Installing OpenWRT

Note

If you see unreadable characters on this page that display as “????” or boxes, that’s because you don’t have a Chinese character set loaded. You’ll want to load one to see the TP-Link admin interface{note}

Installing

These notes are extended from this site : http://cmikavac.net/2012/06/03/how-to-flash-tp-link-wr703n-with-openwrt/

  • Download the latest squashfs-factory.bin file from OpenWRT website
  • Browse http://192.168.1.1/ screen 1
  • Expand the “System Tools” Menu : ????
  • Choose the “Software Upgrades” sub-menu : ???? screen 12
  • Click “Browse” : ??…
  • Select the squashfs-factory bin file that you downloaded from the OperWRT website
  • Click “Upgrade” : ? ?
  • Click “OK” to the “To Confirm that you want to upgrade the software” window : ???????????
  • Allow the snapshot to upload, waiting for the progress bar to complete screen 3 screen 4
  • The message “The router is restarting, please be patient.” will pop up : “???????????????”
  • Click Ok
  • The TP-Link will reboot and your browser will show “Unable to Connect”
  • Wait
  • Telnet to 192.168.1.1 with the user/pass “admin/admin” and confirm that the installation succeeded.

Configuring OpenWRT

These notes are simply the literal commands that came out of this site : http://cmikavac.net/2012/06/03/tp-link-wr703n-openwrt-post-installation-tips/

This process applies to OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment (r33288) but will probably work for any instance of Attitude Adjustment.

You’ll first want to format the USB flash drive with ext2 or ext3. I did this by plugging an old 128MB flash drive into a desktop running Ubuntu and formated the flash drive using gparted.

Next you’ll need to plug that USB flash drive into the USB port because the 4MB onboard storage is not enough for much. The “extroot” process below uses the USB flash drive to extend the storage.

Next telnet into the device since you’ve already installed openwrt

telnet 192.168.1.1

Next set the root password and in doing so disable telnet and enable dropbear ssh

passwd

Now ssh into the TP-Link as the user “root” with the passwd you just set.

Next you’ll want to run these commands to configure OpenWRT

# Enable extroot
opkg update
opkg install kmod-usb-uhci
insmod usbcore
insmod uhci
opkg install kmod-usb-storage
opkg install block-mount
opkg install kmod-fs-ext4
reboot
# /dev/sda1 will be the ext2 or ext3 partition we made on the USB flash drive
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
tar -C /overlay -cvf - . | tar -C /mnt -xf -

(
cat <<'EOF'

config mount
	option target /overlay
	option device /dev/sda1
	option fstype ext3
	option options rw,sync
	option enabled 1
	option enabled_fsck 0
EOF
) >> /etc/config/fstab
reboot

opkg update
opkg install nano
opkg install luci
/etc/init.d/uhttpd enable
/etc/init.d/uhttpd start

Now that luci is installed you can do all further configuration through the Web UI by browsing to http://192.168.1.1/ and logging in, again, as the “root” user with the password you set above.