Great little box this, made better by this great firmware! Ive just flashed the NAS version after trying out the stock OpeWRT stuff and its very good.

For my use, being able to access the NAS from windows without extra software on the PC would be really useful. I know Samba performance isnt great but if it works it would be good enough.

Webcam support would be handy too

Ive no use for OpenVPN on the box as i will only even access it locally.

Tempted to get a 2nd one to mess about with some more...

Hi Sam,

thank you again for the help! I just need your help one more time...

I can't seem to connect my TR703N to my apache on my PC. when I telnet it keeps saying that i could not connect to my PC's ip address.

My current connection to the router is through an ethernet cable that is plugged in to my PC. I have turned DHCP off and set my PC's ipaddress (IPV4) as 192.168.1.2. This is the only way that I can telnet into the router.

Is this connection right? or do I need to put both my PC and TR703N on another router and LAN them and then disable DHCP and set individual IP's for my PC and TR703N? If this is correct how would I go about doing that? Furthermore do i telnet into the IP i have set for my TR703N? I've done a lot of trial and error and the only telnet IP that works for my router is 192.168.1.1

One more thing that I have noticed, I've seen your WR841N router on the network infrastructure while I was in window explorer. Could it be that the WR703N's openwrt firmware was set to your router's setting so that http://nas/ is no accessible through using other routers?(I used a D-Link).

Thanks again for the help! Sorry that I have tons of questions and hopefully didn't bother you too much!

I used Serva rather than setting up full Apache. Its a very small, portable program that can be several different types of server.

http://www.vercot.com/~serva/

Oh and you may need to add an exception to your PC firewall to allow it to connect, Or turn it off while you do what you need to do.

(Last edited by JamesA on 6 Jan 2012, 17:18)

FTP is supported out of box on windows. The software I mentioned just make it looks like a normal disk.

I am working on a project to utilise the storage on the usb disk or nfs share so we can dramatically expand the list of software (samba included) available on WR703N. If the project proves to be successful then I would suggest anyone to seriously consider upgrading to 64MB memory if you intend to turn WR703N into an all-in-one machine.

Any links on how to upgrade memory, sounds interesting. I'd have a bash at it I guess, I'm sure Farnell stock some appropriate memory, I've got a hot air rework station which hasn't seen any use yet, so it would be good to have a go.

@clancom
The fist connection setup you mentioned is correct. You need to connect your pc with static ip address like 192.168.1.2 straight with a cable to WR703N's etherenet port.

When WR703N is in failsafe mode (fast flashing led light) it will assign itself an ip of 192.168.1.1 and you can telnet that ip address from your pc.

As James pointed out please disable your firewall if possible just in case it blocks the apache's port 80. Please also make sure that apache is working on your pc by opening http://192.168.1.2/ from your pc and you should see a "It works" page.

After you logged into (via telnet) WR703N. Run the following commands one by one:

cd /tmp/
wget http://192.168.1.2/FIRMWARENAME

Assume you have set your pc's ip address 192.168.1.2 and replace FIRMWARENAME by what ever the filename you copied to your apache's folder.

If the wget reports no error you can then start flashing the firmware as mentioned in my previous post.

The firmware I created does not have any ability to broadcast its name/services over network. Therefore the WR841N you saw on your pc has nothing to do with it.  If for some reason that WR703N cannot be accessed from http://nas/  (blame your router for that) then you will need to use ip address to access it, which usually can be found on the "dhcp client list" (refer to your router's documents) and remember to cross check the mac address printed on the back of the WR703N.

The one link with a few images I post couple of days back will do. You can see the memory chip model number on the first image. That is a 64MB memory chip reported to be working. The memory chip according to the author was removed from a 512MB pc memory stick and you can try your luck to see if you have some matching old memory stick lying around in your house.

The 64MB mod for TL-WR1043N should also apply to WR703N as well. Here is the link with more infomation http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl- … mb.ram.mod

Note: Don't try the nvram command. I believe you don't need it.

