i though it worthwhile to say something about where i am with this project.

the latest version 0.72 is, i think, very usable.  it supports most basic functionality, is extendible, and takes up very little space.

there are still some features it is missing (e.g. pppoe support) and it is not perfectly robust as far as its installation scripts, i.e., it is not "idiot proof"

that being said, i simply don't have the time to work on the project these days.  i don't mean to say i never will, but i don't now.  accordingly, i would be more than happy if someone wanted to step up and take over.  there have been a few people who have made excellent suggestions and even submitted some code :-)

obviously the project is open source, so anyone could do this at anytime, i just want to make clear that i would not feel like my toes are being stepped on.  additionally, though of course all the code and packaging info is freely available, i'd be more than happy to explain what i can to any one who wants to move the project forward.

finally, my repository will stay open for the forseeable future, and i am still happy to receive bug reports and suggestions.

Hi sam,

I'm very interested in continuing your work. I just ordered a WRT54G and will get it tomorrow. After installing and testing around, I like to start improving your interface.

I think I have enough experience with PHP to

Is there any CVS repo? Or am I the only one who continues developing? If so, please send me a tarball with all your dev-files [to tma at hispeed dot ch]. Thanks.

thomas

I'm also interested in developping the interface-wrt with you if you accept me

Maybe a sourceforge project should be opened or a branch in the openwrt cvs as more convenient as it will be.

Of course .

Hm, I think it's not a real new project, thus a directory in the openwrt cvs repo would be enough.

tma

glad to see there's interest.  a few things:

the interface is not in php.  it used to be, but its now in ash scripting (which is similar to bash).

there is no cvs and there are no dev files.  everything is in the ipkg.  the ipkg is nothing more than a tar file with a funny extension so just use your favorite util to unpack it.  you can even first change the extension to .tar if that makes you feel better :-)

also, though i have no idea if they're interested, users Jannes and plec both contributed helpful bits at various points.  perhaps they'd like to help.

the scripts have little or no commenting, partly because they're relatively simple and partly because i was lazy.  if you have specific questions about why i did something a particular way, feel free to post or pm me, though there's no guarantee i'll remember . . .

best of luck and happy new year.

Ok if it's in ash it would be much more light and also interesting btw.

I dont't know how much users would be interested. If the interface-wrt is enough stable , it could be directly implemented in the basic firmware maybe.

i'm pretty sure that [mbm] is not interested in including a web interface in the base distribution.  the openwrt theory is to keep the base as minimal as possible.

Yes true, I saw it saying that on irc.

Well, I will just post interface ready firmwares as I did for some others packages

Perhaps two branches: a small, minimal version, like now, plus a full-featured with webinterface, QoS, whatever..

tma

Yeah great idea. Well can't we package modules ? I mean like the webmin does ?

Jup, sam integrated such a small module system. Have a look at the gui-example package [1].

[1] http://nthill.free.fr/openwrt/tracker/p … ui-example

hello,
I've builded to small gui-extensions to configure WAN  & OpenVpn
(https://festplattenbau.de/wrt/wan.tgz
https://festplattenbau.de/wrt/openvpn.tgz)
unpack it below /www/openwrt/packages to give a  try

Hi Guys !

I did some small add-on to Sam's GUI. You can found my work on this page http://isf.plec.ca/ipkg.html and others details on what i'm planning to code shortly. Some of my packages can be added to Sam's GUI (web-httpd and web-rdate). Some features are also missing (like PPPOE).

Like Sam tell me before, the best way to add new features is be using packages add-on. You only keep a small and minimal version that support all needs of OpenWRT original firmware. That way, it can be easily maintained and others coders can maintain personal small add-on.

You can do it right now, if you build a package add-on you create a small ipkg that can be added with Sam's GUI. All you have to do is make sure his GUI is installed (use the preinst script in ipkg control). You can validate any others dependencies if you want.

