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Buildroot ​

Build system setup ​

Refers to the OpenWrt wiki Build system setup for the package list of other Linux distributions.

Debian/Ubuntu/Mint ​

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential clang flex bison g++ gawk \
gcc-multilib g++-multilib gettext git libncurses5-dev libssl-dev \
python3-setuptools rsync swig unzip zlib1g-dev file wget

Clone the OpenWrt source code ​

Refers to the OpenWrt wiki Build System Usage.
Run all the above commands as normal user (do not use root).

git clone -b v25.12.0 --single-branch https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt
cd openwrt
git clone -b v24.10.5 --single-branch https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt
cd openwrt

Copy the defalt OpenWrt repositories file, and add the LibreMesh repositories

TIP

Use master to build the latest LibreMesh code (compatible with openwrt-24.10 or newer)
Use 2024.1 to build the latest LibreMesh release (compatible with openwrt-24.10 and openwrt-23.05)

cp feeds.conf.default feeds.conf
cat << EOF >> feeds.conf
src-git libremesh https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages.git;master
src-git profiles https://github.com/libremesh/network-profiles.git
EOF
cp feeds.conf.default feeds.conf
cat << EOF >> feeds.conf
src-git libremesh https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages.git;v2024.1
src-git profiles https://github.com/libremesh/network-profiles.git
EOF

Update the packages from the feeds ​

scripts/feeds update -a
scripts/feeds install -a

Run the configuration menu ​

make menuconfig

Check out the +target+ (e.g. +ATH79+), +subtarget+ (e.g. +generic+) and +profile+ (e.g. +tl-wdr3600-v1+) of your router on OpenWrt table of hardware.

Select the Target System, Subtarget and Target Profile accordingly.

Deselect erroneous feeds locations:

  • Image configuration → Separate feed repositories → Enable feed libremesh
  • Image configuration → Separate feed repositories → Enable feed profiles

Deselect problematic packages:

  • Base system -> dnsmasq
  • Network -> odhcpd-ipv6only

Optionally, deselect unused packages:

  • Network -> ppp

If you local community has a profile in the network-profiles repository, you can select it in:

  • LibreMesh -> network-profile -> profile-your_community-your_profile

NOTE

Network profiles are the specific configuration from the communities, and are stored in this collective repository, but they can also be kept locally, depending on how every community network manages itself. For more instructions on how to create a profile or how to use a local one, check out the network profiles page.

Select (press space until when an asterisk appears, like <*>) LibreMesh packages:

  • LibreMesh → Offline Documentation → lime-docs-minimal (LibreMesh minimal documentation)
  • LibreMesh → lime-app (LibreMeshApp)
  • LibreMesh → lime-hwd-openwrt-wan (Respect openwrt wan interface as default)
  • LibreMesh → lime-proto-anygw (LibreMesh anygw proto support)
  • LibreMesh → lime-proto-babeld (LibreMesh babeld proto support)
  • LibreMesh → lime-proto-batadv (LibreMesh batman-adv proto support)
  • LibreMesh → shared-state ** shared-state-babeld_hosts (babeld-hosts module for shared-state) ** shared-state-bat_hosts (bat-hosts module for shared-state) ** shared-state-nodes_and_links (nodes_and_links module for shared-state)
  • LibreMesh -> babeld-auto-gw-mode

NOTE

If after the compilation you don't see the compiled image in the bin/targets/.../.../ folder, it is possible that your router has such a small flash memory that the aforementioed packages don't fit in it (it can happen also with routers having 8 MB of flash memory when selecting huge packages to be included). In this case, you can remove the .config generated packages list and repeat the packages selection without including lime-app. If the compiled image is still too large, try selecting only lime-proto-anygw, lime-proto-batadv and lime-proto-babeld or following this guide.

Some more packages are recommended but not mandatory for a working LibreMesh network. Consider avoiding to select the following packages only if the created image is too large and does not fit in the router memory.

  • LibreMesh -> check-date-http (Keep local date under NTP too far away skew)
  • LibreMesh -> Offline Documentation -> lime-docs (LibreMesh full documentation)
  • LibreMesh -> lime-debug (libremesh debug utils)

Additionally and optionally, httpS for the web interface can be enabled selecting (beware that the web interace will be shown as not trusted):

  • Utilities -> Encryption -> px5g-standalone

Finally, also the 802.11s mesh connections can be password protected, this will require a specific configuration and this package to be selected:

  • Network -> WirelessAPD -> wpad-mesh-openssl

and this to be de-selected:

  • Network -> WirelessAPD -> wpad-basic-mbedtls

NOTE

In order to have additional packages, the easiest way is to select them in menuconfig. More packages can be installed afterwards via +opkg+, but some of these require a specific kernel configuration to be in place. This can be achieved following link:development-kernel_vermagic.html[these additional instructions dealing with kernel vermagic]. Beware that this will increase noticeably the time and storage space required for the compilation.

Save and exit.

At this stage there is the possibility to include custom files in the compiled firmware image. For this, you will have to create, inside the openwrt/ directory, a files/ directory containing the directory structure and files you want to add. For example, if you want to have a /etc/config/lime-community file you need to do the following:

mkdir -p files/etc/config/
touch files/etc/config/lime-community

and then edit the newly created lime-community file including your custom content. If a file from a package has the same name and path as a file in this directory, it will be overwritten. This is a quick way to include a custom configuration file, without the need to create an online network profile.

.Finally, compile the images

make -j$(nproc)

If everything goes well you should find the produced binaries inside the +bin/+ directory.

== Emulating on your computer with qemu

Its possible to emulate a image compiled for x86_64 architecture. See script qemu_dev_start.sh and qemu_dev_stop.sh scripts.

NOTE

You will be running something like:

sudo ./qemu_dev_start openwrt-x86-64-combined-ext4.img openwrt-x86-64-ramfs.bzImage

More information in TESTING.md