OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: OpenWRT with no GUI

The content of this topic has been archived on 13 Apr 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

Hi all,

I've done quite a few things with OpenWRT now and really like it compared to DD-WRT, because it doesn't come shipped with a load of things I don't need.
However, I've always had to resort back to the console because of bugs and problems with the LuCI web interface and I've decided I would like to remove the GUI and web server completely.

Is there a (supported) way to remove the OpenWRT web GUI and httpd safely, but preserving the LuCI settings? Or removing them as well and resorting back to plain text file based configuration? Or but using another method of (a sort of) supported Linux configuration that can be loaded at startup?.

BTW: Is there a (supported) way to remove all the firewall zones and just use the iptables command line with the default (INPUT, OUTPUT, FORWARD etc..) chains instead?

Yes you don't have to install LuCI. LuCI is just a GUI frontend for uCI, which consists mainly of config files in /etc/config and a nvram-like access program. Removing LuCI and uhttpd doesn't remove uCI. You might need to compile your own firmware (or use the image builder) however.

As for the firewall, you should just keep the default firewall and add your own iptable rules in /etc/firewall.user

(Last edited by zorxd on 11 May 2010, 18:46)

As a note: removing UCI is not a good idea...

Okay thanks for the info so far smile Using the image builder is going to get me somewhere smile

BTW: I wasn't talking about removing UCI though, but just removing the GUI components (web server and web interface) because of the bugs in it that annoy me (changing a few items, like making a custom tun interface with no IP address already causes the web server to throw Internal Server Error 500 and code exceptions for example) and it doesn't give any real enhancements IMO.

Oh and about the firewall, is there really no way to remove those default rules and zone? Since I really don't need them, because I use my own very specific configurations.
For example: I would just use 2 ports with both different IP addresses connected to different subnets use the other 2 ports for other stuff and not use NAT (MASQUERADING) at all and all this with firewalling and the zone-like configuration can really be a pain in cases like these wink.

(Last edited by olger901 on 12 May 2010, 00:34)

olger901 wrote:

Oh and about the firewall, is there really no way to remove those default rules and zone? Since I really don't need them, because I use my own very specific configurations.

I stripped down my /etc/config/firewall file to just the following:

config include
    option path /etc/firewall.user

I generate my firewall.user file on a bigger machine using ferm: http://ferm.foo-projects.org/

olger901 wrote:

Oh and about the firewall, is there really no way to remove those default rules and zone?

You can replace /etc/init.d/firewall with your own start() and stop() functions. I DROP all on stop(), and load my iptables rules on start()

(Last edited by Sylix on 21 May 2010, 23:33)

The OP is quite old so I am asking a little bit more details.
I am running v14.07 on a TP-Link MR3020 (v1.9) and need more room in order to install some packages.
One think I can live without is (well) the web UI (also because I prefer ssh) so I'd like to remove *all* related packages.
I think I should remove a few packages like:

  • uhttpd

  • uhttpd-mod-ubus

  • luci

  • luci-app-firewall

  • luci-base

  • luci-lib-nixio

  • luci-mod-admin-full

  • luci-proto-ipv6

  • luci-proto-ppp

  • luci-ssl

  • luci-theme-bootstrap

Anything else?
Any hint?

Thanks in advance.

I think...

1) just removing the packages (using opkg) is not going to save any storage space, since they are already in your image
2) so you need to build your own image without luci using the Image Builder
3) and if I remember correctly, luci and uhttpd is not included by default when using the Image Builder

My suggestion is, just use the Image Builder, pick the packages you want, and if you just ignore luci you won't get it anyway.

(Last edited by zo0ok on 31 Jul 2015, 08:27)

@uqbar use a trunk distro (it doesnt have luci installed) or build your own

imagebuilder will also put things on the flash in compressed form, whereas using a trunk build and then installing packages won't. There are other challenges related to trunk as well, like not being able to install packages in the future once the kernel rev has changed at all.

Hi.
I think I've got it done. I mean, I installed and run ImageBuilder for my architecture.
Where can I find the list of the installed packages *before* installing the image?
Thanks.

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