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Table of Contents
OpenWrt Overview
Introduction
- The intended audience of this page is someone who is familiar with Linux but new to the OpenWrt world.
- OpenWrt is a very popular project that allows you to build your own Linux based firmware which you can use on embedded devices.
- There are pre-built firmware available for many hardware models.
- You can also compile your own custom firmware using the SDK (Software Development Kit)
- Without duplicating existing documentation you can visit the project's website here: https://openwrt.org
OpenWrt with MESHdesk and APdesk
- MESHdesk and APdesk makes use of OpenWrt.
- It simply adds three additional items to it.
- The MESHdesk package.
- The MESHdesk Luci application.
- Some additional files e.g. a custom banner and logo.
- Although we will cover these items later again when we do hands-on compiling, going through them in the overview will make things a bit more familiar later on.
MESHdesk package
- OpenWrt follows the same pattern as most other Linux distributions where it has a package manager (opkg) that is used to install software onto the device.
- This package manager also takes care of dependencies.
- Packages can be installed after the device is flashed and running with OpenWrt or it can included during compile time to be part of the firmware.
- We will compile our own OpenWrt firmware that have the MESHdesk package included later on.
- When you build your own OpenWrt firmware you make use of the OpenWrt SDK (Software Developer Kit).
- The OpenWrt SDK allows you to:
- Select the specific device you want to build firmware for.
- Select the packages you want to include with the firmware.
- Include your own additional files with the firmware.
- This is exactly what we will be doing later on.
MESHdesk Luci package
- OpenWrt can work fine without any web interface.
- There is however a web interface available called Luci which is an add-on to plain OpenWrt.
- The firmware which you can download from the OpenWrt website has it included by default.
- The nightly builts of the development branch however do not have it included.
- Luci has various sub items e.g. modules, applications, themes etc.
- We will add an application to Luci (the MESHdesk Luci Application)
- This application will allow someone to enable or disable central management of the OpenWrt device using the Luci web interface.