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Installing OpenWRT on a Raspberry Pi 4

Shenzhen, China

Downloading the Image

OpenWRT

ModelVersionCurrent ReleaseFirmware OpenWrt InstallFirmware OpenWrt Upgrade
Raspberry Pi 4B21.02.0LinkLink

Direct Download Link: openwrt-21.02.0-bcm27xx-bcm2711-rpi-4-squashfs-factory

How to flash OpenWrt to MicroSD card

On a Linux desktop and Windows desktop:

  1. Unpack the img file
  2. Insert your MicroSD
  3. Use BalenaEtcher software to write the img file to your MicroSD card's. [https://www.balena.io/etcher/]
  4. Insert the MicroSD into your Pi4B and plug in the power

Connect to OpenWRT

Connect your PC to your Raspberry Pi via an Ethernet cable and change your network settings to an address inside 192.168.1.* - e.g. on Windows:

OpenWRT

The Default IP of your OpenWRT server is 192.168.1.1 - connect to it with your SSH client ssh root@192.168.1.1:

BusyBox v1.33.1 (2021-08-31 22:20:08 UTC) built-in shell (ash)

  _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 -----------------------------------------------------
 OpenWrt 21.02.0, r16279-5cc0535800
 -----------------------------------------------------
=== WARNING! =====================================
There is no root password defined on this device!
Use the "passwd" command to set up a new password
in order to prevent unauthorized SSH logins.
--------------------------------------------------
root@OpenWrt:~#

And the WebUI is also available under this address:

OpenWRT

Now we can change the login and assign a static IP address inside our own Network IP address space:

passwd root

uci set network.lan.ipaddr=192.168.2.245
uci commit
/etc/init.d/network restart

Unplug the LAN cable, switch your PC back to it's original IP and connect both to your router. The OpenWRT WebUI should now be available on the Ip address you set above e.g. 192.168.2.245:

OpenWRT

I noticed that OpenWRT started giving out DHCP leases - You can disable this in the Interfaces/LAN settings Ignore interface: Disable DHCP for this interface.:

OpenWRT

And setting everything to disabled in the DHCP/IPv6 Settings:

OpenWRT

In the top menu go to System → Startup, and disable firewall, dnsmasq and odhcpd in the list of startup scripts. It should be noted that even though they are disabled, flashing a new image to the device will re-enable them. Click the Save and Apply button. Hard-Restart your router if you're not able to connect anymore.

Adding WiFi Clients

cat /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
update_config=1
ap_scan=1
autoscan=periodic:10
disable_scan_offload=1
network={
        ssid="OpenWrt"
        psk="astrongpassword"
}

wpa_supplicant -B -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dnl80211

WPA CLI

wpa_cli reconfigure

wpa_cli reassociate

wpa_cli

wpa_cli v2.9
Copyright (c) 2004-2019, Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> and contributors

This software may be distributed under the terms of the BSD license.
See README for more details.


Selected interface 'wlan0'

Interactive mode

> add_network
1
> set_network 0 ssid "OpenWrt"
OK
> set_network 0 psk "astrongpassword"
OK
> set_network 0 ieee80211w 2
OK
> set_network 0 key_mgmt SAE
OK
> enable_network 0
OK
> reconnect
OK

set_network 0 key_mgmt WPA-PSK-SHA256 for mixed WPA2/WPA3 mode