I flashed master-ow23.05.2 onto some routers and it went pretty well.
This is what I found:
Firstly, I want to say congratulations and well done to everyone who
creates LibreMesh - despite being a complex piece of software, it "Just
Works"! While digging into the internals, I feel like I'm looking at a
shining, polished steam engine - lots of intricate pipework, but every
little piece serves a purpose and is well-designed.
I used 3 different devices:
GL.iNet GL-AR750S ( 128MB Flash! 128MB RAM. 1x2.4GHz 1x5GHz )
+ Works fine
- Doesn't seem to support mesh on 5GHz radio
- I had to use U-boot to flash the -initramfs-kernel- image first,
then sysupgrade to the full image. Going straight from the vendor
image to the full image didn't seem to boot correctly.
https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-ar750s
GL.iNet GL-AR750 ( 16MB Flash. 128MB RAM. 1x2.4GHz 1x5GHz )
+ Works fine
- Doesn't seem to support mesh on 5GHz radio
https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-ar750
GL.iNet GL-MT300N V2 ( 16MB Flash. 128MB RAM. 1x2.4GHz )
+ Works fine
- Only one radio
https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-mt300n_v2
I used firmware images from
https://repo.libremesh.org/selector/ and
chose the master-ow23.05.2 option.
Internet gateway switchover worked fine: I set four devices in a line
A-B-C-D and plugged A into my LAN ethernet and D into my DMZ ethernet. I
then connected to the wifi of router B and watched the traceroute to the
Internet as I unplugged one cable at a time. The switchover happened
within a few seconds of unplugging the cable.
There were 2 bugs which caused me trouble:
+ First boot of the first node gives a blank webpage
+ First-run wizard doesn't always run, leaving shared password unset
Details:
+ First Boot:
The first boot of the first node resulted in a mostly-blank page, with
just the node name and a non-functional hamburger menu. Digging into the
Javascript console, I found an error:
"Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: t.most_active.iface is undefined" in
/app/bundle.d2584.js:2
Despite that, the node came up fine with default settings, advertising
both SSIDs and allowing me to ssh to root@???
+ First-run wizard
Flashing the second node gave a better experience,as (I presume) it
detected the first node and was able to calculate the signal strength to
the first node. This time the first-boot wizard ran and I was able to
set the Network Password. However the 3rd and 4th nodes never ran the
first-boot wizard and I can't use the Network Password on those devices.
One other issue I ran into was trying to resolve router names. From a
cold boot of all nodes it sometimes takes half an hour before I can
reliably ping every router by name. In my test setup above, connecting
via WiFi to B, I could connect to the Internet immediately, but pinging
router A or D by name only became possible after a few minutes. Router C
didn't resolve for 10 mins, but was fine when I tried again after 30 mins.
I spotted some minor problems with the web app, but I'll submit those as
a github issue.
So I was able to successfully build a network without much trouble,
which gives LibreMesh a high rating in my books! Thank you to everyone
who made that possible.
-Kevin
---
Following the easy path, strewn with treats, is how animals end up in cages.
