Welcome to Gluon

Gluon is a modular framework for creating OpenWrt-based firmwares for wireless mesh nodes. Several Freifunk communities in Germany use Gluon as the foundation of their Freifunk firmwares.

User Documentation

Getting Started

Selecting the right version

Gluon’s releases are managed using Git tags. If you’re a community getting started with Gluon we recommend to use the latest stable release of Gluon.

Take a look at the list of gluon releases and notice the latest release, e.g. v2014.3.

Please keep in mind that a matching site configuration for your community is required. Due to new features being added (or sometimes being removed) the format of the site configuration changes slightly between releases.

Recent releases (starting with v2014.3.1) will come with an example configuration located in docs/site-example/.

Dependencies

To build Gluon, several packages need to be installed on the system. On a freshly installed Debian Wheezy system the following packages are required:

  • git (to get Gluon and other dependencies)
  • subversion
  • build-essential
  • gawk
  • unzip
  • libncurses-dev (actually libncurses5-dev)
  • libz-dev (actually zlib1g-dev)

Building the images

To build Gluon, first check out the repository. Replace RELEASE with the version you’d like to checkout, e.g. v2015.1.

git clone https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon.git gluon -b RELEASE

This command will create a directory named gluon/. It might also tell a scary message about being in a detached state. Don’t panic! Everything’s fine. Now, enter the freshly created directory:

cd gluon

It’s time to add (or create) your site configuration. So let’s create the directory site/:

mkdir site
cd site

Copy site.conf, site.mk and i18n from docs/site-example:

cp ../docs/site-example/site.conf .
cp ../docs/site-example/site.mk .
cp -r ../docs/site-example/i18n .

Edit these files to match your community, then go back to the top-level Gluon directory and build Gluon:

cd ..
make update                        # Get other repositories used by Gluon
make GLUON_TARGET=ar71xx-generic   # Build Gluon

When calling make, the OpenWrt build environment is prepared/updated. In case of errors read the messages carefully and try to fix the stated issues (e.g. install tools not available yet).

ar71xx-generic is the most common target and will generated images for most of the supported hardware. To see a complete list of supported targets, call make without setting GLUON_TARGET.

The built images can be found in the directory images. Of these, the factory images are to be used when flashing from the original firmware a device came with, and sysupgrade is to upgrade from other versions of Gluon or any other OpenWRT-based system.

You should reserve about 10GB of disk space for each GLUON_TARGET.

There are two levels of make clean:

make clean GLUON_TARGET=ar71xx-generic

will ensure all packages are rebuilt for a single target; this is what you normally want to do after an update.

make dirclean

will clean the entire tree, so the toolchain will be rebuilt as well, which is not necessary in most cases, and will take a while.

Environment variables

Gluon’s build process can be controlled by various environment variables.

GLUON_SITEDIR
Path to the site configuration. Defaults to site/.
GLUON_IMAGEDIR
Path where images will be stored. Defaults to images/.
GLUON_BUILDDIR
Working directory during build. Defaults to build/.

So all in all, to update and rebuild a Gluon build tree, the following commands should be used (repeat the make clean and make for all targets you want to build):

git pull
(cd site && git pull)
make update
make clean GLUON_TARGET=ar71xx-generic
make GLUON_TARGET=ar71xx-generic

Site

The site consists of the files site.conf and site.mk. In the first community based values are defined, which both are processed during the build process and runtime. The last is directly included in the make process of Gluon.

Configuration

The site.conf is a lua dictionary with the following defined keys.

hostname_prefix
A string which shall prefix the default hostname of a device.
site_name
The name of your community.
site_code
The code of your community. It is good practice to use the TLD of your community here.
prefix4

The IPv4 Subnet of your community mesh network in CIDR notation, e.g.

prefix4 = '10.111.111.0/18'
prefix6

The IPv6 subnet of your community mesh network, e.g.

prefix6 = 'fdca::ffee:babe:1::/64'
timezone

The timezone of your community live in, e.g.

-- Europe/Berlin
timezone = 'CET-1CEST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0/3'
ntp_server

List of NTP servers available in your community or used by your community, e.g.:

ntp_servers = {'1.ntp.services.ffeh','2.tnp.services.ffeh'}
opkg_repo : optional

Overwrite the default opkg repository server, e.g.:

opkg_repo = 'http://opkg.services.ffeh/attitude_adjustment/12.09/%S/packages'

The %S is a variable, which is replaced with the platform of an device during the build process.

regdom

The wireless regulatory domain responsible for your area, e.g.:

regdom = 'DE'
wifi24

WLAN Configuration of your community in the 2.4Ghz radio. Consisting of ssid of your client network, the channel your community is using, htmode, the adhoc ssid mesh_ssid used between devices, the adhoc bssid mesh_bssid and the adhoc multicast rate mesh_mcast_rate. Optionally mesh_vlan can be used to setup VLAN on top of the 802.11 ad-hoc interface. The options mesh_disabled and client_disabled are optional, too. They allow to disable the SSID by default, e.g. for preconfigured node. This only affects first configuraton. Combined in an dictionary, e.g.:

wifi24 = {
  ssid = 'entenhausen.freifunk.net',
  channel = 11,
  htmode = 'HT40-',
  mesh_ssid = 'ff:ff:ff:ee:ba:be',
  mesh_bssid = 'ff:ff:ff:ee:ba:be',
  mesh_mcast_rate = 12000,
},
wifi5
Same as wifi24 but for the 5Ghz radio.
next_node : package

Configuration of the local node feature of Gluon

next_node = {
  ip4 = '10.23.42.1',
  ip6 = 'fdca:ffee:babe:1::1',
  mac = 'ca:ff:ee:ba:be:00'
}
fastd_mesh_vpn

Remote server setup for the fastd-based mesh VPN.

The enabled option can be set to true to enable the VPN by default.

If configurable is false or unset, the method list will be replaced on updates with the list in the site configuration. Setting configurable to true will allow the user to add the method null to the front of the method list or remove null from it, and make this change survive updates. Settings configurable is necessary for the package gluon-luci-mesh-vpn-fastd, which adds a UI for this configuration.

In any case, the null method should always be the first method in the list if it is supported at all. You should only set configurable to true if the configured peers support both the null method and methods with encryption.

fastd_mesh_vpn = {
  methods = {'salsa2012+umac'},
  -- enabled = true,
  -- configurable = true,
  mtu = 1426,
  groups = {
    backbone = {
      limit = 2,
      peers = {
        peer1 = {
          key = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
          remotes = {'ipv4 "vpn1.entenhausen.freifunk.net" port 10000'},
        },
      }
    }
  }
}
mesh_on_wan : optional
Enables the mesh on the WAN port (true or false).
mesh_on_lan : optional
Enables the mesh on the LAN port (true or false).
autoupdater : package

Configuration for the autoupdater feature of Gluon.

autoupdater = {
  branch = 'experimental',
  branches = {
    stable = {
      name = 'stable',
      mirrors = {
        'http://[fdca:ffee:babe:1::fec1]/firmware/stable/sysupgrade/',
        'http://[fdca:ffee:babe:1::fec2]/firmware/stable/sysupgrade/',
      },
      probability = 0.08,
      good_signatures = 2,
      pubkeys = {
        'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', -- someguy
        'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', -- someother
      }
    }
  }
}
roles : optional

Optional role definitions. With this nodes will announce their role inside the mesh. In the backend this adds the facility to distinguish between normal, backbone and service nodes or even gateways (if they advertise the role, also). It is up to the community which roles to define. See the section below as an example. default takes the default role which is set initially. This value should be part of list. If you want node owners to change the role via config mode add the package gluon-luci-node-role to site.mk.

