Asuswrt-Merlin - custom build of the Asus RT-N66U firmware

[darksamus]

Is this custom firmware have support for https web access?

 

[RMerlin]

Is this custom firmware have support for https web access?

Next version will. There are a few bugs in Asus' code that I need to fix related to this.

 

[LaFemme69]

This is quite an interesting approach, a mix of both stock firmware and 3rd party firmware....perhaps 'the best of both world'...... Thanx RMerlin or whom ever who started this project!!

so stock firmware 108 is better and more stable than 112??

few things I don't like about stock firmware 112 are:
(1) not able to name your devices in the reserve list, instead of going by MAC address.
(2) not able to use 'no-ip' DDNS service since i cannot custom add ddns server.
(3) not able to easily assign device IP address manually, as RogerSC said from another post, I'd have to juggle around with lease time for it to work....I can live with this

RMerlin, do you think you can incorporate all of these into your next release??

Thank you again.

kd

 

[RMerlin]

This is quite an interesting approach, a mix of both stock firmware and 3rd party firmware....perhaps 'the best of both world'...... Thanx RMerlin or whom ever who started this project!!

You're welcome.

so stock firmware 108 is better and more stable than 112??

IPv6 support is broken in builds 112 and 114. Fixed in 116b (currently available as a beta from Asus' russian FTP site).

(1) not able to name your devices in the reserve list, instead of going by MAC address.

I agree that it would be nice being able to assign a hostname to devices. However, nvram space being at a premium, I'm avoiding for now adding anything that could significantly increase the nvram usage. I did add ssh (which takes a good chunk of nvram for storing its keys) because it was a much needed feature (IMHO), but after that there is on average less than 1500 bytes of nvram space left. That's not much...

(2) not able to use 'no-ip' DDNS service since i cannot custom add ddns server.

I might take a look at adding possible alternative clients. For now, you can install other dyndns clients through optware. The no-ip client is available there.

(3) not able to easily assign device IP address manually, as RogerSC said from another post, I'd have to juggle around with lease time for it to work....I can live with this

I don't understand what you mean here?

 

[AndreaS]

Just a question.
DownloadMaster is running a quite old version of transmission, what would happen if I install a newer version from optware? would it update the existing client or just create a mess as the installation tree of the new version would be different so I could have the two vesions trying to run at the same time?

 

[RMerlin]

Just a question.
DownloadMaster is running a quite old version of transmission, what would happen if I install a newer version from optware? would it update the existing client or just create a mess as the installation tree of the new version would be different so I could have the two vesions trying to run at the same time?

DownloadMaster's transmission files are named differently from a standard transmission client (for example, transmission-daemon is named dm2_transmission-daemon). So if you install transmission from optware, you will have to manually reconfigure it, and it will be installed in parallel to downloadmaster. You will probably also need to disable downloadmaster, as it would probably try to use the same ports as transmission.

 

[LaFemme69]

You're welcome.



IPv6 support is broken in builds 112 and 114. Fixed in 116b (currently available as a beta from Asus' russian FTP site).



I agree that it would be nice being able to assign a hostname to devices. However, nvram space being at a premium, I'm avoiding for now adding anything that could significantly increase the nvram usage. I did add ssh (which takes a good chunk of nvram for storing its keys) because it was a much needed feature (IMHO), but after that there is on average less than 1500 bytes of nvram space left. That's not much...




I might take a look at adding possible alternative clients. For now, you can install other dyndns clients through optware. The no-ip client is available there.



I don't understand what you mean here?

You're welcome.


How do I install optware? I'm not sure how to use it. Are there any easy step-by-step to install and use it?

kd

 

[RMerlin]

optware isn't officially supported by Asus, so your mileage may vary. What I did here was this:

1) Formatted a USB flash in ext3 format
2) Installed Downloadmaster. This will setup the /opt filesystem on your USB disk, where optware programs get installed
3) Use the ipkg tool through telnet to install programs. Programs get installed under /opt/ .

For the rest, there must be a lot of documetnation on optware itself - I never really used it myself except to install two or three tools on my router, so I'm not an expert.

