Wax 202 storage space?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Netgear WAX 202, replacing some mi wifi 3g at various sites with wifi 6, just acquired a pair of wax202.

As per specs on openwrt.org device list, 128mb listed same as the old xiaomi to be replaced.

Unfortunately after openwrt install only 20MB avail:

df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 6.0M 6.0M 0 100% /rom
tmpfs 217.0M 108.0K 216.9M 0% /tmp
/dev/ubi0_1 20.4M 176.0K 19.1M 1% /overlay
overlayfs:/overlay 20.4M 176.0K 19.1M 1% /
tmpfs 512.0K 0 512.0K 0% /dev

compared to the xiaomi:
df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 6.0M 6.0M 0 100% /rom
tmpfs 122.2M 3.4M 118.9M 3% /tmp
/dev/ubi0_1 95.2M 22.9M 67.5M 25% /overlay
overlayfs:/overlay 95.2M 22.9M 67.5M 25% /
tmpfs 512.0K 0 512.0K 0% /dev
/dev/sda1 7.2G 48.1M 6.8G 1% /mnt

can there be better usage of the storage space on this device upon future updates from openwrt or should I opt for other devices as replacement?

But again if the specs online list the 128, but only a mini fraction of it will be available for all the customization I might fall in the same trap!

Any device recommendation welcome.

thank you.

2

You are right: Netgear WAX202 uas 128 MB of NAND flash, however, the user data partition is much smaller.

[    1.548730] nand: device found, Manufacturer ID: 0x01, Chip ID: 0xf1
[    1.555150] nand: AMD/Spansion S34ML01G2
[    1.559069] nand: 128 MiB, SLC, erase size: 128 KiB, page size: 2048, OOB size: 64
[    1.566655] mt7621-nand 1e003000.nand: ECC strength adjusted to 4 bits
[    1.573335] 15 fixed-partitions partitions found on MTD device mt7621-nand
[    1.580665] Creating 15 MTD partitions on "mt7621-nand":
[    1.586003] 0x000000000000-0x000000080000 : "Bootloader"
[    1.598706] 0x000000080000-0x000000100000 : "Config"
[    1.610702] 0x000000100000-0x000000180000 : "Factory"
[    1.623187] 0x000000180000-0x000002780000 : "firmware"
[    2.040271] 2 fixed-partitions partitions found on MTD device firmware
[    2.046833] Creating 2 MTD partitions on "firmware":
[    2.051837] 0x000000000000-0x000000400000 : "kernel"
[    2.102013] 0x000000400000-0x000002600000 : "ubi"
[    2.475595] 0x000002780000-0x000004d80000 : "firmware_backup"
[    2.892832] 0x000004d80000-0x000005580000 : "CFG"
[    2.985644] 0x000005580000-0x000005980000 : "RAE"
[    3.035048] 0x000005980000-0x000005a80000 : "POT"
[    3.052065] 0x000005a80000-0x000005e80000 : "Language"
[    3.102160] 0x000005e80000-0x000006080000 : "Traffic"
[    3.130546] 0x000006080000-0x000006180000 : "Cert"
[    3.147791] 0x000006180000-0x000006280000 : "NTGRcryptK"
[    3.165381] 0x000006280000-0x000006780000 : "NTGRcryptD"
[    3.226098] 0x000006780000-0x000006880000 : "LOG"
[    3.243275] 0x000006880000-0x000006ec0000 : "User_data"

In general, OpenWrt keeps the vendor partition layout if this is possible at all. Therefore, there is no hope that more data will be available to the user in the future.

Please find a different device if you need storage space.

In any case, the on-board flash only supports a very limited amount of write cycles before breaking, so it is never recommended to use it. Please get a router with a USB port.

A Linksys E8450 (if you can still find it) might be what you need. Alternatively, try GL.iNet GL-MT3000.

3

One could expand the userdata partition by adapting the DTS. If that does not overwrite anything critical, at least. If it's at the end of the used space (and that's how it looks like at first glance), that should not be an issue.