The strings to display in the LuCI interface can be configured per language in the i18n/en.po, i18n/de.po, etc. files of the site repository using message IDs like gluon-luci-node-role:role:node and gluon-luci-node-role:role:backbone.

roles = {
  default = 'node',
  list = {
    'node',
    'test',
    'backbone',
    'service',
  },
},
simple_tc : package

Uplink traffic control, ingress and egress values are specified in kbit/s.

simple_tc = {
  mesh_vpn = {
    ifname = 'mesh-vpn',
    enabled = false,
    limit_egress = 200,
    limit_ingress = 3000,
  },
},
setup_mode : package

Allows skipping setup mode (config mode) at first boot when attribute skip is set to true. This is optional and may be left out.

setup_mode = {
  skip = true,
},
legacy : package

Configuration for the legacy upgrade path. This is only required in communities upgrading from Lübeck’s LFF-0.3.x.

legacy = {
       version_files = {'/etc/.freifunk_version_keep', '/etc/.eff_version_keep'},
       old_files = {'/etc/config/config_mode', '/etc/config/ffeh', '/etc/config/freifunk'},
       config_mode_configs = {'config_mode', 'ffeh', 'freifunk'},
       fastd_configs = {'ffeh_mesh_vpn', 'mesh_vpn'},
       mesh_ifname = 'freifunk',
       tc_configs = {'ffki', 'freifunk'},
       wifi_names = {'wifi_freifunk', 'wifi_freifunk5', 'wifi_mesh', 'wifi_mesh5'},
}

Packages

The site.mk is a Makefile which should define constants involved in the build process of Gluon.

GLUON_SITE_PACKAGES
Defines a list of packages which should installed additional to the gluon_core package.
GLUON_RELEASE
The current release version Gluon should use.
GLUON_PRIORITY
The default priority for the generated manifests (see the autoupdater documentation for more information).
GLUON_LANGS
List of languages (as two-letter-codes) to include for the web interface. Should always contain en.

Config mode texts

The community-defined texts in the config mode are configured in PO files in the i18n subdirectory of the site configuration. The message IDs currently defined are:

gluon-config-mode:welcome
Welcome text on the top of the config wizard page.
gluon-config-mode:pubkey
Information about the public VPN key on the reboot page.
gluon-config-mode:reboot
General information about the reboot page.

There is a POT file in the site example directory which can be used to create templates for the language files. The command msginit -l en -i ../../docs/site-example/i18n/gluon-site.pot can be used from the i18n directory to create an initial PO file called en.po if the gettext utilities are installed.

Examples

site.mk
##	gluon site.mk makefile example

##	GLUON_SITE_PACKAGES
#		specify gluon/openwrt packages to include here
#		The gluon-mesh-batman-adv-* package must come first because of the dependency resolution

GLUON_SITE_PACKAGES := \
	gluon-mesh-batman-adv-15 \
	gluon-alfred \
	gluon-announced \
	gluon-autoupdater \
	gluon-config-mode-autoupdater \
	gluon-config-mode-contact-info \
	gluon-config-mode-core \
	gluon-config-mode-geo-location \
	gluon-config-mode-hostname \
	gluon-config-mode-mesh-vpn \
	gluon-ebtables-filter-multicast \
	gluon-ebtables-filter-ra-dhcp \
	gluon-luci-admin \
	gluon-luci-autoupdater \
	gluon-luci-portconfig \
	gluon-luci-wifi-config \
	gluon-next-node \
	gluon-mesh-vpn-fastd \
	gluon-radvd \
	gluon-setup-mode \
	gluon-status-page \
	haveged \
	iptables \
	iwinfo

##	DEFAULT_GLUON_RELEASE
#		version string to use for images
#		gluon relies on
#			opkg compare-versions "$1" '>>' "$2"
#		to decide if a version is newer or not.

DEFAULT_GLUON_RELEASE := 0.6+exp$(shell date '+%Y%m%d')


##	GLUON_RELEASE
#		call make with custom GLUON_RELEASE flag, to use your own release version scheme.
#		e.g.:
#			$ make images GLUON_RELEASE=23.42+5
#		would generate images named like this:
#			gluon-ff%site_code%-23.42+5-%router_model%.bin

# Allow overriding the release number from the command line
GLUON_RELEASE ?= $(DEFAULT_GLUON_RELEASE)

# Default priority for updates.
GLUON_PRIORITY ?= 0

# Languages to include
GLUON_LANGS ?= en de
site.conf
-- This is an example site configuration for Gluon v2015.1
--
-- Take a look at the documentation located at
-- http://gluon.readthedocs.org/ for details.
--
-- This configuration will not work as it. You're required to make
-- community specific changes to it!
{
  -- Used for generated hostnames, e.g. freifunk-abcdef123456. (optional)
  -- hostname_prefix = 'freifunk-',

  -- Name of the community.
  site_name = 'Freifunk Entenhausen',

  -- Shorthand of the community.
  site_code = 'ffxx',

  -- Prefixes used within the mesh. Both are required.
  prefix4 = '10.xxx.0.0/20',
  prefix6 = 'fdxx:xxxx:xxxx::/64',

  -- Timezone of your community.
  -- See http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/uci/system#time_zones
  timezone = 'CET-1CEST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0/3',

  -- List of NTP servers in your community.
  -- Must be reachable using IPv6!
  ntp_servers = {'1.ntp.services.ffxx'},

  -- Wireless regulatory domain of your community.
  regdom = 'DE',

  -- Wireless configuration for 2.4 GHz interfaces.
  wifi24 = {
    -- Wireless channel.
    channel = 1,

    -- ESSID used for client network.
    ssid = 'entenhausen.freifunk.net',

    -- Specifies the channel width in 802.11n and 802.11ac mode.
    -- Possible values are:
    -- HT20 (single 20MHz channel),
    -- HT40- (2x 20MHz channels, secondary below)
    -- HT40+ (2x 20MHz channels, secondary above)
    htmode = 'HT20',

    -- Adjust these values!
    mesh_ssid = 'xe:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx',  -- ESSID used for mesh
    mesh_bssid = 'xe:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx', -- BSSID used for mesh

    -- Bitrate used for multicast/broadcast packets.
    mesh_mcast_rate = 12000,

    -- (optional) mesh VLAN on 802.11 ad-hoc interface (1-4095)
    -- mesh_vlan = 14,
    -- client_disabled = true,
    -- mesh_disabled = false,
  },

  -- Wireless configuration for 5 GHz interfaces.
  -- This should be equal to the 2.4 GHz variant, except
  -- for channel and htmode.
  wifi5 = {
    ssid = 'entenhausen.freifunk.net',
    channel = 44,
    htmode = 'HT20',
    mesh_ssid = 'xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx',
    mesh_bssid = 'xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx',
    mesh_mcast_rate = 12000,
    -- mesh_vlan = 14,
    -- client_disabled = true,
    -- mesh_disabled = false,
  },

  -- The next node feature allows clients to always reach the node it is
  -- connected to using a known IP address.
  next_node = {
    -- anycast IPs of all nodes
    ip4 = '10.xxx.0.xxx',
    ip6 = 'fdxx:xxxx:xxxx::xxxx',

    -- anycast MAC of all nodes
    mac = 'xe:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx',
  },

  -- Refer to http://fastd.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ to better understand
  -- what these options do.
  fastd_mesh_vpn = {
    -- List of crypto-methods to use.
    methods = {'salsa2012+umac'},
    -- enabled = true,
    -- configurable = true,

    mtu = 1426,
    groups = {
      backbone = {
        -- Limit number of connected peers to reduce bandwidth.
        limit = 2,

        -- List of peers.
        peers = {
          peer1 = {
            key = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',

            -- This is a list, so you might add multiple entries.
            remotes = {'ipv4 "xxx.somehost.invalid" port xxxxxx'},
          },
          peer2 = {
            key = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
            -- You can also omit the ipv4 to allow both connection via ipv4 and ipv6
            remotes = {'"xxx.somehost2.invalid" port xxxxx'},
          },
        },

        -- Optional: nested peer groups
        -- groups = {
        --   backbone_sub = {
        --     ...
        --   },
        --   ...
        -- },
      },
      -- Optional: additional peer groups, possibly with other limits
      -- backbone2 = {
      --   ...
      -- },
    },
  },

  autoupdater = {
    -- Default branch. Don't forget to set GLUON_BRANCH when building!
    branch = 'stable',

    -- List of branches. You may define multiple branches.
    branches = {
      stable = {
        name = 'stable',

