[Berlin-wireless] Idea of making the firmware maintainance easier ?!

[Bluse]

Hello Freifunkers,

Basti and I want to discuss the following firmware idea with the Freifunk
crew.
So please reply with comments, pro&cons and wishes.

Motivation:
Since a while, we both are working in the admin group of Freifunk mesh
networks with nodes from 40 to 200. If there is a new firmware out and we
want to deploy it - you get quit busy. The process of updating all the nodes
is quite time consuming. You have to know the hardware-version of your
router, then download the
regarding firmware image, than flashing, then logging in, then reinstalling
your previous ipkg packets. We want to split this update process into the
process per single node and the overall process for the whole network. This
first idea is reganrding the update process per node, which is done
manually, without having a software distribution function.

Idea:
Basti created a proper working script to check the routers hardware and
specifications while boot up process and installs automatically the former
ipkg packets. In detail, the script checks the type of the router (wrt54g
1.0 , wrt54g x, buffalo, asus ...), reads out the memory capacity, checks if
there is a usb-port available, ethernet ports... We managed to built just
only one firmware, fitting to all kinds of routers, we do know now about to
be out there.

the SVN:
http://tinyurl.com/yvfbjk
the script, to check/repair hardware-settings:

(sorry, there are some weimarnetz-tweaks in there...)
http://tinyurl.com/2ehq3b

Advantages:
-there is no need for a hardware specific firmware anymore. All Freifunkers
just have to download one single firmware image file to flash all kinds of
hardware they may have. Of course you have to change the file extension from
*.bin to *.trx in the case of flashing an Asus router.
-if there is a USB port in your router, the  necessary ipkg packets gets
installed under the condition you have a at least on internet connection to
your router to connect the repository.
-If we would have a NVRAM variable holding all the information of what ipkg
packets are installed, the script will reinstall all the packets
automatically. So if you have set up a router and just want to update the
firmware to a newer release.. why reinstalling all the ipkg´s manually ? ...
We should change the updating process to the one, having all the ipkg´s
back after a new firmware release is installed.

 The script is attached .. so have a look. In the Freifunk-Weimar community
they already use this script suceccfully since some weeks. And I could
imaging that there are some admin out there would love that as I do.

Determine userwishes, way:

(there are features: install all the packages, which were installed before
flashing, and: install package-list, what firmware thinks...)
http://tinyurl.com/34qhsr

Installing the wished packages:
http://tinyurl.com/2jqy6j

15min-croncheck, for hanging wget-tasks:
http://tinyurl.com/2shkmg


Bye Basti & Bluse