I will certainly take a look at your work 

Anybody still here with development of sam's web ui for openwrt? I've done a similar development for our olsr-community firmware package and I'am looking for people to join in or for cooperation. Have a look on these sites:

English Overview:
http://www.freifunk.net/wiki/FreifunkFirmwareEnglish
German Overview:
http://www.freifunk.net/wiki/FreifunkFirmware
English UI Demo:
http://styx.commando.de/sven-ola/ffen/
German UI Demo:
http://styx.commando.de/sven-ola/ffde/
French UI Demo:
http://styx.commando.de/sven-ola/fffr/

Wow - that project really impresses me.
It's just great. It looks nice and has every important function included.

Good work!

This is a sweet project. I would like to see the modular approach taken for it as well. I know that the orignal devoplers are devolping for their CWN so I imagine it would be a fork of this. There are things that I don't need and things that I would like to see in this GUI so a modular approach would be ideal. Start off with the bare minium and add functionality as needed.

This GUI seems a little more stable and functional than the interface-wrt package.

I would like to help with this project, too. I prefer a modular solution as well, but i know the freifunk.net people like a interface to easy let people be part of their net.
So i think a modular interface, but easy to pre-config would be an ideal solution to all parts of the community.

My first thoughts to design this GUI where:

1. I like the way interface-wrt is designed because of no need of other packages like php or perl.

2. Every part should be in a modular part, so should the base configs, so it is easyer to maintain.

3. My idea is to have only one index.html and every part should take place in a directory. So you can easy see which part is for which module. Like this
-www
--index.html
--base-network
---module.html
--base-wlan
---module.html
--pppoecd
---module.html
...
...
-- functions (maybe for general functions used by every module)

This way the index.html can parse this directory and build menus with name of the directory.
freifunk.net uses numbers like 11-pppoecd, 22-wlan ... to define the order in the menu.
I would prefer pppoecd.11, wlan.22 ... but this is a matter of taste.

4. maybe there is a possibility to use something like xml for the menus parsed by a script so you only have to put in the variables need to be saved. This can be parsed and combined with a template.

If there is a standard it is easy for everyone to give modules an easy config-page.

This is my first brainstorming on this issue, maybe these ideas are good, maybe not, but surely there are better ones, and i like to here these.

Gunni

Hi,

major development changes in the Web GUI will not take place, until I integrated the project sources into the sourceforge CVS system (see http://sourceforge.net/projects/ff-firmware/).

The main work to be done with this is: I maintain the Freifunk-Firmware project with a bunch of shell scripts until now. For a proper sourceforge integration, I need to convert to Makefile based build processing. Otherwise I have to write too much support emails. It is unlikely, that I can spend the time for this work prior to end of Feb 2005.

Until this date, everyone is invited to make new packages with included web gui based on the devpack I offer in the download directory http://styx.commando.de/sven-ola/ipkg/w … -devel.tgz Read the Readme and proceed as you like. Notes on that project:

* Focus is not to outrule SveaSoft or interface-wrt. Main purpose is and will be the easy deployment and setup for OLSR based MANET community projects.

* For other community projects, the look and feel of the Web GUI may be customized as well. Read the docs available in the Admin/Publish page for a conceptional overview.

* For easy development I use the XML editor (aka XXE on http://www.xmlmind.com) to edit the content. This java program will run on any major OS. For the different languages, I customize the xhtml/xhtml.css for other bgcolors to show german, french and english content.

* If you have the time, please include sufficient online help content to any admin web page you add. Use the <TR TITLE="!en:blabla!de:blabla"> notation for this. That is a matter of quality. Currently, I maintain english, french and german content. Surround language snippets you cannot translate by hash marks e.g. TITLE="!en:What the heck!de:###What the heck###" or <SPAN LANG="en">This is new</SPAN><SPAN LANG="de">###This is new###</SPAN> for later translation.

Regards, Sven-Ola

Hi Sven,

I absolutely love your work with the Friefunk Firmware.  It is likely I will use it as a base for a firmware for the Melbourne Wireless group.

I would modify it as follows (keeping it all open source, of course):
* I intend to connect another AP to the WRT54GS' WAN port and sell them together as an outdoor, dual-radio node.
* I would like to add a webpage to control packet filtering and NAT between the LAN interface and the Wireless and WAN interfaces.
* Melbourne Wireless doesn't really do Mesh networking as such - we're more of a fixed-wireless group.  So I would swap OLSR for Quagga or BIRD and a (hopefully) simple webpage for basic OSPF and BGP configuration.
That's the basic minimum features.  As time goes on I'd like to integrate Frottle and ChilliSpot into the firmware - provided they could all fit in the WRT54GS flash RAM.