 

[ArCan]

DNScrypt ?

Hi!
Thank you for JFFS and User Scripts.
Could I now to use the guide from the first post of
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/dnscrypt-preview.37031/
to add DNScrypt to RT-N66U with your f/w ?

 

[Gitsum]

Can you add L7 QOS categories?

 

[shantanugoel]

How do I install optware? I'm not sure how to use it. Are there any easy step-by-step to install and use it?

kd

optware isn't officially supported by Asus, so your mileage may vary. What I did here was this:

1) Formatted a USB flash in ext3 format
2) Installed Downloadmaster. This will setup the /opt filesystem on your USB disk, where optware programs get installed
3) Use the ipkg tool through telnet to install programs. Programs get installed under /opt/ .

For the rest, there must be a lot of documetnation on optware itself - I never really used it myself except to install two or three tools on my router, so I'm not an expert.

You don't need to use download master to install optware. Just mount your usb partition/folder for optware to /tmp/opt (/opt is symlinked to /tmp/opt by default). Rest of the stuff for optware/entware remains same as any other router.

 

[RMerlin]

Can you add L7 QOS categories?

I don't expect to be changing how QOS is working, sorry.

 

[RMerlin]

You don't need to use download master to install optware. Just mount your usb partition/folder for optware to /tmp/opt (/opt is symlinked to /tmp/opt by default). Rest of the stuff for optware/entware remains same as any other router.

I was installing downloadmaster first because it ensured that all required sub-folders were created under /opt. I'm not sure also if it will automatically mount /opt unless some specific nvram settings get set (which downloadmaster did).

 

[shantanugoel]

I was installing downloadmaster first because it ensured that all required sub-folders were created under /opt. I'm not sure also if it will automatically mount /opt unless some specific nvram settings get set (which downloadmaster did).

/opt is always symlinked to /tmp/opt but yeah, it doesn't mount the drive automatically there. We can have an fstab entry to do that or through a script in the jffs partition.

 

[LaFemme69]

optware isn't officially supported by Asus, so your mileage may vary. What I did here was this:

1) Formatted a USB flash in ext3 format
2) Installed Downloadmaster. This will setup the /opt filesystem on your USB disk, where optware programs get installed
3) Use the ipkg tool through telnet to install programs. Programs get installed under /opt/ .

For the rest, there must be a lot of documetnation on optware itself - I never really used it myself except to install two or three tools on my router, so I'm not an expert.

LOL.....sounds so complicated so i chickened out in installing optware. Since I still have the d-link dir-655 which was replaced by asus rt-n66u, I set up the dlink as an access point and used the the dlink to custom add no-ip ddns service. so far, working well. the only draw back is that with shibby's v085 it automatically update my IP with no-ip but dlink doesn't.......no biggie, i can manually update whenever......still glad that my ddns is working again.

thanx again for your help but definitely keeping my eyes on your future releases.....

kd

 

[shantanugoel]

JFFS can get wiped after a firmware upgrade if the new firmware is a different size.

Eric, I've got an idea. (borrowed from Oleg's custom firmware).
Just like we have a way to backup router config, we can back up the jffs partition as well. Oleg's firmware (which utilizes flashfs for storing custom scripts, some configurations like ssh etc, and other things) does this as well.
So, we can backup the jffs partition contents from web interface, upgrade the firmware and then restore the jffs partition contents.
Does that sound good?

 

[RMerlin]

Eric, I've got an idea. (borrowed from Oleg's custom firmware).
Just like we have a way to backup router config, we can back up the jffs partition as well. Oleg's firmware (which utilizes flashfs for storing custom scripts, some configurations like ssh etc, and other things) does this as well.
So, we can backup the jffs partition contents from web interface, upgrade the firmware and then restore the jffs partition contents.
Does that sound good?

That sounds doable. I'll put it down on the list of things to check in the future.

 

[mtz_ro_2003]

Great job, RMerlin!

