That is really strange.  I just tried the latest builds VirtualBox image and was able to login via tty1 and tty2 using the root credentials "just fine".  If you can get in over ssh/LuCI you should be able to login via tty[1|2] with the same credentials.

Maybe a caps lock / num lock issue?

(Last edited by mcrosson on 27 Jan 2013, 08:01)

Checked that, DOUBLE checked that, it just won't let me login and nothing seems to show up in the logs either. :-/

Its not generally a problem, but when I made a change recently it didn't bring the network back up so it would be useful to be able to get in from the console if/when that sort of thing happens.

Can't find module kmod-crypto-core, need that for module kmod-mppe.

I'll take a look and get a new build posted shortly.

Edit: I just checked and the kmod-crypto-core modules should be included by default.  What is the error you received when trying to install kmod-mppe?

(Last edited by mcrosson on 5 Feb 2013, 15:26)

Thanks for the info.  I will post back once I have had a chance to look at this more closely.

First off, thanks for the great work on this custom build! My old MIPSR1-based router (with various firmwares over the years, including OpenWrt) just couldn't cut it any more after my recent speed upgrade. After trying and discarding various x86 distros, I settled on pfsense -- IPv6 (in the 2.1 beta), multiple DDNS-provider support, flexible rules. Unfortunately, the DHCP server seemed to conflict with my VOIP ATA which would fail to refresh its SIP server registration.

But your build works flawlessly and is painless to install (and I agree that the default x86 OpenWrt build leaves a lot to be desired), so thank you for your hard work.

Second, this has less to do with your build and more to do with OpenWrt driver support, but the SiS900 driver is bugged. It goes into a continuous loop of up/down at boot, never making it to the login. I got around this by using an Intel adapter I had laying around instead. I realize that this may not matter to you since: A. SiS is out of the chipset business; B. none of their motherboard chipsets ever supported SMP cpus. But there may be others like me who repurpose old hardware, so it's probably information you should have.

@killerbobjr Thanks for the heads up on the SiS driver.

@Rushmore: Looking into the mppe install issue.  Ran a new build today and will be looking at it further.

This is really a Great Project! I think theese low power Atoms like N270 will be the right choice.
I have an maxdata Favorit 500 over here. It is an tvserver/nas/gateway/hotspot/homeserver engine in one box@12w idle - 15w load.

I need to add my own Kernelmodules to your build. is there a patch which i can apply to my buildsystem which
give me the advantages of that Dualcore and 2gb ram?

Or is one of the Checkouts from https://bitbucket.org/nuskunetworks/nnopenwrt allready patched ?

(Last edited by derdigge on 23 Feb 2013, 10:31)

I have looked into this a bit more closely and I don't see why the build isn't generating an ipkg for kmod-crypto-core yet.  It is marked for inclusion as part of the base image though.  You may be able to force opkg to install kmod-mppe.  I am still poking at the problem, but I'm not sure how much longer it will take to yield a result.

Very nice   I've been on an Atom board for quite some time and I don't think I'll ever go back to a pre-built solution until they start doing dual core's plus 1+gb ram.

If you want to work off my base all of the code is in the url you linked.  Each branch represents a piece of the builds system.  Below are some notes on how you can build my release.  If you do enhance anything, please submit a patch / pull request / ticket with the necessary info and I'll get it integrated into the builds if it is something everyone can win with.

Branches Overview

• feed_luci: The trunk of the luci feed.  This is not used to build currently.  Mainly for tracking upstream trunk changes.

• feed_luci-0.11: The Attitude Adjustment branch of the luci feed.  This is used for my attitude adjustment builds

• feed_nusku: Packages I have written for OpenWRT's Attitude Adjustment release.  Some of these packages are redundant in the latest truck of feed_packages, but are not included in the Attitude Adjustment release.

• feed_packages: The truck of the packages feed.  This is not used to build currently.  Mainly for tracking upstream trunk changes.

• feed_packages-12.09: The Attitude Adjustment branch of the packages feed.  This is used for my attitude adjustment builds.

