Howdy folks,
Asus are releasing updates at a breakneck pace lately
Those latest updates also bring a LOT of major changes. Some of which were taken from Asuswrt-Merlin (like the OpenVPN code), however they did a lot of changes around it to provide a more user-friendly interface. Merging these changes will require me to take a few design decisions, as both of our implementations have different strengths and weaknesses:
Asus
- User-friendly configuration for basic OpenVPN server access (generates the config file for you, generates even the certs, and lets you download pre-configured config files for the clients)
- VPN client integrates OpenVPN, PPTP and L2TP all on the same webui, and allows multiple client configurations
Merlin
- More flexible configuration (some VPN providers require more advanced configuration than provided by the currrent Asus webui)
- Allow for two separate OpenVPN server configurations
- Uniform interface between Server and Client, also uniform with Tomato making it easy to follow existing Tomato guides to configure Asuswrt-Merlin
I have to decide how I want to pick the best parts of their implementation without losing the benefits of mine. That will require me to spend more time studying the new code (that was only released today) and think thoroughly about it.
Also, after doing a few quick tests, it seems they store the generated certificates in their raw format. I stopped doing so a few months ago as the nvram backup/restore code is unable to handle certificates that contain carriage returns in them. What this currently means: switching between Asuswrt-Merlin and Asuswrt will cause issues with stored certificate/keys, which means you might need to clear them and re-enter (or re-generate) them. Since this will cause a problem even for Asuswrt's own users I reported the issue to Asus. We'll see how they wish to handle it.
Another change I saw after only a first quick look at the 291 GPL is they are implementing JFFS2 support but differently. While I decided to carve out a 32 MB partition for JFFS out of the 96 MB unused (in case they eventually decided to use some of that for a separate dual-FW partition like they already worked on in the past), Asus chose to use that whole unused partition as a JFFS partition. This will probably mean that switching back and forth between Asuswrt and Asuswrt-Merlin can potentially cause you to lose the JFFS2 partition content. I will have to decide if I want to follow them and do the same (which will imply that all A-M users will lose their jffs2 partition on the first FW update to the new scheme), or keep things like they are and warn that from now on, switching between A and A-M can lead to loss of configuration.
In light of those major changes, I will most likely push out 374.34 based on the current 374_979 code. After that I will need a few weeks to determine how I want to proceed in dealing with these changes. It will also give Asus more time to fully stabilize the new code, which would put the 374.35 release a few weeks down the road.
Asus are releasing updates at a breakneck pace lately
Those latest updates also bring a LOT of major changes. Some of which were taken from Asuswrt-Merlin (like the OpenVPN code), however they did a lot of changes around it to provide a more user-friendly interface. Merging these changes will require me to take a few design decisions, as both of our implementations have different strengths and weaknesses:Asus
- User-friendly configuration for basic OpenVPN server access (generates the config file for you, generates even the certs, and lets you download pre-configured config files for the clients)
- VPN client integrates OpenVPN, PPTP and L2TP all on the same webui, and allows multiple client configurations
Merlin
- More flexible configuration (some VPN providers require more advanced configuration than provided by the currrent Asus webui)
- Allow for two separate OpenVPN server configurations
- Uniform interface between Server and Client, also uniform with Tomato making it easy to follow existing Tomato guides to configure Asuswrt-Merlin
I have to decide how I want to pick the best parts of their implementation without losing the benefits of mine. That will require me to spend more time studying the new code (that was only released today) and think thoroughly about it.
Also, after doing a few quick tests, it seems they store the generated certificates in their raw format. I stopped doing so a few months ago as the nvram backup/restore code is unable to handle certificates that contain carriage returns in them. What this currently means: switching between Asuswrt-Merlin and Asuswrt will cause issues with stored certificate/keys, which means you might need to clear them and re-enter (or re-generate) them. Since this will cause a problem even for Asuswrt's own users I reported the issue to Asus. We'll see how they wish to handle it.
Another change I saw after only a first quick look at the 291 GPL is they are implementing JFFS2 support but differently. While I decided to carve out a 32 MB partition for JFFS out of the 96 MB unused (in case they eventually decided to use some of that for a separate dual-FW partition like they already worked on in the past), Asus chose to use that whole unused partition as a JFFS partition. This will probably mean that switching back and forth between Asuswrt and Asuswrt-Merlin can potentially cause you to lose the JFFS2 partition content. I will have to decide if I want to follow them and do the same (which will imply that all A-M users will lose their jffs2 partition on the first FW update to the new scheme), or keep things like they are and warn that from now on, switching between A and A-M can lead to loss of configuration.
In light of those major changes, I will most likely push out 374.34 based on the current 374_979 code. After that I will need a few weeks to determine how I want to proceed in dealing with these changes. It will also give Asus more time to fully stabilize the new code, which would put the 374.35 release a few weeks down the road.
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