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.