        -- List of mirrors to fetch images from. IPv6 required!
        mirrors = {'http://1.updates.services.ffhl/stable/sysupgrade'},

        -- Number of good signatures required.
        -- Have multiple maintainers sign your build and only
        -- accept it when a sufficient number of them have
        -- signed it.
        good_signatures = 2,

        -- List of public keys of maintainers.
        pubkeys = {
                'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', -- Alice
                'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', -- Bob
                'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', -- Mary
        },
      },
    },
  },

  -- Node roles
  -- roles = {
  --   default = 'node',
  --   list = {
  --     'node',
  --     'test',
  --     'backbone',
  --     'service',
  --   },
  -- },

  -- Bandwidth limiting
  simple_tc = {
    mesh_vpn = {
      ifname = 'mesh-vpn',

      -- You may enable it by default here.
      enabled = false,

      -- Default upload limit (kbit/s).
      limit_egress = 200,

      -- Default download limit (kbit/s).
      limit_ingress = 3000,
    },
  },

  -- Skip setup mode (config mode) on first boot
  -- setup_mode = {
  --  skip = true,
  -- },
}
i18n/en.po
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: 2015-03-19 20:28+0100\n"
"Last-Translator: Matthias Schiffer <mschiffer@universe-factory.net>\n"
"Language-Team: English\n"
"Language: en\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);\n"

msgid "gluon-config-mode:welcome"
msgstr ""
"Welcome the the setup wizard of your new Freifunk Duckburg node. "
"Please fill out the following form and transmit it."

msgid "gluon-config-mode:pubkey"
msgstr ""
"This is your Freifunk node's public key. The node won't be able to "
"connect to the mesh VPN until the key has been registered on the Freifunk "
"Duckburg servers. "
"To register the key send it together with your node's name (<em><%=hostname%></em>) to "
"<a href=\"mailto:keys@entenhausen.freifunk.net\">keys@entenhausen.freifunk.net</a>."


msgid "gluon-config-mode:reboot"
msgstr ""
"<p>The node is currently rebooting and will try to connect to other "
"nearby Freifunk nodes  after that. "
"Your can find lots of information on the Freifunk Duckburg community on "
"<a href=\"https://entenhausen.freifunk.net/\">our homepage</a>.</p>"
"<p>To get back to this configuration interface, press the reset button for "
"3 seconds during normal operation. The device will then reboot into config "
"mode.</p>"
"<p>Have fun with your node and exploring the Freifunk network!</p>"
i18n/de.po
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: 2015-03-19 20:28+0100\n"
"Last-Translator: Matthias Schiffer <mschiffer@universe-factory.net>\n"
"Language-Team: German\n"
"Language: de\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);\n"

msgid "gluon-config-mode:welcome"
msgstr ""
"Willkommen zum Einrichtungsassistenten für deinen neuen Entenhausener "
"Freifunk-Knoten. Fülle das folgende Formular deinen Vorstellungen "
"entsprechend aus und sende es ab."

msgid "gluon-config-mode:pubkey"
msgstr ""
"Dies ist der öffentliche Schlüssel deines Freifunk-Knotens. Erst nachdem "
"er auf den Servern des Entenhausener Freifunk-Projektes eingetragen wurde, "
"kann sich dein Knoten mit dem Entenhausener Mesh-VPN zu verbinden. Bitte "
"schicke dazu diesen Schlüssel und den Namen deines Knotens "
"(<em><%=hostname%></em>) an "
"<a href=\"mailto:keys@entenhausen.freifunk.net\">keys@entenhausen.freifunk.net</a>."

msgid "gluon-config-mode:reboot"
msgstr ""
"<p>Dein Knoten startet gerade neu und wird anschließend versuchen, "
"sich mit anderen Freifunkknoten in seiner Nähe zu "
"verbinden. Weitere Informationen zur "
"Entenhausener Freifunk-Community findest du auf "
"<a href=\"https://entenhausen.freifunk.net/\">unserer Webseite</a>.</p>"
"<p>Um zu dieser Konfigurationsseite zurückzugelangen, drücke im normalen "
"Betrieb für drei Sekunden den Reset-Button. Das Gerät wird dann im Config "
"Mode neustarten.</p>"
"<p>Viel Spaß mit deinem Knoten und der Erkundung von Freifunk!</p>"
modules
# This file allows specifying additional repositories to use
# when building gluon.
#
# In most cases, it is not required so don't add it.

##	GLUON_SITE_FEEDS
#		for each feed name given, add the corresponding PACKAGES_* lines
#		documented below
#GLUON_SITE_FEEDS='my_own_packages'

##	PACKAGES_$feedname_REPO
#		the  git repository from where to clone the package feed
#PACKAGES_MY_OWN_PACKAGES_REPO=https://github.com/.../my-own-packages.git


##	PACKAGES_$feedname_COMMIT
#		the version/commit of the git repository to clone
#PACKAGES_MY_OWN_PACKAGES_COMMIT=123456789aabcda1a69b04278e4d38f2a3f57e49

##  PACKAGES_$feedname_BRANCH
#   the branch to check out
#PACKAGES_MY_OWN_PACKAGES_BRANCH=my_branch
site-repos in the wild

This is a non-exhaustive list of site-repos from various communities:

x86 support

Gluon can run on normal x86 systems, for example virtual machines and VPN boxes. There is no WLAN support on x86 though.

Targets

There are two targets for x86 images:

x86-generic

Generic x86 support with many different ethernet drivers; should run on most x86 systems.

There are three images:

  • generic (compressed “raw” image, can written to a disk directly or booted with qemu)
  • virtualbox (VDI image)
  • vmware (VMDK image)

These images only differ in the image file format, the content is the same. Therefore there is only a single x86-generic sysupgrade image instead of three.

Please note that the x86-generic image doesn’t include VirtIO support, so another virtual NIC like pcnet32 must be chosen when using VirtualBox.

x86-kvm
The x86-kvm image uses VirtIO as its harddisk and network driver.

Frequently Asked Questions

Features

Config Mode

When in Config Mode a node will neither participate in the mesh nor connect to the VPN using the WAN port. Instead, it’ll offer a web interface on the LAN port to aid configuration of the node.

Whether a node is in Config Mode can be determined by a characteristic blinking sequence of the SYS LED:

_images/node_configmode.gif

Activating Config Mode

Config Mode is automatically entered at the first boot. You can re-enter Config Mode by pressing and holding the RESET/WPS button for about three seconds. The device should reboot (all LEDs will turn of briefly) and Config Mode will be available.

Port Configuration

In general, Config Mode will be offered on the LAN ports. However, there are two practical exceptions:

  • Devices with just one network port will run Config Mode on that port.
  • Devices with PoE on the WAN port will run Config Mode on the WAN port instead.

Accessing Config Mode

Config Mode can be accessed at http://192.168.1.1. The node will offer DHCP to clients. Should this fail, you may assign an IP from 192.168.1.0/24 to your computer manually.

Autoupdater

Gluon contains an automatic update system which can be configured in the site configuration.

Building Images

By default, the autoupdater is disabled (as it is usually not helpful to have unexpected updates during development), but it can be enabled by setting the variable GLUON_BRANCH when building to override the default branch set in the set in the site configuration.

A manifest file for the updater can be generated with make manifest. A signing script (using ecdsautils) can by found in the contrib directory. When creating the manifest, GLUON_PRIORITY can be set on the command line, or it can be taken from the site.mk.

The priority defines the maximum number of days that may pass between releasing an update and installation of the images. The update probability with start at 0 after the release time mentioned in the manifest and then slowly rise to 1 after the number of days given by the priority has passed.

The priority may be an integer or a decimal fraction.

A fully automated nightly build could use the following commands:

git pull
(cd site && git pull)
make update
make clean
make -j5 GLUON_TARGET=ar71xx-generic GLUON_BRANCH=experimental
make manifest GLUON_BRANCH=experimental
contrib/sign.sh $SECRETKEY images/sysupgrade/experimental.manifest

rm -rf /where/to/put/this/experimental
cp -r images /where/to/put/this/experimental

Infrastructure

We suggest to have following directory tree accessible via http:

firmware/
        stable/
                sysupgrade/
                factory/
        snapshot/
                sysupgrade/
                factory/
        experimental/
                sysupgrade/
                factory/

The server must be available via IPv6.

