Hello Miguel, MBS just gave you good answers on your questions. You find generic pre-compiled images of every release including trunk. Just start off with the RC5 to play safe. The factory squashfs image can be flashed user-friendly through the stock web-interface of the router. You can do a power recycle in advance to free ram on the device. RC4, RC5 and trunk images will install fine. Avoid anything older, there are some nasty bugs for this device on older images.

Cross compilation is transparent on OpenWrt, just use a Debian based distro (e.g., Debian itself or Ubuntu with it's derivatives), and you will find directions on the wiki (i.e., through the link I provided) as to which packages you need. There is really nothing to it. Just play around with the pre-compiled image first, then you will also learn what packages you would want to compile in.

Good luck!

Has anybody else experienced unstable wireless connection during torrent traffic on clients? Any feed-back is really nice

I got hangs up when torrenting. The error logs in system logs and sometimes kernel log. Miniupnp generates other errors on 3g-wan.

I successfully made TL-WR1043ND as AP & connect to another router with WPA-PSK security (using Gargoyle firmware), but all network work in one subnet.

My question is: "How to configurate this router to have different subnets?"

For example:
Main Router (10.0.0.138)
|
Client (wifi 10.0.0.100)
TL-WR1043ND
AP (wifi 192.168.1.1)
|
User Computer (192.168.1.100)

[Solved]

(Last edited by neivel on 11 Aug 2011, 15:45)

neivel, your problem has probably little or nothing to do with the router. Hence, I suggest you start a new thread.

I haven't used client mode since White Russian, so I do not remember how the networking is set up. From what you are saying dhcp is handled by the other router (i.e., your openwrt router works as a simple switch), which sounds like a good default solution to me. It seems you want your openwrt router to do dhcp with it's own lan. Then as a minimum you will also need to have nat set-up. You probably want to mimic the network set-up of the wan port for the wireless connection.

When Torrenting I get these messages sometimes on kernel log and system log:
ath: Failed to stop TX DMA!

I swapped all the 10V Capacitors with 25V Capacitors(of same capacitance) and TX DMA Messages seemed to dissppear even with torrenting.
I think I still need to monitor further to be sure.

(Last edited by alphasparc on 11 Aug 2011, 09:54)

Interesting. How about the wireless, is the disconnecting gone? Would be helpful if anybody can confirm the same behaviour on stock firmware. I will get hold of another unit over the week-end, so I can test with that one before the stock firmware is nuked. I never had this issue with my old white russian wrt54gl, but then again my lines were slower at the time. I guess I can test with the old wrt54gl too to see if it can take the torrent traffic without hick-ups. On vacation right now though, so it will have to wait a week. Please keep us updated on your progress.

Got
ath: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x42000020 DMADBG_7=0x00026040
ath: Could not stop RX, we could be confusing the DMA engine when we start RX up
today looks like that failed.

Hello guys,

its been a very busy week for me but, i found the time to make some progress.

i got my headphone jack mod done, it works perfectly now with both usb ttl adapters so i got a working serial console to
the device.

i got backfire 10.03.1-rc5 up and running on my 1043, it seems very stable.

i made some very basic install.. samba, transmission, aircrack-ng, hd-idle, htop, nano, and i got out of space,
remembering some reply and if i got it right if i compile my own image all this can be put into the squashfs part
and thus compressed into an estimated 3:1 ratio ?

anyway, i got leds configured, (except for the usb active on device presence, which i read the trigger for that is only on trunk) and read a lot about uci configuration handling, i must say it surpases every idea i made about how would openwrt behave, its an amazing peace of software.

transmission seems to request a lot memory (i got some log messages about transmission requesting 4MB for some udp related queue and 1MB for something else, it made me add some lines to /etc/config/network)

i am going to use a 32/64 GB usb flashdrive with a swap partition on it. ( or is there a way to create a "swap file" in the already existing
partition? )

i read from very early posts that shibby made the 64MB RAM mod, i dont know if i can find anyone crafty enought in here ( Mérida, Yucatán, México) to do that soldering for me, that mod surpases my soldering skills so for now i'll just take note of how does it behave with
32 ram and 128 swap...  i hope its enought to make transmission runs decent.

apart form that, i received the TX DMA log messages without torrenting at all, it was during a stress test to the switch and firewall at gigabit speeds
and when port scaning via wireless while testing security...

i think a bit more of this playing around stable images and get used to the ways openwrt handle things i'll be compiling and
helping debugging in short time .

best regards.
Miguel.

(Last edited by miguel.arce on 13 Aug 2011, 07:52)

since the swap partition is treated like a file (i.e. /dev/sda2) you can also use a file instead (i.e. /mnt/swap). on a regular linux box I created a swap file, ran mkswap over it and then added it with swapon. I guess in openwrt you can do something similar and even add it to your /etc/fstab (just need to make sure it is added after the filesystem is mounted).
I just don't know how perfomance will be, since you will have the additional filesystem layer, so you probably have to test yourself.

Yes However, if you attach flash storage you can install stuff there instead.