• feed_xwrt: The truck of the xwrt feed.  This is included in feeds.conf by default but I've never really understood why it exists or what it really provides beyond a few packages I don't see used/mentioned ever.

• master: My customized sources and various scripts I've written to help build OpenWRT.

• openwrt: The truck of the OpenWRT sources.  This is not used for builds currently.  Mainly for tracking upstream trunk changes to the main OpenWRT source.

• openwrt-attitude_adjustment: The attitude adjustment branch of OpenWRT.  This is used for my attitude adjustment builds

Building
My sources (https://bitbucket.org/nuskunetworks/nnopenwrt)are a mimick of the OpenWRT SVN sources with a twist.  Each of the SVN repo's needed to build OpenWRT are setup as different branches in my repo.

The general steps (from memory) for build are:

1. Clone my repo (see above) somewhere

2. Create a 2nd, local clone of the repo where you want your build root to be (/scratch/openwrt/build for example)

3. In the 2nd clone checkout the openwrt-attitude_adjustment branch.  This branch is the same as the OpenWRT main build root for attitude adjustment

4. In the original clone run the bin/pre-process.sh script (see script for arguments).  This will create some helper files and whatnot that you will need/want for building OpenWRT.

5. In the original clone run bin/patch.sh (see script for arguments).  This will patch up inittab, passwd, setup feeds.conf and some other bits.

6. In the 2nd clone (build root), update the feeds.conf to point to the right spots (feeds.conf is updated as part of the patch.sh script, you may want to update the bits in the main clone to make this easier long-term)

7. Update the feeds (see OpenWRT build docs)

8. Run the build (see OpenWRT build docs)

I have been thinking about ways of getting various network monitors on a display in my room, without adding more PCs.

I first tried my NAS box but I seem to be having problems either getting the signal all the way to where I want it, or there is something wrong with the graphics driver, as I am getting huge graphical corruption when I fire up Xorg.

Next, I tried a cheap Android tablet, but that seems to work for so long and then the feed freezes.  I have tried various different web browsers, none of them are reliable on this particular tablet.  I tried a few Xorg servers with the application itself running on my NAS box, but they just crash too.

So that leaves me with only one spare device, my router.

Being a dual-core Atom, its not really doing a lot the majority of the time.  Its sat there with a HDMI port on the back, completely unused.  That seems like such a waste.

So while looking around for a solution I stumbled onto this: http://www.netsurf-browser.org/downloads/

This sounds ideal as if the JavaScript support is mature enough it could even allow you access to LuCI, which is extremely useful if you messed up the network configuration and aren't 100% sure which files you need to be editing to fix it.

I would try compiling it myself but looking at your instructions above my eyes start to gloss over, it sounds overly complicated having to fiddle around with two different build directories to build a single release.  So I thought I would document my findings here as its likely you would be able to give it a try far quicker than I would.  Although I must try compiling your build myself at some point, as I would be interested to see if I can build an X server for the router as well to see if it would be light enough to use as the output from my NAS box without killing the routing.

Hello again!

Yesterday i found the Time to do so. Btw thanks for the explainations mcrosson!
After booting my newly build Image i have only one Thread in htop instead of two.
I played arround with several Kernel modules, but no change.

I also noticed, that the speedstep Feature isn´t used. cpu is allway at 1600mhz.
It could down to 800mhz. Because my device is passive cooled this will let it burn like the sun over time

Any Idea on this ?

Power management was disabled on the build as it caused compatibility problems with some network cards (most notably, the one on my Intel DN2800MT board) and generally is not advised for a router anyway as it causes latency spikes when devices wake up, when the CPU frequency is changed, etc.  It might be a very small amount of latency, but for a router you want it as responsive as possible.

Also we found it made no measurable difference to heat or power consumption, if the machine is otherwise mostly idle anyway.