(Last edited by s7mx1 on 6 Jan 2012, 23:24)

Hmm, didnt know windows could deal with FTP without a 3rd party client. I guess You can you a browser now i think about it, hmm.

Good luck with the storage project Sam, hope you manage to pull it off! I'll have to look into the memory upgrade myself.

Windows supports ftp natively for a very very long time. I am not sure anything before xp but you should have no problem with xp, 2003, vista or 7.

http://www.studio-owens.com/blog/How-To … and-XP.htm

The problem with microsoft is that they has no interest (or strongly against I guess) of integrating ftp tightly with windows. The software I mentioned in the first few posts should solve that.

From what I have heard it will be a bit hard to find the right memory chip so good luck to you on that.

Hi Sam! Thanks you so much for your patients! I have successfully restored to the original firmware. And I reflashed the big squeeze again, and now the usb tethering --> wifi works like a charm!

Thanks again to all who have helped me out. Sorry that I was asking a lot of stupid questions, but all your answers have helped me through this!

Thanks again sam for your wonderful firmware!

Just one more question for you sam, was wondering if you would support iPhone's tethering system in the firmware? As far as I know right now, android phones seems to work with the 3G--> wifi, but not with iPhones (no blue tethering bar showing up). Or should I install another tethering program on the iPhone to make it work?

Thanks!

@clancom

I don't have an Iphone so cannot really test it here. Will try to google it when I am bit free. If its a small fix will try to get it into the next release.

progress on extra-root

I finally nailed the shared library problem and built lots of software including mpd, transmission, python and others that I lot count of. The method I used unlike others does not use pivot-root or LD_LIBRARY_PATH and therefore does not interfere with what's installed on the rom and best of all they can be upgraded independently.

My extra-root will require non-standard path in the configuration file and my plan is to set those up for most commonly used packages, i.e. pre-configured. This is likely to take some time (couple of weeks I guess).

For those interested of using mpd on WR703N. I can confirm that mp3, ogg, flac works flawlessly. AAC, WMA does not work since they require too much CPU (floating point) power. The mpd that is going to be shipped with next firmware will only have these three format plus wave supported. Its time to convert all your music files to these three supported format.

is there a chance for getting this collection for tp-link tl-mr3220?

@firesam
I don't suggest you flash it. I don't have MR3200 but you are welcome to try my patches to create your own firmware for MR3220. You will need to strip  patches involved network bits out as MR3220 has an additional wan port.

(Last edited by s7mx1 on 9 Jan 2012, 01:00)

I have a working 3220 with openwrt. It is available as trunk. I am able to make my own firmware with what I need more or less. I would be very interested in your patches and try it myself if you like. I have an extra 3220 with a serial cable connection soldered on to recover from bad flashes via tftp.

--thanks

Great new Sam, look forward to testing it out!

Ive used MP3 from day one as i always saw it as the most compatible format.

@sam
Thanks for you cool firmware,i have a WR703N run your nas firmware,now it's work good.
But solder the TTL out on WR703N is a dark day for me,i lost one of the bonding pad...

So i decide to buy another device which is easy solder the TTL out and similar with WR703N,from this thread's pictures:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=33936
confirmed MR11U is easy have TTL.

So i suggest any one who is not good at solder can try the MR11U.My MR11U is on ship,just wait to get my hand dity!

@mips
From what I heard MR11U is just WR703N with a battery pack. You probably can flash my firmware on MR11U. If it does not work you can always recover it with TTL.

(Last edited by s7mx1 on 9 Jan 2012, 12:46)

@firesam

The MR3220 does not have kernel lzma support with its uboot. As a result the firmware for MR3220 holds less than that of WR703N. I had to remove opkg and fine tuned the openvpn link options (this surprisingly shed 230KB off the openvpn binary). Here is the firmware for MR3220 you can try.

My network scripts does not understand the extra wan (eth1) and as a result you need to configure yourself if you want the wan port to work. Otherwise I would expect it work as usual. One more thing to note is that the etherenet port are supposed to be connected uplink (i.e. to another router) since this is based on nas firmware.