I'm using 108.3 build for 2 days (I got this router 3 days ago ) and I'm more than satisfied with it. I also consider that sticking closest to the original firmware is best.
I'd like to share my comments regarding the WOL function... It's great that you managed to include such function in the UI and it's a shame Asus didn't do it by themselves.
However, for me at least, such WOL function, in the UI, is somehow not very handy... Let me explain a bit. I'm running a streaming server (QLoud) on my PC which is used to stream movies and music from my NAS (Synology DS411) to mu Android phone and tablet. Evidently, the NAS is running 24/7, but I don't need the PC working that much. So, it enters sleep mode and I want to wake it whenever I want to watch a movie and I'm away.
Ofcourse, I can logon to the UI of the router and wake the PC from there, but... let's be honest... it's not so handy
My previous router, a Zyxel NBG460N had a great feature. On the Port Forward page, it had a check box: "Wake target" (or something like that). Whenever it had to forward packets to the specified port (in my case port 8888 for the streaming server) it sent a WOL packet and the PC was online in seconds.
I didn't imagine that a router with such a price (I'm talking about the Asus) didn't come with such option and after checking all the original firmwares (officials and betas), shibby, Tomato, etc. I'd like to stick to your version, but I want to add the feature that Zyxel had.
Well, it turns out that it's easy to do that...
Take a look at some script posted in the DD-WRT Wiki http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Useful_Scripts#Web_Server_Wake-up
Based on that, with minor modifications, a script that runs very well on my router is the following:

#!/bin/sh

INTERVAL=5
NUMP=3
OLD=""
TARGET=192.168.200.3
IFACE=br0
MAC=54:04:A6:62:FF:C6
WOL=/usr/bin/ether-wake
LOGFILE="/var/log/ether-wake.txt"

while sleep $INTERVAL;do
NEW=`dmesg | awk '/ACCEPT/ && /DST='"$TARGET"'/ {print }' | tail -1`
SRC=`dmesg | awk -F'[=| ]' '/ACCEPT/ && /DST='"$TARGET"'/ {print $9}' | tail -1`
DPORT=`dmesg | awk -F'[=| ]' '/ACCEPT/ && /DST='"$TARGET"'/ {print $28}' | tail -1`
PROTO=`dmesg | awk -F'[=| ]' '/ACCEPT/ && /DST='"$TARGET"'/ {print $24}' | tail -1`

if [ "$NEW" != "" -a "$NEW" != "$OLD" ]; then
if ping -qc $NUMP $TARGET >/dev/null; then
echo "NOWAKE $TARGET was accessed by $SRC, port $DPORT, protocol $PROTO and is already alive at" `date`>> $LOGFILE
else
echo "WAKE $TARGET requested by $SRC, port $DPORT, protocol $PROTO at" `date`>> $LOGFILE
$WOL -i $IFACE $MAC
sleep 5
fi
OLD=$NEW
fi
done

I removed to check for the forwarded port, because I want to wake the PC on every port (I have 3 ports forwarded: streaming server, VNC si RDP).

The next think is to run this script at startup. I'm still struggling with that.
What would you think is the best approach? Use your /jffs/scripts/services-start?
How do I do that?

Thanks and keep up the good work!

 

[RMerlin]

The WOL through web UI is something I was using myself with DD-WRT on my previous router. I occasionally VPN back from work, and then I need a way to turn on my workstation remotely - that's what I'm using the web-based WOL for. Also with people getting smartphones and tablets, having a device at hand that lets you remotely turn on a compter through a web UI does make sense.

I can understand not implementing an automated method like yours as a built-in feature. First, it requires you to have packet logging enabled, which can add quite a load on a router in the long run. There are also security concerns. But using an external script like yours should get the job done for those who still wishes to use that method of WOL.

The best place to put your script would probably be in /jffs/scripts/services-start . That script gets run right after all other services have been started. You could either put the content of your script directly in it, or save your script somewhere in the /jffs partition, and have services-start run your script - that way you will be able to easily add or remove more entries to the services-start script.

 

[RMerlin]

While on the topic of WOL, as a heads up: someone brought to my attention that ether-wake isn't as widely supported as the wol binary I was including in build 1 and 2. Therefore I will most likely add the wol binary back in build 4, and switch back to it for the webui. The ether-wake command will still be usable through telnet for those that prefer to use that one.