Compiling a Custom OpenWrt Image

If you are managing many devices and customizing your openwisp-config configuration by hand on each new device, you should switch to using a custom OpenWrt firmware image that includes openwisp-config and its precompiled configuration file, this strategy has a few important benefits:

you can save yourself the effort of installing and configuring openwisp-config on each device
you can enable Automatic registration by setting shared_secret, hence saving extra time and effort to register each device on the controller app
if you happen to reset the firmware to initial settings, these precompiled settings will be restored as well

The following procedure illustrates how to compile a custom OpenWrt image with a precompiled minimal /etc/config/openwisp configuration file:

git clone https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt.git openwrt
cd openwrt
git checkout <openwrt-branch>

# include precompiled file
mkdir -p files/etc/config
cat <<EOF > files/etc/config/openwisp
config controller 'http'
    # change the values of the following 2 options
    option url 'https://demo.openwisp.io'
    option shared_secret 'nzXTd7qpXKPNdrWZDsYoMxbGpOrEVjeD'
EOF

# configure feeds
echo "src-git openwisp https://github.com/openwisp/openwisp-config.git" > feeds.conf
cat feeds.conf.default >> feeds.conf
./scripts/feeds update -a
./scripts/feeds install -a
# replace with your desired arch target
arch="ar71xx"
echo "CONFIG_TARGET_$arch=y" > .config
echo "CONFIG_PACKAGE_openwisp-config=y" >> .config
make defconfig
# compile with verbose output
make -j1 V=s

Automate Compilation for Different Organizations

If you are working with OpenWISP, there are chances you may be compiling several images for different organizations (clients or non-profit communities) and use cases (full featured, mesh, 4G, etc).

Doing this by hand without tracking your changes can lead you into a very disorganized and messy situation.

To alleviate this pain you can use ansible-openwisp2-imagegenerator.

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