Has anyone had any luck building an image (from the tiny image builder) that actually works and includes coovachilli? (with or without luci, most likely luci will not fit)
LuCI is a definitely out for a device that's already barely clinging to life on the "tiny" image. Even if you could get it to fit, low RAM is another concern, as would be any logging.
Given that you're asking for a captive portal, I'm guessing this is some kind of commercial endeavor. If so, perhaps the investment of under US$20 for a new device that has significantly greater capabilities would be a wise choice.
Thanks Jeff,
Yes, this is a commercial endeavor for deploying captive portals... I definitely would go with better devices but lots of clients already own these devices and are unhappy to hear that their devices are not supported by our platform.
I have done a lot of builds on top of the tiny image with coovachilli and put it on but like you said the problem arises when I try to start (run) the coovachilli process, it crashes and from what I can see from dmesg it says it has run out of memory.
yes, confirmed. That is standard behaviour running "tiny" and chilli.
You might run chilli with an (very) old version of openwrt. In case it supports your device.