Power consumption is 1w lower for my atom n270 atom.
But thats not interesting. The Heat really matters for that device.
On ubuntu server temperature is ~40 on openwrt it grows up to ~70.
I am not that Hardwareproof but i think this is a difference.
Can you tell me please how to activate those Powerfeatures?

I do not know precisely what was done but I would expect it to be a simple matter of finding the kernel support for speedstep and enabling in the config file so it gets compiled in.

I believe it should be possible to keep speedstep support while still disabling power management for the rest of the hardware.  It was just easier to turn it all off as up until that point, we weren't concerned with heat output.

Running at 70 shouldn't really be an issue though, but I appreciate your wish to get that temp down for peace of mind.  Just consider that if you plan to do things with encryption, it might still hit 70 anyway when in use. 

Its always been my understanding that its more harmful for the motherboard/solder joins when the temperature frequently changes, than it is for the temperature to just constantly remain high.  So if it ends up swinging between 40-70 on a daily basis that might actually be worse than staying consistently around 70. (eg Xbox 360 RROD caused by the motherboard warping due to high temp when in use then changing to a low temp when you switch it off)

I disabled speed step and power management functions in the kernel in order to get power management disabled on all underlying hardware.  As @Alex points out: in our setup's this did not make a practical difference heat or power usage wise.  I also took the sledgehammer approach by disabling all power management to ensure that it was off for network controllers and any other hardware displaying signs of problems.

In the kernel there should be some general "Power Management" options that need to be enabled along with the speed step driver.  I'm not sure if there is a userland component, if there is you'll need to enable that too.  To enable new kernel options you can run "make kernel_menuconfig" from the build root and to enable new packages you can run "make menuconfig" from the build root.

If you don't want a serial console as your default tty you'll need to edit the .config by hand and disable the serial console options.  Search .config for TTYS0 and you'll see the two options that need to be commented out.  I'd post the relevant lines, but I do not have access to my build root currently.

This is also my understanding: best to maintain a constant temp than have it yo-yo up and down.  Having said that: if you feel more comfortable with the lower thermal output go for it.  At these temps I wouldn't expect much of a problem for quite some time.

As an auxiliary follow up: my entire network infrastructure at home freaked out over the weekend.  My 16 port GigE switch is dead and my router is still showing signs of problems.  I have not had a chance to hookup a keyboard and monitor yet, but I expect the filesystem to be trashed thanks to me yanking the power as a reboot fix.

This has set me back quite a bit for free time.  As I posted on my G+ feed: I am still working on this OpenWRT build but my free time is limited.  I planned on looking at things closer this week but it may take longer given the core of my network just went down in an impressive and time consuming way.

And I have internets again.  I will be looking closer at the above items this week/weekend.

Maybe that switch continiously driven @ 70°C

Maybe, I think it was a power thing.  The power brick was wining and the port on my the network port on my atom's motherboard turned out to be dead as well.

Loads of fun fixing that set of problems.  The best part: OpenWRT weathered the crazy just fine

(Last edited by mcrosson on 11 Mar 2013, 06:32)

Hello,

i have installed this image on a MacMini 2006 it works fine :-).

Only one thing:
when the DVI port (Monitor) ist not connected OpenWRT does NOT boot for some reason!
I want the MacMini to run without monitor because there is no space left in the server Rack :-/

What can i do?
I do not need the monitor at all, so i might be enough to remove monitor support but how?

thanks heaps!

cheers,
polly

I am not sure what is causing this.  I run without a monitor hooked up to my Atom.  Can the mac mini run properly without a monitor?  Is it throwing something up during boot that is causing an issue?

Can you try booting without monitor, let it hang, plugin a monitor and report back with what the mini is showing?

thanks ... i'll check this straight away :-)
i hope it displays anything after reconnecting ...

The MacMini itself with OSX and Ubuntu 10.04 working with Display and without.

i tried to connect DVI after boot, but no signal on the monitor even if i hit a few keys on the keyboard ...

Here is my log while doing a boot with plugged in monitor:

http://dokuwiki.knallimall.org/de/openwrt_log

thanks,
polly