Hi all, thanks for the hints,

MBS what i meant is my usb flash comes with one FAT partition (sda1) what i wanted to avoid is creating a sda2 partition on the usb flash
i wanted a "swapfile", like /dev/sda1/tl-1043.swp, a file already in the sda1 partition to be used for swap.

i already created the swap partition (128) mb on the usb and transmission seems more responsive than without the swap.

hey del, how that extra install space works? is it necesary to create a special filesystem in the usb for using it to install extra stuff?

what i mean is this usb flash most have FAT filesystem so i can unplugit and take it with me and readit everywhere i need, since if i am home i can just read it with samba.

best regards,
have a nice weekend.

That's been pretty much what I wanted to point out: for the kernel it does not matter if you give it a partition or a file inside a filesystem. It treats both as a file (may it be called /dev/sda2 for a partition or /mnt/swap for a file).
Like Del mentioned, you can have your root filesystem on an usb drive. Information are in the wiki: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/extroot
But FAT is probably no good choice, since it lacks user permission attributes. One option is to create a (ext2/3/4)filesystem image in your FAT partition and try to point in fstab on it. But like with a swap file: the sequence matters. You need to make sure the FAT partition is mounted first, so the system will see your root filesystem image file to mount it. I experienced lately on my linux pc that the loop-option for filesystem images has become obsolete lately, so this might work pretty easily.
Just one more thing: if you have your root filesystem or swap on the usb drive, you should not hotplug or even remove it (without crashing the router). So I would recommend to use an usb drive that you will just dedicate to that router.

Login with ssh and use swapon/swapoff and umount to unmount the vfat filesystem. After that the usb stick can be removed safely.

hey Del, MBS, Schugy, thanks for all the hints.

i'll be reading then, i am stuck now with firewall settings, i am a little paraoid when it comes to services,
but right now most daemons are listining on 0.0.0.0 tha is all interfaces ... and even when the firewall settings
prevent wan access to them i would preffer they to listen only in required interfaces.

i am experienced in setting up services what i dont know if these openwrt daemons have been stripped from funcionalities
or if they honor all the options "normal" daemons would like bind to only some interfaces, etc...

one other thing, while running transmission, i have four instances of it, could it be because the interface bindings?
it does seems that only one is the parent the others are threads but they seem to be really using the ram they report.

this is the must fun i had in years playing with linux thanks

best regards,
Miguel.

OK, I have opened a ticket for the unstable wireless:
https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/9950

No, that doesn't mean what you say, BJ. You should read the friendly manual without relying on what you already know.
If I read it, I understand that if I don't have a firmware file with the "boot" wording I won't be able to revert back.
The webflash option is not even mentioned. That's it.
The only point, BJ, is that you use more information than it's written into the wiki.
Or, vice versa, the wiki contains less information than it's needed to a "user from scratch" like me.

Does this mean, we now have a volunteer to write it in a way that even unexperienced users will understand it? Like it :-)

BTW: I doubt the sense of bringing up a post of last year for such a minor reason.

(Last edited by MBS on 22 Aug 2011, 19:59)

Nope. :-)
If you read the forums (not just OpenWRT's) you'll find a number of complaints about not being able to find the *boot* file to be trimmed.
I'm among those who had to dare to blindly do it with the GUI because of the lack of a clearer procedure.
The 1043 is indeed a best seller, so it deserves better documentation. IMHO.

Indeed, and I have not yet come over another wiki page with that enormous amount of information. Your effort in improving the wiki article is highly appreciated, though I recommend to add only verified information.

Hi guys,

has anybody checked the board for the voltage regulatror ? I want to drive my 1043ND within a car, so the input voltage will be between 11V - 14V. I did not find any information regarding this. For the older links wrt54 modells i found this and these are working really good. But I will upgrade/extend the old wrt54.

Thanks for any information on this

Ronny

(Last edited by rcmc_ronny on 27 Aug 2011, 08:52)

@Ronnie: My opinion is that it will not harm, since it seems to use some step-down converter inside to create the needed voltages of 5V and below. The step-down converters I know so far have a pretty wide input range, so +/-15% should be fine. However I would recommend you to check the data sheets for U1 and U20 to be on the safe side (the pictures I've got are too blurry to see anything).

@MBS: Thanks

I found a HighRes picture at http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/5152/pcbfront.jpg
So I could have a look for the ics, i have no luck with U1, but with U20

U20 seems to be a APM7120 TL9JK - Datasheet: http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet- … W7120.html
So its range goes up to 16V, prefered max is 13.2V , so this should suit my needs.

Perhaps anybody have his 1043ND open and could make a good pictor of U1 (or post the label on the IC) ?

Ronny

I uploaded it last year, but when I checked today I could not read anything on those two chips. I'm just not really in the mood to open my 1043 again :-)

Guys! I have a problem connecting D-Link DWA-125 (rt3070) USB WiFi dongle to the TP-Link WR1043ND (ar71xx) router! Actually WiFi dongle doesn't work!
I'm using OpenWRT BackFire 10.03.1-rc5 (tried also last Trunk). I have installed appropriate packages - kmod-rt2800-usb, kmod-rt2x00-usb. Router seems to recognize the dongle, but WiFi doesn't work! - it doesn't find wifi nets in vicinity (tried in LuCi), it doesn't connect to the wifi net, which exists (WiFi USB dongle state in LuCi is always - "Not associated or disabled").
But WiFi LED (on the dongle) is blinking, signaling that device in work!
What can be the problem? Maybe rt3070 driver problem?
Many thanks in advance for assistance!