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2023-01-04 TECH MEETING ​

People & list of topics:

Rodrigo, Cri, Hiure, Gio, Ilario, Henrik, S K, Dinesh, Ger

Wish list:

  • decide if both swconfig and DSA should be supported in the next release

  • Legacy hardware that is actually in use in real world community networks

  • Next meeting dates

  • debug connectivity problems with local services (Hiure)

  • Channel for technical discussions

  • LibreMesh support for OpenWrt 22.03 (or better next release?)

  • support for OpenWrt 22.03, QoS,using TC (traffic control)

  • review all the pull requests

  • prioritise a list of issues to be resolved for the next LibreMesh release

Next Meeting ​

Saturday 21 of january at 13 UTC

Decide if both swconfig and DSA should be supported in the next release ​

Gio: to introduce the topic: openwrt22.3 is using DSA (Distributed Switch Architecture), [1] [2]and we in Lime2020 we use SWconfig. Support both could be difficult. [1] https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/dsa/start [2]https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/dsa/dsa-mini-tutorial [3] https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/dsa/converting-to-dsa Talk at battlemesh https://youtu.be/1BqrX0-ICBQ?t=3462

Not all targets that we use a lot have been ported to DSA, like:

  • LibreRouter v1
  • TP-Link TL-WDR3600
  • TP-Link TL-WDR4300
  • TP-Link TL-WDR4310
  • TP-Link TL-WDR3500

There is a big pull request in OpenWrt porting all ath79 to DSA. https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/4622 We can take that PR and split it in smaller ones to send to OpenWrt for easing its merging.

Henrik: it is too messy to support both. There are many devices still with swconfig. Have anyone used any router with two real ports (like HiveAP), no switches?

Ilario: The proposal to wait for the merge of DSA for our favourite ATH79 routers would mean waiting for more years and our last release is already very old (2020). Can we make one release that supports both and then dropping swconfig for the following one?

Henrik: Some routers do not work well with swconfig, so if possible we should move to DSA.

Cri: we use Ubiquiti LiteBeam (Atheros). We are patching LibreMesh for using it on OpenWrt 22.03, we listed our patches in the mailing list https://lists.autistici.org/message/20221210.180941.ac807e16.en.html

Ilario: some of your patches have been used for making this pull request https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/pull/959

Henrik: what has been planned?

Ilario: does Altermundi have planning? This meeting is also for making this planning

Gio: old devices are important to support Libremesh, The new devices will be all DSA, but how we do with the old? Are we sure that old devices will support DSA?

Ilario: we have old devices to test and I already checked that can support it the DSA presence check is already included in https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/pull/959

Henrik: OpenWrt is moving away from Lua, going to ucode (own scripting language, better integrated with UCI, similar to JavaScript), rewriting all their scripts. How is this going to affect LibreMesh? Lua is not going to be included by default. I think they do a great work but the problem is the conversion to the new scripts.

https://lxr.openwrt.org/source/ucode/README.mdhttps://forum.openwrt.org/t/luci-rewrite-in-ucode-testers-wanted/137250 ucode https://github.com/ynezz/openwrt-ucode ucode git https://github.com/jow-/ucode#about

Ilario: hopefully, if we include the Lua interpreter, our stuff should go on working

Gio: I hate JavaScript

Henrik: they fixed many things, seems like a good step. The major issue is the memory impact of having both UCode and Lua. Anyway Lua is not too big and the impact should be ok.

Rodrigo: Archer C660 C50 C600 only work with OpenWrt 22 Is there some line where help to move forward? Where I can start?

Ilario: start testing a couple of pull request: this for example https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/pull/959 is useful if you try others devices. I can propose to use the chat element of Lime, or in the Mailinglist. Also you will need to include https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/pull/950

Rodrigo: I can build myself and test, I can open this server to you for compiling http://compila.ax.org.br:5000/ Sounds good to open a specific channel for testing.

Gio: why not move to a json like format for configuration of.. ?

