Omega2 - LEDE or OpenWrt?
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Now that the Omega2's are approaching, I wonder what software will run on them? Will it still be OpenWrt, or will it be LEDE?
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Definitely something to think about.
Since the infrastructure is already laid out, my guess is OnionOS v2 for the Omega2 will still be based on OpenWRT. However, I could very well see a parallel work for an OnionOS v3 based on LEDE being in the pipeline to address remaining issues, unanswered questions and long awaited requests by Omega1 users (that Omega2 users will perhaps request as well).
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Choosing between LEDE and OpenWrt is not so much about technology (the LEDE fork hasn't divereged significantly overall), but more about communities and future activity.
The interesting stuff regarding the MT7688 chip in the Omega2 seems to happen in LEDE now. MediaTek (the maker of the MT7688) is one of the few SoC makers actually betting on open source, and thus supporting the idea of open source WiFi drivers. At least that's what I learned from this talk from last years 32C3 by Felix Fietkau, who's definitely active in LEDE working on topics relevant for Omega2's ramips/mt7688 platform.
With LEDE #1 release still ahead, I admit it might be too early for Onion to switch the Omega standard FW to it.
However, looking at the OpenWRT-Packages repo it seems we'll get the cutting egde opensource WiFi driver Felix was mentioning in his talk for the Omega2
Anyway, as soon as the Omega2 platform support (the "profile") is pushed to either tree, it will be easy to port it to the other. I'm already building my own LEDE and OpenWrt images for the Omega1 and another MT7688 target, and I'd definitely be willing to help bringing Omega2 to LEDE (if it hasn't already happened).
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Hi @luz
Would you mind sharing your OpenWRT images for Omega1?
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@luz sorry how can i add a tag for my question ?
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@Venet I would share the images if they were in a generally usable state - but at this time these are highly experimental with application specific software of my own, and pretty much everything else disabled.
However, creating an OpenWRT image for the Omega1 is pretty straightforward (only somewhat compile time intensive and needing ~15GB of disk space) as described in the onion wiki. Easiest way is to use a Linux box or a Linux VM, but it also works on Mac OS X within a case sensitive volume (OS X file systems are not case sensitive by default - so you need to create a case sensitive disk image to put OpenWrt or LEDE into).
The only real difficulty is that Onion hasn't published the OpenWrt .config file yet, so what you get is a stock OpenWrt that runs on the Omega1, but not the nice setup the official Onion image has.
All the extras are available in the Onion feed, but need to be manually configured correctly on top of the standard OpenWrt config. I did a few attempts in the beginning but failed and gave up for the time being - at the moment I run my experiments on stock OpenWrt/LEDE.
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I would generally concur with what @luz said in Omega2 - LEDE or OpenWrt? in particular in relation too:
The only real difficulty is that Onion hasn't published the OpenWrt .config file yet, so what you get is a stock OpenWrt that runs on the Omega1, but not the nice setup the official Onion image has.
All the extras are available in the Onion feed, but need to be manually configured correctly on top of the standard OpenWrt config. I did a few attempts in the beginning but failed and gave up for the time being - at the moment I run my experiments on stock OpenWrt/LEDEIt would be really helpful if Onion made this information available - this has been and outstanding request for quite some time
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@Kit-Bishop said in Omega2 - LEDE or OpenWrt?:
It would be really helpful if Onion made this information available - this has been and outstanding request for quite some time
I do agree ... and do belief that this miss behavior could break them the neck with their project.
What brings a good hardware with bad working software ... and vise-versa? If they not share knowledge with the community, the community will slow down and do the same.
If there would be a unbranded version of the OS and available with all the configuration information the community could go on and progress.
I guess the big "break" was made here. It says:
The Omega now supports NodeJS version 4.3.1!!
The new version requires some updates to the Linux kernel, so you will need to do a full firmware update to prepare your Omega for the latest NodeJS. To reflect this, the Omega firmware version has been changed to 0.0.7"Born to get kernel mismatch"
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Things are moving! Have a look at the github repo!
This does answer my original question - YES, Omega2 does use LEDE! Great!
(see paragraph "the operating system")Now I hope the LEDE fork actually used for the Omega2 will soon get available. Maybe it will be a while until Omega2 support becomes part of LEDE mainline (fully understandable, preparing and submitting patches takes time).