Could you please post the content of /etc/config/network and /etc/config/wireless here before you modify them. Would like to improve my network script on support MR3220 or similar devices.

@firesam

The MR3220 does not have kernel lzma support with its uboot. As a result the firmware for MR3220 holds less than that of WR703N. I had to remove opkg and fine tuned the openvpn link options (this surprisingly shed 230KB off the openvpn binary). Here is the firmware for MR3220 you can try.

My network scripts does not understand the extra wan (eth1) and as a result you need to configure yourself if you want the wan port to work. Otherwise I would expect it work as usual. One more thing to note is that the etherenet port are supposed to be connected uplink (i.e. to another router) since this is based on nas firmware.

Could you please post the content of /etc/config/network and /etc/config/wireless here before you modify them. Would like to improve my network script on support MR3220 or similar devices.

Here is the output of cat /etc/config/network and wireless

root@OpenWrt-NAS-c4e8:/# cat /etc/config/network 

config 'interface' 'loopback'
    option 'ifname' 'lo'
    option 'proto' 'static'
    option 'ipaddr' '127.0.0.1'
    option 'netmask' '255.0.0.0'

config 'interface' 'lan'
    option 'ifname' 'eth0'
    option 'type' 'bridge'
    option 'proto' 'static'
    option 'ipaddr' '192.168.1.1'
    option 'netmask' '255.255.255.0'

config 'interface' 'wan'
    option 'ifname' 'eth1'
    option 'proto' 'dhcp'

config 'switch'
    option 'name' 'eth0'
    option 'reset' '1'
    option 'enable_vlan' '1'

config 'switch_vlan'
    option 'device' 'eth0'
    option 'vlan' '1'
    option 'ports' '0 1 2 3 4'





root@OpenWrt-NAS-c4e8:/# cat /etc/config/wireless 

config 'wifi-device' 'radio0'
    option 'type' 'mac80211'
    option 'channel' 'auto'
    option 'hwmode' '11ng'
    option 'macaddr' '54:e6:fc:b9:c4:e8'

config 'wifi-iface'
    option 'device' 'radio0'
    option 'network' 'lan'
    option 'mode' 'ap'
    option 'encryption' 'psk2'
    option 'key' 'UEC7wzdu'
    option 'wds' '1'
    option 'ssid' 'NAS-c4e8'

config 'wifi-iface'
    option 'device' 'radio0'
    option 'network' 'wifi'
    option 'mode' 'sta'
    option 'encryption' 'psk2'
    option 'ssid' 'Disabled'
    option 'wds' '0'
    option 'disabled' '1'

@firesam

Thanks for getting back to me. Do you have an overlay on MR3220? You can just show me the result of "df -h"

How well does the firmware work on your MR3220 in general?

I will need some time to try it out. I just installed the firmware to be able to post for you those files. One thing I did notice is that the usb flash drive that I had plugged in was not getting mounted. It was used as an extroot on the previous firmware so it is obviously mountable etc... Unfortunately I did not yet have time to work with it yet.

An interesting idea I was toying with you might be interested in was setting up a firmware with some scripts that on firstboot will create an extroot/swap on an external drive and reboot and then continue installation of what is needed for that firmwares purposes. This way the custom files can be included in the original firmware with a script to dl and install the rest of the packages in instances where space is not really a constraint outside of the router itself.

--thanks, I will post back after I try it out for real.

My firmware does not support ext4 due to kernel driver size but not sure that't the cause of not mounting it (ext2 ext3 are supported). The mount point will always be /mnt/sda1. You can try manually mount it if you have time.

I now have 351 packages in a 28MB compressed tar ball and I am sure not everyone would need it and I can imagine it can only becoming bigger. The time to extract that tar ball on WR703N is very long (5-10 minutes on nfs share) though I can literately extract it within seconds on a machine with very weak atom. I will keep it as an option instead of compulsory and you should be able to set it up easily via the web gui in the next release.

swap is really not a good idea. upgrade to 64MB is much better if you can.