I would try to keep it modular, but I do want it to be as easy to use as possible - which may require tight integration of the various software elements.

I have created a FreeNet Router Project wiki page here:

http://wiki.freenetworks.org/index.cgi/ … terProject

I've listed the various software and hardware options available, and Friefunk Firmware definitely gets a mention, as does OpenEmbedded and the MeshCube.

Soon I will create a wiki page on the Melbourne Wireless site detailing a localised version of the FreeNet Router Project.

Cheers,
Dan

Hi Dan,

absolutely nothing to say against not using OLSR. Let me express some comments on that topic anyway:

- Everyone needs another firewall config For this reason, the customized /etc/init.d/S45firewall is part of the freifunk-olsr.ipk package. I just need to move the OLSR admin page into that packet in the next releases - it is until now part of freifunk-webadmin.ipk. Until that, just overwrite /etc/init.d/S45firewall with your own version and place an exit command in /etc/init.d/S53olsrd. I am not using shorewall because the OLSR needs are a little bit different...

- Consider using cheaper devices for that double bundle. Two WAP54g devices will do - they do have only one RJ45 ether port.

- For a more customized view of the web admin create a new template and use the template concept as explained in the Admin/Publish page. The same template can be used later on for the complete version of the web admin pages for your project. As pointed out earlier, I dont publish the complete sources until end-of-feb2005 within the sourceforge project migration step. If you are ready to deploy earlier I will provide you with the rest of the webadmin page sources if necessary. Until that, the ff-devel.tgz sample will do.

- Create new packages as needed. Create a new master package e.g. "melbourne-wireless.ipk" which mentions your customized packages in the dependencies. Then it will be possible to burn the freifunk-firmware and add your customizations simply by changing /etc/ipkg.conf and issue "ipkg install melbourne-wireless". Another opportunity will be to install plain OpenWRT and issue the same command. For this you need to mention "freifunk-webadmin" in the dependencies too.

Regards, Sven-Ola

I'd like to use a proper distribution based on OpenWRT for what I'm doing (wireless mesh - currently each router is set up by hand, based on the wildcatmesh package).

Freifunk seems like it could soon do the job... I am currently using openVPN to tunnel from the nodes to the internet gateway, so that is why I can't use Freifunk now.

Configuring openVPN (actually the SSL certificates) is a real pain to do manually - sometimes the certificates don't work at all; and this week apparently all my certificates expired.

Also, on the subject of OLSR vs OSPF, I'd only say that you should at least test the performance of OLSR before choosing. The latest OLSR has link-quality extensions specifically designed to work well in a wireless (read "high packet loss") environment. Obviously this is only beneficial if nodes have multiple routes between them.

Oik

Hi OIK,

just give the OLSR protocol a shot. Here in Berlin we have around 30-80 OLSR nodes in our mesh network and it works great. A community member developed the ETX/QOS enhancements for OLSR and since we use that enhancements we have stable routes while members dynamically join and leave - which explains also my node number estimate...

On my wishlist, theres a openVPN package anncounced already. I would greatly appreciate if someone will do that job and pack together an openVPN package with web page for administration. You may refer to another community mebers web page also: http://freifunk.net/wiki/OpenVPN.

Rgds, Sven-Ola

:!: Oops - the mentioned page is in german. I'am sorry...

Sven,

Can you tell me what % of CPU is required to run OLSR with 60 nodes? The one nagging doubt I had was that the  author of OLSR measured the CPU load at 1-2% for only 3 nodes.

Also, how do you encrypt/secure the traffic on your mesh?

Oik

Hi,

most people dream of mesh networks bigger than 100 nodes. There was a conference at the end of 2004 (21C3) in Berlin - and there where around 80 nodes in the net. CPU load rises up to 80 percent with debug switched on. CPU load is around 30 percent with no debug - for a plain WRT54g. According to the OLSR devs, this is due to extensive searches of linear routing tables which is to be optimized in the future...

Rgds, Sven-Ola