Command Line

These commands can be used on a node.

# Update with some probability
autoupdater
# Force update check, even when the updater is disabled
autoupdater -f

Private WLAN

It is possible to set up a private WLAN that bridges the WAN port and is seperated from the mesh network. Please note that you should not enable mesh_on_wan simultaneously.

The private WLAN can be enabled through the config mode if the package gluon-luci-private-wifi is installed. You may also enable a private WLAN using the command line:

uci set wireless.wan_radio0=wifi-iface
uci set wireless.wan_radio0.device=radio0
uci set wireless.wan_radio0.network=wan
uci set wireless.wan_radio0.mode=ap
uci set wireless.wan_radio0.encryption=psk2
uci set wireless.wan_radio0.ssid="$SSID"
uci set wireless.wan_radio0.key="$KEY"
uci set wireless.wan_radio0.disabled=0
uci commit
wifi

Please replace $SSID by the name of the WLAN and $KEY by your passphrase (8-63 characters). If you have two radios (e.g. 2.4 and 5 GHz) you need to do this for radio0 and radio1.

It may also be disabled by running:

uci set wireless.wan_radio0.disabled=1
uci commit
wifi

Mesh on WAN

It’s possible to enable the mesh on the WAN port like this:

uci set network.mesh_wan.auto=1
uci commit

It may also be disabled again by running:

uci set network.mesh_wan.auto=0
uci commit

site.conf

The optional option mesh_on_wan may be set to true (false is the default) to enable meshing on the WAN port without further configuration.

Announcing Node Information

Gluon is capable of announcing information about each node to the mesh and to neighbouring nodes. This allows nodes to learn each others hostname, IP addresses, location, software versions and various other information.

Format of collected data

Information to be announced is currently split into two categories:

nodeinfo
In this category (mostly) static information is collected. If something is unlikely to change without human intervention it should be put here.
statistics
This category holds fast changing data, like traffic counters, uptime, system load or the selected gateway.

Both categories will have a node_id key by default. It should be used to match data from statistics to nodeinfo.

Accessing Node Information

There are two packages responsible for distribution of the information. For one, information is distributed across the mesh using alfred. Information between neighbouring nodes is exchanged using gluon-announced.

alfred (mesh bound)

The package gluon-alfred is required for this to work.

Using alfred both categories are distributed within the mesh. In order to retrieve the data you’ll need both a local alfred daemon and alfred-json installed. Please note that at least one alfred daemon is required to run as master.

nodeinfo is distributed as alfred datatype 158, while statistics uses 159. Both are compressed using GZip (alfred-json can handle the decompression).

In order to retrieve statistics data you could run:

# alfred-json -z -r 159
{
  "f8:d1:11:7e:97:dc": {
    "processes": {
      "total": 55,
      "running": 2
    },
    "idletime": 30632.290000000001,
    "uptime": 33200.07,
    "memory": {
      "free": 1660,
      "cached": 8268,
      "total": 29212,
      "buffers": 2236
    },
    "node_id": "f8d1117e97dc",
    "loadavg": 0.01
  },
  "90:f6:52:3e:b9:50": {
    "processes": {
      "total": 58,
      "running": 2
    },
    "idletime": 28047.470000000001,
    "uptime": 33307.849999999999,
    "memory": {
      "free": 2364,
      "cached": 7168,
      "total": 29212,
      "buffers": 1952
    },
    "node_id": "90f6523eb950",
    "loadavg": 0.34000000000000002
  }
}

You can find more information about alfred in its README.

gluon-announced

gluon-announced allows querying neighbouring nodes for their nodeinfo. It is a daemon listening on the multicast address ff02::2:1001 on UDP port 1001 on the bare mesh interfaces.

gluon-neighbour-info

A programm called gluon-neighbour-info has been developed to retrieve information from neighbours.

gluon-neighbour-info -i wlan0 \
-p 1001 -d ff02:0:0:0:0:0:2:1001 \
-r nodeinfo

On optional timeout may be specified, e.g. -t 5 (default: 3 seconds).

Adding a fact

To add a fact just add a file to either /lib/gluon/announce/nodeinfo.d/ or /lib/gluon/announce/statistics.d/.

The file must contain a lua script and its name will become the key for the resulting JSON object. A simple script adding a hostname field might look like this:

return uci:get_first('system', 'system', 'hostname')

The directory structure will be converted to a JSON object, i.e. you may create subdirectories. So, if the directories look like this

.
├── hardware
│   └── model
├── hostname
├── network
│   └── mac
├── node_id
└── software
    └── firmware

the resulting JSON would become:

# /lib/gluon/announce/announce.lua nodeinfo
{
   "hardware" : {
      "model" : "TP-Link TL-MR3420 v1"
   },
   "hostname" : "mr3420-test",
   "network" : {
      "mac" : "90:f6:52:82:06:02"
   },
   "node_id" : "90f652820602",
   "software" : {
      "firmware" : {
         "base" : "gluon-v2014.2-32-ge831099",
         "release" : "0.4.1+0-exp20140720"
      }
   }
}

Adding SSH public keys

By using the package gluon-authorized-keys it is possible to add SSH public keys to an image to permit root login.

If you select this package, add a list of authorized keys to site.conf like this::

{
  authorized_keys = { 'ssh-rsa AAA.... user1@host',
                      'ssh-rsa AAA.... user2@host },
  hostname_prefix = ...
  ...

Existing keys in /etc/dropbear/authorized_keys will be preserved.

Roles

It is possible to define a set of roles you want to distinguish at backend side. One node can own one role which it will announce via alfred inside the mesh. This will make it easier to differentiate nodes when parsing alfred data. E.g to count only normal nodes and not the gateways or servers (nodemap). A lot of things are possible.

For this the section roles in site.conf is needed:

roles = {
  default = 'node',
  list = {
    node = 'Normal Node',
    test = 'Test Node',
    backbone = 'Backbone Node',
    service = 'Service Node',
  },
},

The value of default is the role every node will initially own. This value should be part of list as well. If you want node owners to change the defined roles via config-mode you can add the package gluon-luci-node-role to your site.mk. Then, you can select one of the defined roles from a dropdown list where the right-handed value is the one which is displayed and the left-handed key the one which is configured into the system.

The role is saved in gluon-node-info.system.role. To change the role using command line do:

uci set gluon-node-info.system.role="$ROLE"
uci commit

Please replace $ROLE by the role you want the node to own.

Developer Documentation

Development Basics

Gluon’s source is kept in git repositories at GitHub.

Bug Tracker

The main repo does have issues enabled.

IRC

Gluon’s developers frequent #gluon on hackint. You’re welcome to join us!

Working with repositories

To update the repositories used by Gluon, just adjust the commit IDs in modules and rerun

make update

make update also applies the patches that can be found in the directories found in patches; the resulting branch will be called patched, while the commit specified in modules can be refered to by the branch base.

make unpatch

sets the repositories to the base branch,

make patch

re-applies the patches by resetting the patched branch to base and calling git am for the patch files. Calling make or a similar command after calling make unpatch is generally not a good idea.

After new patches have been commited on top of the patched branch (or existing commits since the base commit have been edited or removed), the patch directories can be regenerated using

make update-patches

If applying a patch fails because you have changed the base commit, the repository will be reset to the old patched branch and you can try rebasing it onto the new base branch yourself and after that call make update-patches to fix the problem.

Always call make update-patches after making changes to a module repository as make update will overwrite your commits, making git reflog the only way to recover them!

Adding support for new hardware

This page will give a short overview on how to add support for new hardware to Gluon.

Hardware requirements

Having an ath9k (or ath10k) based WLAN adapter is highly recommended, although other chipsets may also work. VAP (multiple SSID) support is a requirement. At the moment, Gluon’s scripts can’t handle devices without WLAN adapters (although such environments may also be interesting, e.g. for automated testing in virtual machines).

