The OpenWrt One system [LWN.net]

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By Jonathan Corbet
November 4, 2024

OpenWrt is, regardless of its comparatively low
profile, one in every of our group’s most essential distributions; it runs
untold numbers of community routers and has served as the bottom on which lots
of network-oriented growth (together with the bufferbloat-reduction
work) has been completed. At the start of 2024, a couple of members of the
mission announced
a plan to design and produce a router machine particularly designed to run
OpenWrt. This machine, dubbed the “OpenWrt One”, is now changing into accessible;
the type people on the Software Freedom
Conservancy have been sort sufficient to ship one to LWN, the place the need to
play with a brand new toy is rarely missing.

The OpenWrt One was designed to be a practical community router that might
function a useful gizmo for the event of OpenWrt itself. To that finish,
the hope was to create a tool that was solely supported by upstream
free software program, and which was as unbrickable because it may very well be. The builders
concerned concluded that the Banana
Pi boards have been already moderately near these aims, in order that
was the chosen start line. Banana Pi can be the producer of the
board that resulted.

The OpenWrt One comes with a two-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor, 1GB of RAM,
and 256MB of NAND flash reminiscence. There can be a separate, read-only 16MB
NOR flash array within the machine. Normally, the OpenWrt One will boot and run from
the NAND flash, however there’s a small change within the again that may trigger it
as well from the NOR as a substitute. This is a bricking-resistance characteristic;
ought to a software program load break the machine, it may be recovered by booting
from NOR and flashing a brand new picture into the NAND array.

The machine solely comes with two Ethernet ports, one configured by default to
discuss to an upstream router. That alternative raised a couple of eyebrows, since a
router can usually be anticipated to have extra ports; in an FAQ
posting in January, John Crispin defended that alternative this fashion:

We did not need to impose further complexity and prices by
together with an exterior managed change IC. One port is 1GBit/s
succesful, whereas the opposite encompasses a pace as much as 2.5GBit/s. This is
a limitation of the chosen SoC.

The router has 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi radios and three antennas. There is a
USB 2.0 port on the entrance. Within the field, there’s a mikroBUS connector for
miscellaneous peripheral units and an M.2 PCIe connector for the
attachment of a solid-state drive. The area for M.2 playing cards is proscribed to
the 2242 or 2230 codecs, that means that it permits the addition of up
to 2TB of comparatively quick storage with at the moment accessible drives. That,
in flip, would make it attainable to make use of the router as a network-attached
storage server, or to run a extra conventional Linux distribution on it.

The OpenWrt one arrived with no documentation in any respect. Perhaps
surprisingly for a tool shipped by the SFC, it additionally lacked the required
written provide to supply supply for the GPL-licensed software program contained
inside — not that stated supply is tough to seek out. [Correction:
the offer is there, printed on the outside of the box. I missed that, and
apologize for the mistake.] There was no energy
provide supplied; the consumer wants to produce a USB-C charger or energy over
Ethernet. It attracts about three watts when working.

The machine had a minimal OpenWrt snapshot put in. Evidently, it was not
the supposed picture and didn’t work correctly; it might boot
and permit logins through SSH, however lacked the power to put in the LuCI internet
interface. That made life tough for these of us who, having by no means
taken the time to completely perceive OpenWrt’s distinctive package-management and
configuration instruments, are likely to lean arduous on LuCI. That, in flip, led to an
early train of the NOR-flash restoration mechanism, described on this page, to flash a brand new
picture. The ritual is a bit cumbersome, involving holding a
front-panel button down whereas connecting energy to the rear. But, then,
fully reflashing a tool shouldn’t be one thing one can do
unintentionally.

After booting into the brand new picture, the One behaved like some other OpenWrt
router. It got here up operating a 6.6.50 kernel and with LuCI put in; with
only a little bit of configuration, it was sitting on the native community and
offering WiFi service. Nothing thrilling to report. That is the factor
about working {hardware}; it simply quietly does what is predicted of it.

What may very well be extra fascinating is seeing this router get into the arms of
builders and fans who will use it to make OpenWrt (and different
small-system distributions) higher. The mixture of free software program
(with the exception, seemingly, of the firmware blob loaded into the WiFi
adapter) and brick-proof {hardware} ought to make the OpenWrt One a comparatively
straightforward and nice machine to develop for. That will, hopefully, encourage
extra builders to affix the mission and make the system higher for
all people.

Getting there, although, would require some vital documentation
enhancements. The machine lacks even the same old “getting started” web page, a lot
much less extra detailed data on learn how to join it to the community or what the
three LEDs imply. A pleasant tutorial on learn how to construct a customized picture for this
machine can be welcome. OpenWrt as a complete has moderately full (if
typically arduous to navigate) documentation, so presumably these gaps shall be
crammed over time.

Given the big selection of units that OpenWrt can run on, the addition of
another may appear to be a drop within the bucket. But most of these programs
have been designed to run one thing else, even whether it is typically OpenWrt with a
proprietary interface grafted on high, and changing the software program just isn’t
all the time straightforward or risk-free. A tool that was designed to run OpenWrt from
the start, with out limiting the consumer’s freedom, is a welcome addition
and an appropriate current to the OpenWrt mission because it celebrates
20 years of growth.

[The OpenWrt One is expected to be generally available by the end of
November. The price of each system will include an (unspecified) donation
to the OpenWrt project. Schematics and data sheets for
the device are also available.]