Openwrt on a pc.

The little network routers you can purchase in the store are ok, but they are not upgradeable. With things changing so fast, that seems like a boon only for the router manufacturers. Also firmware upgrades quickly cease. Having a router on a pc makes more sense not only for the ability to upgrade the hardware, but you can add so many more features software wise. You are not limited by the memory or space of the boxed routers. Nothing wrong with the boxed routers for a turnkey setup. If you are like me, you want more. That is why I also use Openwrt.

This is a great project to put an old pc back to work. Openwrt is a cousin so to speak of DD-WRT that  is installed on many brand name routers to increase their capabilities. Openwrt will also allow a pc to act as an expensive router without the big price tag. Of course, you could easy use some of the router distros such as ipcop and many others (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_or_firewall_distributions). openwrt is so much more upgradeable and expandable.

Did this with the original image on a pentium2 and it worked well. If you want the gui, you may need to install the web add-on.

Installing OpenWrt x86 on a PC. (Try this at your own risk!!!)

Requirements:

An X86 compatible pc (i386) or greater with at least 16MB of RAM, 2 network cards, and a hard drive. With newer versions of openwrt require higher hardware requirements. Check openwrt.org for more details.

OpenWrt binary file, for x86.

Old:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/8.09.2/x86/openwrt-x86-ext2.image

Newer:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/x86/openwrt-x86-generic-combined-ext4.img.gz (need to gunzip first) to openwrt-x86-generic-combined-ext4.img

($ gunzip openwrt-x86-generic-combined-ext4.img.gz)

Installation:

For M$ Windows, please also get physdiskwrite. [http://m0n0.ch/wall/physdiskwrite.php]

For Linux just use dd.

Grab the latest binary code from OpenWrt download site.

dd if=openwrt-x86-2.6-ext2.image of=/dev/hda (where hda and image name must be changed)

or

dd if=openwrt-x86-2.6-ext2.image of=/dev/sda (where hda and image name must be changed)

Step 1 Adding the web interface.

Appendices: 

Howto get OpenWrt up and running with a web interface given the base image is running.

Contents

 

Edit the network configuration '/etc/config/network' (this assumes a static IPv4 address):

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   192.168.0.126
        option netmask  255.255.255.0
        option gateway  192.168.0.254
        option dns      192.168.0.16 192.168.0.2

Load the updated lan network configuration

# ifup lan

Edit /etc/ipkg.conf. Add the last line (bold)

(use the version for your openwrt. Latest version is 8.x)

src release http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/7.09/x86-2.6/packages
src packages http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/packages/i386
dest root /
dest ram /tmp
src X-WRT http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/kamikaze/7.09/x86-2.6/packages 

(use the version for your openwrt. Latest version is 8.x)

 Update and install webif

root@OpenWrt:~# ipkg update
root@OpenWrt:~# ipkg install webif

Update

 # ipkg update
Downloading http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/7.09/x86-2.6/packages/Packages
Updated list of available packages in /usr/lib/ipkg/lists/release
Downloading http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/packages/i386/Packages
Updated list of available packages in /usr/lib/ipkg/lists/packages
Downloading http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/kamikaze/7.09/x86-2.6/packages/Packages
Updated list of available packages in /usr/lib/ipkg/lists/X-WRT
Done.

Install webif

# ipkg install webif
Installing webif (0.3-12) to root...
Downloading http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/kamikaze/7.09/x86-2.6/packages/./webif_0.3-12_i386.ipk
Installing haserl (0.8.0-2) to root...
Downloading http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/kamikaze/7.09/x86-2.6/packages/./haserl_0.8.0-2_i386.ipk
Configuring haserl
Configuring webif
Linux OpenWrt 2.6.22 #2 Sun Sep 30 21:02:32 CEST 2007 i586 unknown
Committing new firmware id ...
Device: PC Engines WRAP
Committing new device id ...
SUCCESS! Webif^2 installation appears OK. Welcome to X-Wrt!
You may need to do a hard REFRESH to clear old CSS style from your browser.
Reinitializing httpd ...
Done.

 

Comments

[Awesome-aniac]

I use dd-wrt on my router and I absolutely love it. I didn't know this was even possible, and if I had a desktop, I would definitely try this. Wireless-N cards can be purchased for as little as $10 a piece and older computers can be found for free.

[Computothought]

Your right and that is what I did. There is a version of dd-wrt for x86, but I never could get the free version to work. Actually openwrt will work in a virtual machine.