Adding profiles

The vast majority of devices with ath9k WLAN uses the ar71xx target of OpenWrt. If the hardware you want to add support for is also ar71xx, adding a new profile is enough.

Profiles are defined in targets/<target>-<subtarget>/profiles.mk. There are two macros used to define which images are generated: GluonProfile and GluonModel. The following examples are taken from profiles.mk of the ar71xx-generic target:

$(eval $(call GluonProfile,TLWR1043))
$(eval $(call GluonModel,TLWR1043,tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs,tp-link-tl-wr1043n-nd-v1))
$(eval $(call GluonModel,TLWR1043,tl-wr1043nd-v2-squashfs,tp-link-tl-wr1043n-nd-v2))

The GluonProfile macro takes at least one parameter, the profile name as it is defined in the Makefiles of OpenWrt (openwrt/target/linux/<target>/<subtarget>/profiles/* and openwrt/target/linux/<target>/image/Makefile). If the target you are on doesn’t define profiles (e.g. on x86), just add a single profile called Generic or similar.

It may optionally take a second parameter which defines additional packages to include for the profile (e.g. ath10k). The additional packages defined in openwrt/target/linux/<target>/<subtarget>/profiles/* aren’t used.

The GluonModel macro takes three parameters: The profile name, the suffix of the image file generated by OpenWrt (without the file extension), and the final image name of the Gluon image. The final image name must be the same that is returned by the following command.

lua -e 'print(require("platform_info").get_image_name())'

This is just so the autoupdater can work. The command has to be executed _on_ the target (eg. the hardware router with a flashed image). So you’ll first have to build an image with a guessed name, and afterwards build a new, correctly named image. On targets which aren’t supported by the autoupdater, require("platform_info").get_image_name() will just return nil and the final image name may be defined arbitrarily.

On devices with multiple WLAN adapters, care must also be taken that the primary MAC address is configured correctly. /lib/gluon/core/sysconfig/primary_mac should contain the MAC address which can be found on a label on most hardware; if it does not, /lib/gluon/upgrade/core/initial/001-sysconfig in gluon-core might need a fix. (There have also been cases in which the address was incorrect even on devices with only one WLAN adapter, in these cases an OpenWrt bug was the cause).

Adding support for new hardware targets

Adding a new target is much more complex than adding a new profile. There are two basic steps required for adding a new target:

Adjust packages

One package that definitely needs adjustments for every new target added is lua-platform-info. Just start with a copy of an existing platform info script, adjust it for the new target, and add the new target to the list of supported targets in the package Makefile.

On many targets, Gluon’s network setup scripts (mainly in the packages gluon-core and gluon-mesh-batman-adv-core) won’t run correctly without some adjustments, so better double check that everything is fine there (and the files primary_mac, lan_ifname and wan_ifname in /lib/gluon/core/sysconfig/ contain sensible values).

Add support to the build system

A directory for the new target must be created under targets, and it must be added to targets/targets.mk. In the new target directory, three files must be created:

  • config
  • profiles.mk
  • vermagic

The file config can be used to add additional, target-specific options to the OpenWrt config. It must at least select the correct target and subtarget. For profiles.mk, see Adding profiles.

The files vermagic must have the correct content so kernel modules from the upstream repositories can be installed without dependency issues. The OpenWrt version a Gluon release is based on is defined by the upstream package repo URL in include/gluon.mk (in the variable CONFIG_VERSION_REPO); at the time this documentation was written, this was barrier_breaker/14.07; whenever the package repo is updated, all vermagic files must be updated as well.

The content is a hash which is part of the version number of the kernel package. So in the case of ar71xx-generic on barrier_breaker, we look for the kernel package in the directory https://downloads.openwrt.org/barrier_breaker/14.07/ar71xx/generic/packages/base/. As the kernel package is called kernel_3.10.49-1-0114c71ed85677c9c1e4911437af4743_ar71xx.ipk, the correct vermagic string is 0114c71ed85677c9c1e4911437af4743.

After this, is should be sufficient to call make GLUON_TARGET=<target>-<subtarget> to build the images for the new target.

Upgrade scripts

Basics

After each sysupgrade (including the initial installation), Gluon will execute all scripts under /lib/gluon/upgrade. These scripts’ filenames usually begin with a 3-digit number specifying the order of execution.

To get an overview of the ordering of all scripts of all packages, the helper script contrib/lsupgrade.sh in the Gluon repository can be used, which will print all upgrade scripts’ filenames and directories. If executed on a TTY, the filename will be highlighted in green, the repository in blue and the package in red.

Best practices

  • Most upgrade scripts are written in Lua. This allows using lots of helper functions provided by LuCi and Gluon, e.g. to access the site configuration or edit UCI configuration files.
  • Whenever possible, scripts shouldn’t check if they are running for the first time, but just edit configuration files to achive a valid configuration (without overwriting configuration changes made by the user where desirable). This allows using the same code to create the initial configuration and upgrade configurations on upgrades.
  • If it is unavoidable to run different code during the initial installation, the sysconfig.gluon_version variable can be checked. This variable in nil during the initial installation and contains the previously install Gluon version otherwise. The package gluon-legacy (which is responsible for upgrades from the old firmwares of Hamburg/Kiel/Lübeck) uses the special value legacy; other packages should handle this value just as any other string.

Script ordering

These are some guidelines for the script numbers:

  • 0xx: Basic sysconfig setup
  • 1xx: Basic system setup (including basic network configuration)
  • 2xx: Wireless setup
  • 3xx: Advanced network and system setup
  • 4xx: Extended network and system setup (e.g. mesh VPN and next-node)
  • 5xx: Miscellaneous (everything not fitting into any other category)
  • 6xx .. 8xx: Currently unused
  • 9xx: Upgrade finalization

Config Mode

As of 2014.4 gluon-config-mode consists of several modules.

gluon-config-mode-core
This modules provides the core functionality for the config mode. All modules must depend on it.
gluon-config-mode-hostname
Provides a hostname field.
gluon-config-mode-autoupdater
Informs whether the autoupdater is enabled.
gluon-config-mode-mesh-vpn
Allows toggling of mesh-vpn-fastd and setting a bandwidth limit.
gluon-config-mode-geo-location
Enables the user to set the geographical location of the node.
gluon-config-mode-contact-info
Adds a field where the user can provide contact information.

In order to get a config mode close to the one found in 2014.3.x you may add these modules to your site.mk: gluon-config-mode-hostname, gluon-config-mode-autoupdater, gluon-config-mode-mesh-vpn, gluon-config-mode-geo-location, gluon-config-mode-contact-info

Writing Config Mode Modules

Config mode modules are located at /lib/gluon/config-mode/wizard and /lib/gluon/config-mode/reboot. Modules are named like 0000-name.lua and are executed in lexical order. If you take the standard set of modules, the order is, for wizard modules:

  • 0050-autoupdater-info
  • 0100-hostname
  • 0300-mesh-vpn
  • 0400-geo-location
  • 0500-contact-info

While for reboot modules it is:

  • 0100-mesh-vpn
  • 0900-msg-reboot
Wizards

Wizard modules return a UCI section. A simple module capable of changing the hostname might look like this:

local cbi = require "luci.cbi"
local uci = luci.model.uci.cursor()

local M = {}

function M.section(form)
  local s = form:section(cbi.SimpleSection, nil, nil)
  local o = s:option(cbi.Value, "_hostname", "Hostname")
  o.value = uci:get_first("system", "system", "hostname")
  o.rmempty = false
  o.datatype = "hostname"
end

function M.handle(data)
  uci:set("system", uci:get_first("system", "system"), "hostname", data._hostname)
  uci:save("system")
  uci:commit("system")
end

return M
Reboot page

Reboot modules return a function that will be called when the page is to be rendered or nil (i.e. the module is skipped):

if no_hello_world_today then
  return nil
else
  return function ()
    luci.template.render_string("Hello World!")
  end
end

WAN support

As the WAN port of a node will be connected to a user’s private network, it is essential that the node only uses the WAN when it is absolutely necessary. There are two cases in which the WAN port is used:

  • Mesh VPN (package gluon-mesh-vpn-fastd
  • DNS to resolve the VPN servers’ addresses (package gluon-wan-dnsmasq)

After the VPN connection has been established, the node should be able to reach the mesh’s DNS servers and use these for all other name resolution.