But please just publish Onion's LEDE fork as-is soon, including the .config. So the community can actually participate and contribute to the ongoing project.
@Luciano-S Sticking to an old kernel just to avoid kernel mismatch can't be the solution either. It all hinges on public availability of the exact same LEDE/OpenWrt tree + config which Onion uses internally for the firmware, that allows building packages against whatever kernel is used on the Omega. So again - development in the open is the key
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Hey! Updates are December 4th! Isn't it exciting!
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@Lazar-Demin I hit a road block for using self-built LEDE on Omega2:
The omega2-ctrl package in the onion feed references sources at github.com:OnionIoT/omega2-ctrl.git, but this repo apparently does not exist.
I guess that's just an oversight you can fix quickly - can you please push omega2-ctrl.git to github? Thanks!
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just wanted to mention - in the meantime @onion did publish omega2-ctrl - thanks
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And: Omega2/Omega2+ support is now in the official LEDE 17.01 release
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@luz Hi Luz, I've been playing with a recently unboxed Omega2+ these past couple days. I started with @WereCatf repo then saw your message that it was in in official LEDE so I went and pulled it down last night, built an image and finally got to boot it up tonight on a flight. I've noticed that with with @WereCatf repo things seem to "just work" a bit better. For example, I can't join a network in 'sta' mode ('ap' works) with LEDE but could with the original repo. Would you mind providing your .config and /etc/config/wireless&network that you have working successfully?
Thank you,
Nick
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What does the official LEDE support brings ? If I build an image, will I get the exact same functionality as the original Omega2 ?
Is there a way to obtain the exact same image as the official firmware ?
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@Pierre-Rossinès said in Omega2 - LEDE or OpenWrt?:
What does the official LEDE support brings ? If I build an image, will I get the exact same functionality as the original Omega2 ?
Not at all. You get only the basic LEDE support, which is a network router targeted firmware (with a web-ui, if you enable LuCi).
The thing is - LEDE is highly configurable, there are literally thousands of options to include/exclude support for all sorts of things in a selector utility (make menuconfig). Plus there are external so-called feeds carrying even more options. @onion have created their own (public) feed with their specific extensions. The only problem is, the Omega2's
.configfile, which defines what to pick from all these sources to make an image, is still not published.Is there a way to obtain the exact same image as the official firmware ?
Once the
.configonion is using is available, yes.
Without that - in theory, maybe, if somebody has a lot of patience to figure out manually which packages and options need to be selected to get to the same result.
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@luz Mmmno. We still do not have the source-code for all the packages, let alone the Wi-Fi driver. Having the.config file would not give us much of anything we didn't already have! We already know what packages the images include, we know at least most of the kernel-config options they use, but.config does not give access to any of the actual code they are holding back or the changes they made to the actual source code of LEDE itself.
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@luz Thanks. Does LEDE include the firmware flashing tool ? I have no dock nor do I have a serial to USB chip, so I would appreciate to be able to flash the official firmware back if I mess something up while using LEDE.
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@WereCatf oh! Must have been wishful thinking on my part. I thought the missing parts had appeared in the meantime (but indeed, I forgot the WiFi driver, should have known that).
What else is missing? I must admit I haven't kept track of what has and what hasn't appeared on github, because I'm happy with stock LEDE. So - sorry for the misinformation and raising false hopes.Still, a published
.configor diffconfig would help, because at least we could build an image that is identical up to those missing parts.@administrators what's the problem here? Are there roadblocks? Just lacking time to polish the now missing stuff for publishing?
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@luz said in Omega2 - LEDE or OpenWrt?:
What else is missing? I must admit I haven't kept track of what has and what hasn't appeared on github, because I'm happy with stock LEDE. So - sorry for the misinformation and raising false hopes.
I haven't checked all the packages that are missing, but e.g. the source-codes for the Arduino-dock and some other packages are missing -- access denied, if you try to access the respective repos.
Still, a published
.configor diffconfig would help, because at least we could build an image that is identical up to those missing parts.I tried to tell you, it still wouldn't be identical. .config only tracks configuration-changes that LEDE is aware of, it doesn't track any changes to the actual source-code nor any kernel-config changes outside of the pre-defined ones that LEDE-supports. So no, it still wouldn't be identical, they have made changes that the LEDE configuration-tools are not aware of and thus wouldn't be tracked in .config.
