d/uhttpd stop && /etc/init.d/uhttpd might be a good idea).
Edited:
Use the sysupgrade image and copy it to your router's /tmp/ and flash it using sysupgrade -n /tmp/openwrt-18.06.1-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin.
Do I have to copy `openwrt-18.06.1-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-factory.bin to the router or can I install via ssh from the pc, I mean the bin-file is on the pc.
I have changed the network to 192.168.178.x on the tp-link. I assume after flashing I have another network. What is important in this case?
Does an andorid-app exist to configure the TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND v1.8? Especially I want to change the network again with 192.to.178.x
For security reasons it is really essential to run the current version (17.01.x will cease to be supported in january), if your hardware can't cope with that anymore, you might want to look into replacing it.
I mean openwrt-18.06.1-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
Since it is so long ago, I am asking, have there been changes, eg partitionsize, that sysupgrade doesn't work?
I have:
root@wr1043-openwrt-ap-wds:~# mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/root on /rom type squashfs (ro,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=14716k)
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=512k,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,mode=600)
/dev/mtdblock3 on /overlay type jffs2 (rw,relatime)
mini_fo:/overlay on / type mini_fo (rw,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
none on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,relatime)
There are some changes that afaik aren't being migrated such as adding a user for dnsmasq when doing sysupgrade which will cause some breakage (dnsmasq won't start) so I'd suggest that you save your current config and do a clean update.
Be very careful with services if you want to run 18.X or master as you will quite easily trigger "out of memory" errors. I have a similar device (https://openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/tp-link/tp-link_tl-wr810n_v2) which acts as a very barebone gateway also running wireguard and it can barely handle such tasks comfortably (OpenWrt master). Adding WIFI on top of that would most likely make it crash, it did however work fine as a standalone AP but your mileage may vary. Keep in mind that 1043nd v1 uses a very old WIFI chipset (draft-n) so stability and support isn't going to be great.