Routing tables

As a node may get IPv6 default routes both over the WAN and the mesh, Gluon uses two routing tables for IPv6. As all normal traffic should go over the mesh, the mesh routes are added to the default table (table 0). All routes on the WAN interface are put into table 1 (see /lib/gluon/upgrade/110-network in gluon-core).

There is also an ip -6 rule which routes all IPv6 traffic with a packet mark with the bit 1 set though table 1.

libpacketmark

libpacketmark is a library which can be loaded with LD_PRELOAD and will set the packet mark of all sockets created by a process in accordance with the LIBPACKETMARK_MARK environment variable. This allows setting the packet mark for processes which don’t support this themselves. The process must run as root (or at least with CAP_NET_ADMIN) for this to work.

Unfortunately there’s no nice way to set the packet mark via iptables for outgoing packets. The iptables will run after the packet has been created, to even when the packet mark is changed and the packet is re-routed, the source address won’t be rewritten to the default source address of the newly chosen route. libpacketmark avoids this issue as the packet mark will already be set when the packet is created.

gluon-wan-dnsmasq

To separate the DNS servers in the mesh from the ones on the WAN, the gluon-wan-dnsmasq package provides a secondary DNS daemon which runs on 127.0.0.1:54. It will automatically use all DNS servers explicitly configured in /etc/config/gluon-wan-dnsmasq or received via DNS/RA on the WAN port. It is important that no DNS servers for the WAN interface are configured in /etc/config/network and that peerdns is set to 0 so the WAN DNS servers aren’t leaked to the primary DNS daemon.

libpacketmark is used to make the secondary DNS daemon send its requests over the WAN interface.

The package gluon-mesh-vpn-fastd provides an iptables rule which will redirect all DNS requests from processes running with the primary group gluon-fastd to 127.0.0.1:54, thus making fastd use the secondary DNS daemon.

Internationalization support

General guidelines

  • All config mode packages must be fully translatable, with complete English and German texts.
  • All new expert mode packages be fully translatable. English texts are required, German texts recommended.
  • Existing expert mode packages should be made translatable as soon as possible.
  • The “message IDs” (which are the arguments to the translate function) should be the English texts.

i18n support in LuCI

Internationalization support can be found in the luci.i18n package. Strings are translated using the i18n.translate and i18n.translatef functions (translate for static strings, translatef for printf-like formatted string).

Example from the gluon-config-mode-geo-location package:

local i18n = require "luci.i18n"
o = s:option(cbi.Flag, "_location", i18n.translate("Show node on the map"))

Adding translation templates to Gluon packages

The i18n support is based on the standard gettext system. For each translatable package, a translation template with extension .pot can be created using the i18n-scan.pl script from the LuCI repository:

cd package/gluon-config-mode-geo-location
mkdir i18n
cd i18n
../../../packages/luci/build/i18n-scan.pl ../files > gluon-config-mode-geo-location.pot

The entries in the template can be reordered after the generation if desirable. Lots of standard translations like “Cancel” are already available in the LuCI base translation file (see packages/luci/po/templates/base.pot) and can be removed from the template.

In addition, some additions to the Makefile must be made. Instead of OpenWrt’s default package.mk, the Gluon version $(GLUONDIR)/include/package.mk must be used. The i18n files must be installed and PKG_CONFIG_DEPENDS must be added:

...
include $(GLUONDIR)/include/package.mk

PKG_CONFIG_DEPENDS += $(GLUON_I18N_CONFIG)
...
define Build/Compile
  $(call GluonBuildI18N,gluon-config-mode-geo-location,i18n)
endef

define Package/gluon-config-mode-geo-location/install
  ...
  $(call GluonInstallI18N,gluon-config-mode-geo-location,$(1))
endef
...

Adding translations

A new translation file for a template can be added using the msginit command:

cd package/gluon-config-mode-geo-location/i18n
msginit -l de

This will create the file de.po in which the translations can be added.

The translation file can be updated to a new template version using the msgmerge command:

msgmerge -U de.po gluon-config-mode-geo-location.pot

After the merge, the translation file should be checked for “fuzzy matched” entries where the original English texts have changed. All entries from the the translation file should be translated in the .po file (or removed from it, so the original English texts are displayed instead).

Adding support for new languages

A list of all languages supported by LuCI can be found in the include/package.mk file of the Gluon repository. Adding translations for these languages is straightforward using the msginit command.

For other languages, support must be added tu LuCI first, which constitutes completely translating the base.pot. Please contact the upstream LuCI maintainers if you’d like to do this.

Releases

Gluon 2015.1.1

Added hardware support

ar71xx-generic
  • TP-Link
    • TL-WA830RE (v1)

New features

The x86-generic and x86-kvm_guest images now support two ethernet interfaces by default. If two interfaces exist during the first boot, eth0 will be used as LAN and eth1 as WAN.

Bugfixes

  • Fix German “Expert Mode” label (was “Export Mode”)
  • Fix download of OpenSSL during build (because of broken OpenSSL download servers...)
  • Fix ABI break causing kernel panics when trying to use network-related modules from the official OpenWrt repository (like kmod-pppoe)
  • Fix race conditions breaking parallel build occasionally
  • A broken network configuration would be generated when an older Gluon version was updated to 2015.1 with mesh_on_lan enabled in site.conf
  • Minor announced/alfred JSON format fixes (don’t output empty lists where empty objects would be expected)

Gluon 2015.1

Added hardware support

Gluon v2015.1 is the first release to officially support hardware that is not handled by the ar71xx-generic OpenWrt target. This also means that ar71xx-generic isn’t the default target anymore, the GLUON_TARGET variable must be set for all runs of make and make clean now.

ar71xx-generic
  • Allnet
    • ALL0315N
  • D-Link
    • DIR-615 (C1)
  • GL-Inet
    • 6408A (v1)
    • 6416A (v1)
    • WRT160NL
  • Netgear
    • WNDR3700 (v1, v2)
    • WNDR3800
    • WNDRMAC (v2)
  • TP-Link
    • TL-MR3220 (v2)
    • TL-WA701N/ND (v1)
    • TL-WA860RE (v1)
    • TL-WA901N/ND (v2, v3)
    • TL-WR743N/ND (v1, v2)
    • TL-WR941N/ND (v5)
    • TL-WR2543N/ND (v1)
  • Ubiquiti
    • Nanostation M XW
    • Loco M XW
    • UniFi AP Pro
ar71xx-nand
  • Netgear
    • WNDR3700 (v4)
    • WNDR4300 (v1)
mpc85xx-generic
  • TP-Link
    • TL-WDR4900 (v1)
x86-generic
  • x86-generic
  • x86-virtualbox
  • x86-vmware
x86-kvm_guest
  • x86-kvm

New features

Multilingual config mode

All config and expert mode modules contain both English and German texts now. The English locale should always be enabled in site.mk (as English is the fallback language), German can be enabled in addition using the GLUON_LANGS setting.

The language shown is autmatically determined from the headers sent by the user’s browser.

Mesh-on-LAN

Gluon now supports meshing using a node’s LAN ports. It can be enabled by default in site.conf, and configured by the user using the gluon-luci-portconfig expert mode package.

Please note that nodes without the mesh-on-lan feature enabled must never be connected via their LAN ports.

Extended WLAN configuration

The new client_disabled and mesh_disabled keys in the wifi24 and wifi5 sections allow to disable the client and mesh networks by default, which may make sense for images for special installations.

The new package gluon-luci-wifi-config allows the user to change these settings; in addition, the WLAN adapters’ transmission power can be changed in this package.

fastd “performance mode”

The new package gluon-luci-mesh-vpn-fastd allows the user to switch between the security and performance VPN settions. In performance mode, the method null will be prepended to the method list.

The new option configurable in the fastd_mesh_vpn section of site.conf must be set to true so firmware upgrades don’t overwrite the method list completely (non-null methods will still be overwritten). Adding the gluon-luci-mesh-vpn-fastd package enforces this setting.