Henrik: the config format is trying to stay compatible. There are issues with the use of labels and names. E.g. the main device in the /etc/config/network does not have a name. Important that the config file is human readable

Ilario: this issue we hit when preparing the pull request, it is the [0] here: https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/pull/959/files#diff-f3b71b4df527c1cf41e8c74bddde83a63cc2424814a06db3e415a640c0e480efR54

Henrik: I made a script for getting around the positional reference issue, I will try to share it on the linked pull request in a few days

Ilario: let's test the pull requests and talk about this swconfig+DSA vs DSA-only decision in the next meeting

Cri: ok we finshed the first hour of meeting, lets' go to try to set the next meeting

Legacy hardware that is actually in use in real world community networks ​

// Please be specific and put the exact models, many models have same branding name but quite differents versions

G10h4ck:

  • LibreRouter v1
  • TP-Link TL-WDR3600
  • TP-Link TL-WDR4300
  • TP-Link TL-WDR4310
  • TP-Link TL-WDR3500

Troian - Nupef : TPLinks- WDR 3500, 3600, 4300 Archer C7v5 Archer C50v4, CPE210v1-3,

Equippment ported only to owrt22 - Archer C50 v5, Archer C6 (to test new LIME version)

bologna appennino: Ubiquity Litebeam M5 - TPlink CPE 510 (ath79)

Hiure - Brasil / India : Cpe510/v1,v2,v3, Cpe210/v1,v2,v3 Cpe220, A7v5, tl-wdr3500, tl-wdr3600, tl-wdr4310, C60, C7, C5

Next meeting dates ​

Ilario: what about one technical meeting every two months?

Hiure: what about one or two weeks?

Ilario: ok 2 weeks Cri: ok,could be on 18th of January? wednesday..

Ilario: is Saturday ok?

Gio: better for me to do it in weekdays, but my agenda is changing so you can organize it in any day and then I will try to join

Hiure, for me is good, but after of 19th of january

ilario: not able to connect during week, available only at night. And weekends. Ilario: what about alternating meetings on Saturdays with meetings on Wednesdays?

Rodrigo: better during week days at work time

Cri: Saturday the 21st?

Ilario: great! Same time?

Hiure: yes Cri: yes Troian: yes

NEXTmeeting: saturday 21 of january at 13 UTC

Debug connectivity problems with local services (Hiure) ​

--> from India some feedbacks about issues on "How he data are routed inside of the network"? ex: wireless network, more wired connection, more internal service exposed also to external, DNS configuration works, the server sometimes is not connected due to routing of network..

The problem starts when we use cables, things get unstable if I try to extend network by cable, I get the problem: the 2 libremesh routers use ..... and start loops and callbacks, problems with Batman-adv

Ilario: Can you list a minumal setup for reproducing? Do you only use the LAN ports or also the WAN ports? If you connect via cable a LAN port to a WAN port of another LibreMesh router things are going to be broken for sure.

Gio: are not supperted connect WAN and LAN by cable

S K: The problem appears when you are doing ethernet mesh and connect local servers on the same router

Cri: how do you keep the problem? just a pig with DUP? or what?

Gio: the local server is just as the other clients, should not trigger any issue. Maybe the already existing issue gets more visible when it happens with a server.

S K: One problem is that ip of the local server changes now and then. But the main problem is latency.

Hiure: yes we use the local server with fixed ip in libremesh, editing /etc/config/dhcp and /etc/dnsmasq.d/localserver.conf

Ilario: for leaving some IP ranges out of the auto-configuration and the IP assigned to the DHCP clients https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/blob/master/packages/lime-docs/files/www/docs/lime-example.txt#L33-L35

S K: Sorry, my point is that the problem could be that there are two DHCP servers (two nodes) connected with each other through ethernet and then there are clients on the same switch. So that might cause routing problems?

Hiure: when we have only one service it works. nginx servers with lot of services, using CNAME, some servers have fixed IP.

Ilario: can you share the modifications you do to those two files, for understanding?

Hiure: /etc/config/dhcp config hostrecord 'server' option ip '10.x.y.z' list name 'servidor.com'

/etc/dnsmasq.d/localservice.conf
cname=serv2.iruway.in,janastunuc
cname=nextcloud.iruway.in,serv2.iruway.in
cname=prometheus.iruway.in,janastu.iruway.in
cname=grafana.iruway.in,janastu.iruway.in
cname=collaborate.iruway.in,janastu.iruway.in

and we copy this on every router.

Channel for technical discussions ​

We have two channels: https://libremesh.org/communication.html and also the Github Issues and Pull Requests.

Gio: no time for following the chat but I follow the mailing list

Ilario: prefer to use the chat, so that is easier to share simple observations in a casual way

Rodrigo: I prefer the chat

Ilario: no consensus, no decision.

Closing ​

Closing at 14:56 UTC Next technical meeting is going to be on Saturday the 21st of January 2023 at 13:00 UTC