What

It's a script to build a customized OpenWRT firmware image using ImageBuilder.

If the generated image is flashed on a device it will try to automatically set up extroot on any (!) storage device plugged into the USB port (/dev/sda), including your working extroot pendrive if you plug it in only later in the boot process. Keep in mind that this will erase any inserted storage device while the router is in the initial setup phase! Unfortunately there's little that can be done at that point to ask the user for confirmation.

Why

So that e.g. customers can buy a router on their own, flash our custom firmware, plug in a pendrive, and manage their SIP (telephony) node from our webapp.

I've extracted the generic parts from the above mentioned auto-provision project because I thought it's useful enough for making it public.

How

You can read more about the underlying technology on the OpenWRT wiki: see e.g. the ImageBuilder page, or the page that lists some other ImageBuilder frontends.

As for the actual mechanism: custom scripts are baked into the boot process of the flashed firmware. If the extroot overlay is properly set up, then these scripts get hidden by it; i.e. they will only run when the extroot has failed to mount early in the boot process.

Building

OpenWRT's ImageBuilder only works on Linux x86_64. To build a firmware, issue the following command: ./build.sh architecture variant device-profile, e.g.:

./build.sh ath79 generic tplink_tl-wr1043nd-v1
./build.sh ath79 generic tplink_archer-c6-v2
./build.sh ath79 generic tplink_tl-wdr4300-v1

Results will be under build/openwrt-imagebuilder-${release}-${architecture}-${variant}.Linux-x86_64/bin/.

To see a list of available targets, run make info in the ImageBuilder dir.

If you want to change which OpenWRT version is used, then edit the relevant variable(s) in build.sh.

Setup stages

Blinking leds show which phase the extroot setup scripts are in. Consult the sources for details: autoprovision-functions.sh.

Stage 1: setup extroot

When the custom firmware first boots, the autoprovision script will wait for anything (!) in /dev/sda to show up (that is >= 512M), then erase it and set up a swap, an extroot, and a datafilesystem (for the remaining space), and then reboot.

Stage 2: download and install some packages from the internet

Once it rebooted into the new extroot, it will continuously keep trying to install some OpenWRT packages until an internet connection is set up on the router. You need to do that manually either by using ssh or the web UI (LuCI).

Stage 3, optional

We also have a 3rd stage, written in Python, but it's commented out here. Search for autoprovision-stage3.py to see how it's done.

Login

After flashing the firmware the router will have the standard 192.168.1.1 IP address.

By default the root passwd is not set, so the router will start telnet with no password. If you want to set up a password, then edit the stage 2 script: autoprovision-stage2.sh.

If a password is set, then telnet is disabled by OpenWRT and SSH will listen using the keys specified in authorized_keys.

Once connected, you can read the log with logread -f.

Status

This is more of a template than something standalone, but I use it for my home routers as is. You most probably want to customize this script here and there; search for CUSTOMIZE for places of interest.

Most importantly, set up a password and maybe an ssh key.

At the time of writing it only supports a few ath79 routers out of the box, but it's easy to extend it. Support for a new router entails looking up some led names for setLedAttribute so that there's feedback to the user through the blinking of the leds. It should work fine without that, but it will be less convenient to interact with your router in the initial setup phase.

Troubleshooting

Which file should I flash?

You should consult the OpenWRT documentation. The produced firmware files should be somewhere around ./build/openwrt-imagebuilder-21.02.0-ath79-generic.Linux-x86_64/bin/targets/ath79/generic/.

In short:

You need a file with the name -factory.bin or -sysupgrade.bin. The former is to be used when you first install OpenWRT, the latter is when you upgrade an already installed OpenWRT.
You must carefully pick the proper firmware file for your hardware version! I advise you to look up the wiki page for your hardware on the OpenWRT wiki, because most of them have a table of the released hardware versions with comments on their status (sometimes new hardware revisions are only supported by the latest OpenWRT, which is not released yet).

Help! The build has finished but there's no firmware file!

If the build doesn't yield a firmware file (*-factory.bin and/or *-sysupgrade.bin): when there's not enough space in the flash memory of the target device to install everything then the OpenWRT ImageBuilder prints a hardly visible error into its flow of output and silently continues. Look into build.sh and try to remove some packages that you can live without.

redzed501 / openwrt-auto-extroot