Altitude setting in gluon-config-mode-geo-location

The gluon-config-mode-geo-location config mode module now contains an optional altitude field.

gluon-announced rework

The gluon-announced package has been reworked to allow querying it from anywhere in the mesh. In contrast to gluon-alfred, it is based on a query-response model (the master multicasts a query, the nodes respond), while gluon-alfred uses periodic announcements.

For now, we recommend including both gluon-alfred and gluon-announced in Gluon-based firmwares, until gluon-announced is ready to replace gluon-alfred completely, and software like the ffmap backend has been adjusted accordingly.

Nested peer groups

Nested peer groups for the fastd-mesh-vpn-fastd package can now be configured in site.conf, each with its own peer limit. This allows to add additional constaints, for example to connect to 2 peers altogether, but only 1 peer in each data center.

Autoupdater manual branch override

When running the updater manually on the command line, the branch to use can now be overridden using the -b option.

Bugfixes

Accidental factory reset fix

Pressing a node’s reset button for more than 5 seconds would completely reset a node’s configuration under certain conditions.

WAN IPv6 issues

The WAN port would stop to respond to IPv6 packets sometimes, also breaking IPv6 VPN connectivity.

WDR4900 WAN MAC address

The MAC address on the WAN port of the WDR4900 was broken, making this device unusable for mesh-on-wan configurations.

Site changes

  • site.conf

    • hostname_prefix is now optional, and is concatenated directly with the generated node ID, in particular no hyphen is inserted anymore. If you want to keep the old behaviour, you have to append the hyphen to the hostname_prefix field of your site.conf.

    • mesh_vpn_fastd: The default peer group name backbone isn’t hardcoded anymore, any group name can be used. Instead, the fastd_mesh_vpn table must now contain an element groups, for example:

      fastd_mesh_vpn = {
          methods = {'salsa2012+umac'},
          mtu = 1426,
          groups = {
              backbone = {
                  limit = 2,
                  peers = {
                      -- ...
                  }
              }
          }
      }
      
    • config_mode: The config mode messages aren’t configured in site.conf anymore. Instead, they are defined language-specific gettext files in the i18n subdirectory of the site configuration (see Config mode texts).

    • roles: The display strings for the node roles aren’t configured in the site.conf anymore, but in the site i18n files. The site.conf section becomes:

      roles = {
          default = 'foo',
          list = {
              'foo',
              'bar',
          }
      }
      

      The display string use i18n message IDs like gluon-luci-node-role:role:foo and gluon-luci-node-role:role:bar.

  • site.mk

    • gluon-mesh-batman-adv-15 is now the recommended batman-adv version for new Gluon deployments.
    • The packages gluon-setup-mode and gluon-config-mode-core must now be added to GLUON_SITE_PACKAGES explicitly (to allow replacing them with community-specific implementations).
    • The new GLUON_LANGS variable selects the config mode languages to include. It defaults to en, setting it to en de will select both the English and German locales. en must always be included.

Internals

New upgrade script directory

The distinction between initial and invariant scripts has been removed, all scripts are now run on each upgrade. Instead of having one script directory per package, all upgrade scripts lie in /lib/gluon/upgrade now, so it is possible to define the run order across packages.

Merged package repository

The Gluon-specific packages have been moved to the package directory of the Gluon main repository. The packages repository now only contains packages that will be submitted to the OpenWrt upstream eventually.

Known Issues

Alfred/respondd crashes

https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/issues/177

Occasional alfred crashes may still occur. As this is caused by a kernel issue, we suspect that respondd, which gluon-announced is based on, is affected in the same way.

Ignored TX power offset on Ubiquiti AirMax devices

https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/issues/94

The default transmission power setting on many of these devices is too high. It may be necessary to make manual adjustments, for example using the gluon-luci-wifi-config package. The values shown by gluon-luci-wifi-config generally include the TX power offset (amplifier and antenna gain) where available, but on many devices the offset is inaccurate or unavailable.

Gluon 2014.4

Added (and removed) hardware support

  • Buffalo
    • WZR-HP-AG300H / WZR-600DHP
    • WZR-HP-G450H
  • D-Link
    • DIR-615 (E1) support had to be dropped
  • TP-LINK
    • CPE210/220/510/520 (v1)
    • TL-MR3040 (v2
    • TL-WA750RE (v1)
    • TL-WA801N/ND (v2)
    • TL-WA850RE (v1)
    • TL-WR703N (v1)
    • TL-WR710N (v1)
    • TL-WR1043N/ND (v2)

New features

OpenWrt Barrier Breaker

Switching to the new OpenWrt release 14.09 (“Barrier Breaker”) has yielded lots of updates for both the kernel and most packages. Besides better performance, this has also greatly improved stability (far less out-of-memory issues!).

Modular config mode

The old gluon-config-mode package has been split into five small packages, each providing a single section of the config mode form. This simplifies removing or replacing parts of the wizard.

See the Site changes section for details.

Experimental support for batman-adv compat 15

As batman-adv has broken compatiblity starting with batman-adv 2014.0 (bumping the “compat level” to 15), Gluon users must decide which batman-adv version to use. The package for the old batman-adv version gluon-mesh-batman-adv has been renamed to gluon-mesh-batman-adv-14, the new version can be used with gluon-mesh-batman-adv-15.

Please note that batman-adv compat 15 still isn’t tested very well (and there are known bugs in the current release 2014.3), so for now we still recommend using compat 14 in “production” environments.

fastd v16

Besides other new features and bugfixes, fastd v16 support the new authentication method “UMAC”. We recommend switching from the old salsa2012+gmac and null+salsa2012+gmac methods to the new salsa2012+umac and null+salsa2012+umac as UMAC is much faster and even more secure than GMAC.

Private WLAN

The new package gluon-luci-private-wifi allows to configure a private WLAN with WPA-PSK in the expert mode which is bridged with the WAN uplink.

Embedding SSH keys

Using gluon-authorized-keys it is possible to embed predefined SSH public keys to firmware images. If gluon-config-mode-* is left out images will be ready to mesh after the first boot with SSH running for further configuration.

Status page resolves nodenames

The tools gluon-announced and gluon-neighbour-info are now available. Using them enables the status page to resolve hostnames and IPs of a nodes’ neighbours.

This will also work on devices with multiple wireless interfaces.

Bugfixes

  • Expert Mode: Fixed all SSH keys being removed when a password was set
  • gluon-mesh-vpn-fastd: Fixed VPN peers removed from the site.conf not being removed from /etc/config/fastd
  • TL-LINK TL-WDR3600/4300: Added workaround for reboot issues
  • Improved stability (due to switch to OpenWrt Barrier Breaker)

Site changes

  • site.mk
    • Obsolete packages:
      • gluon-config-mode
      • gluon-mesh-batman-adv
    • Recommended new packages:
      • gluon-config-mode-autoupdater
      • gluon-config-mode-hostname
      • gluon-config-mode-mesh-vpn
      • gluon-config-mode-geo-location
      • gluon-config-mode-contact-info
      • gluon-mesh-batman-adv-14 (specify this before all other packages in the site.mk!)

Internals

The switch to Barrier Breaker has led to a multitude of changes all over Gluon:

  • The config mode/setup mode is now started by an own set of init scripts in /lib/gluon/setup-mode/rc.d run by procd
  • Many tools and services used by Gluon have been replaced by our own implementations to reduce the size of the images:
    • ethtool has been replaced by our minimal Lua library lua-ethtool-stats
    • tc has been replaced by our minimal implementation gluon-simple-tc
    • radvd has been replaced by our minimal implementation gluon-radvd

Known Issues

Alfred crashes

https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/issues/177

Alfred may still crash unconditionally. Some measures have been taken to aid but the core problem hasn’t been analyzed yet.

Out of memory / batman-adv memory leaks

https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/issues/216

In some (hopefully rare!) cases batman-adv may still leak memory associated with global TT entries. This may result in kernel panics or out-of-memory conditions.

Ignored tx-power offset on Ubiquiti AirMax devices

https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/issues/94

There is still no OpenWRT support for determining the transmission power offsets on Ubiquiti AirMax devices (Bullet M2, Picostation M2, Nanostation (loco) M2, ...). Use Gluon with caution on these devices! Manual adjustment may be required.

Gluon 2014.3.1

This is a bugfix release.

Bugfixes

  • gluon-announced zombie process bug

    gluon-announced was creating zombie processes when answering requests, causing issues with the new status page which is currently in development.

  • fastd peers removed from site.conf weren’t removed correctly from the fastd configuration on firmware upgrades

  • Expert Mode: setting a password will not remove SSH keys anymore

  • alfred has been updated to 2014.3.0

    We hope this solves the alfred stability issues noted by several people.

  • gluon-ebtables-filter-ra-dhcp and gluon-ebtables-filter-multicast have been fixed to allow DHCPv6 to work

  • Another ath9k patch has been added, which might further improve WLAN stability and performance

New features

  • Support for static WAN setups instead of (DHCP/Router Advertisement) has been added; configuration is possible on the port config page of the Expert Mode.

Site changes

  • site.conf
    • The new boolean option fastd_mesh_vpn.enabled allows enabling the mesh VPN by default. This value is optional; if it isn’t specified, the mesh VPN will be disabled.

Gluon 2014.3

New hardware support

  • Linksys WRT160NL

New features

New autoupdater

The autoupdater has been rewritten.

Two new fields have been added to the manifest:

DATE
Specifies the time and date the update was released. make manifest will take care of setting it to the correct value.
PRIORITY
Specifies the maximum number of days until the update should be attempted (thus lower numbers mean the priority is higher). It must be set either in site.mk or on the make manifest command line.

Updates will be attempted at night, between 04:00 and 5:00, with a specific probability. When less than PRIORITY days have passed (calculated using DATE and the current time), the probability will proportional to the time passed. I.e. the update probability will start at 0 and slowly increase to 1 until PRIORITY days have passed. From then, the probability will be fixed at 1.

Note: For the new update logic to work, a valid NTP server reachable over the mesh (using IPv6) must be configured in site.conf. If the autoupdater is unable to determine the correct time, it will fall back to a behavior similar to the old implementation (i.e. hourly update attempts).

Seperation of announced data

The data announced by alfred has been split into two data types:

  • nodeinfo (type 158) contains all static information about a node
  • statistics (type 159) contains all dynamic information about a node

Both types also contain a new field node_id which contains an arbitrary unique ID (currently the primary MAC address, sans colons) which can be used to match the nodeinfo with statistics information.

gluon-announced

A new daemon has been added in a new package gluon-announced. This daemon can be used for querying the nodeinfo data of a node via link-local multicast on the ad-hoc interfaces.

At the moment, this daemon is not used, but we recommend including it in site.mk nevertheless as we plan to implement a new status page showing some information about neighbor nodes in the next version of Gluon.

VPN over IPv6

It is now possible to use fastd in IPv6 WAN networks. This still needs testing, but it should work well.

Please note that the MTU of 1426 used by many communities for VPN over IPv4 is too big for IPv6 as the IPv6 header is 20 bytes longer (fastd over IPv4 has an overhead of 66 bytes, fastd over IPv6 has an overhead of 86 bytes).

More modular Config Mode

The package gluon-config-mode has been split into multiple packages to simplify the development of extensions. The low-level logic (handling of the button, starting the services for the config mode) has been moved into a new package gluon-setup-mode, while gluon-config-mode only contains the frontend now.

Extended Expert Mode

The Expert Mode now has a nice info page. In addition, the new package gluon-luci-portconfig has been added which allows simple configuration of batman-adv on the WAN interface.

Site validators

The content of the site.conf is now validated when the images are built to make it less likely to accidentially build broken images.

gluon-firewall

The package gluon-firewall has been removed. Its features are now part of the packages gluon-core and gluon-mesh-batman-adv.

gluon-ath9k-workaround

This package installs a cron job which tries to recognize ath9k hangs and restart the WLAN while recording some information. It is very rudimentary and we can’t really recommend using it on “production” nodes.

Bugfixes

Improved ath9k stability

Multiple bugs in the WLAN driver ath9k have been fixed upstream. This should greatly improve the WLAN stability.

odhcp6c 50 day bug

An important update for odhcp6c fixes a bug which caused Gluon nodes to lose their IPv6 addresses on br-client after an uptime of 50 days, making the nodes unable perform automated updates (besides other issues).

IPv6 preference

Commands like wget now prefer IPv6 for domains with both AAAA and A records, allowing to use such domains for the autoupdater URLs and as NTP servers in site.conf.

Site changes

  • site.conf
    • The probability fields for the autoupdater branches can be dropped as they aren’t used anymore
    • The type of the enabled options of the gluon-simple-tc configuration has been changed to boolean, so true and false must be used instead of 1 and 0 now
  • site.mk
    • Obsolete packages:
      • gluon-firewall
    • Recommended new packages:
      • gluon-announced
      • gluon-luci-portconfig
    • GLUON_PRIORITY must be set in site.mk or on the make manifest commandline. Use GLUON_PRIORITY ?= 0 in site.mk to allow overriding from the commandline.

Internals

Some internal changes not mentioned before which are interesting for developers:

  • Many more shell scripts have been converted to Lua

  • gluon-mesh-vpn-fastd now uses the new package gluon-wan-dnsmasq, which provides a secondary DNS server on port 54 that is only reachable from localhost and uses the DNS servers on the WAN interface for everything. This allowed us to remove some ugly hacks which were making the DNS servers used depend on the domain being resolved.

    For IPv6, the default route is now controlled via packet marks, so the secondary DNS server and fastd set the packet mark so they use the default route provided on the WAN interface instead of the mesh.

Supported Devices & Architectures

ar71xx-generic

  • Allnet
    • ALL0315N
  • Buffalo
    • WZR-HP-AG300H / WZR-600DHP
    • WZR-HP-G450H
  • D-Link
    • DIR-825 (B1)
    • DIR-615 (C1)
  • GL-Inet
    • 6408A (v1)
    • 6416A (v1)
  • Linksys
    • WRT160NL
  • Netgear
    • WNDR3700 (v1, v2)
    • WNDR3800
    • WNDRMAC (v2)
  • TP-Link
    • CPE210 (v1)
    • CPE220 (v1)
    • CPE510 (v1)
    • CPE520 (v1)
    • TL-MR3020 (v1)
    • TL-MR3040 (v1, v2)
    • TL-MR3220 (v1, v2)
    • TL-MR3420 (v1, v2)
    • TL-WA701N/ND (v1)
    • TL-WA750RE (v1)
    • TL-WA801N/ND (v2)
    • TL-WA850RE (v1)
    • TL-WA860RE (v1)
    • TL-WA901N/ND (v2, v3)
    • TL-WDR3500 (v1)
    • TL-WDR3600 (v1)
    • TL-WDR4300 (v1)
    • TL-WR1043N/ND (v1, v2)
    • TL-WR703N (v1)
    • TL-WR710N (v1)
    • TL-WR740N (v1, v3, v4)
    • TL-WR741N/ND (v1, v2, v4)
    • TL-WR743N/ND (v1, v2)
    • TL-WR841N/ND (v3, v5, v7, v8, v9)
    • TL-WR842N/ND (v1, v2)
    • TL-WR941N/ND (v2, v3, v4, v5)
    • TL-WR2543N/ND (v1)
  • Ubiquiti
    • Bullet M2
    • Nanostation M2
    • Nanostation M XW
    • Loco M XW
    • Picostation M2
    • Rocket M2
    • UniFi AP
    • UniFi AP Pro
    • UniFi AP Outdoor

ar71xx-nand

  • Netgear
    • WNDR3700 (v4)
    • WNDR4300 (v1)

mpc85xx-generic

  • TP-Link
    • TL-WDR4900 (v1)

x86-generic

  • x86-generic
  • x86-virtualbox
  • x86-vmware

See also: x86 support

x86-kvm_guest

  • x86-kvm

See also: x86 support

License

See LICENCE

Indices and tables