Tomato 1.24

Ik las net op Tweakers.net dat versie 1.24 van Tomato is vrijgegeven. Ziet er leuk uit.

Het is beschikbaar via de site http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato.

Volgens de spec alleen beschikbaar voor de Premium. Helaas voor mij, maar wie het wil proberen... Schrijf even een reactie.

Het ondersteund wel de WL500GE dus misschien iets om uit te proberen op het terras 's avonds.

OpenWRT mailserver

Just finished getting my WL500gp to work as a mail server. Features so far:

• Secure IMAP (using SSL)
• SMTP server (receive mail for my domain, forward local mail to provider's smtp server (smart host))
  

Ingredients:

• Assus WL500G premium
• OpenWRT Kamikaze 7.09
• PC with linux (kubuntu)
• NAS for storage
• Free server SSL certificate from http://www.cacert.org/
  

What I did:

• Install OpenWRT (Kamikaze 7.09 release)
  
• Install OpenWRT packages (ipkg) for nfs
• Get NFS to work, so i can mount filesystems on my NAS, I mount /var/mail from there. (Also put a swap file on the NAS disk, mouted using -o loop, since I expect that with all services running that I (eventually) want, peak memory usage could easily exceed the 32MB my router has installed)
  
• Install dovecot (ipkg), and configure it (using my SSL server certificate)
• I didn't find a ready-to-use package for a smtp server, so had to build one myself.

I decided to go for exim, since I hae experience with it, it is flexible, and performance/resource usage seems to be within limits (according to articles on the net). Cross compiling it was not trivial, though. Either I could try to get a generic cross-compiling setup on my linux pc and try to compile exim there. Or I try to use the OpenWRT build tools. I used the last approach.

Using these instructions I managed to build an exim package, but only after many trial-and-error patching of makefiles. An annoying thing is that exim builds an executable that generates a config.h file and this executable needs to be built to run on the host (linux pc), not on the target (wl500gp). I finally got it working, at least on my system (I took a pragmatic approach, and didn't spend the time to figure out what the 'right' way would be to accomplish things like calling the host compiler in stead of the cross compiler).
The resulting package description can be found here. It needs the gdbm and openssl packages installed.

Next items on my wish list are:

• run fetchmail for getting mail from accounts that don't support forwarding (should be easy, since a fetchmail ipkg is available)
• add a webmail interface (https)
  

Future thoughts

My future thoughs in WL500g are:

• Memory expansion 64-128MB, (SDRAM info)
• Run Subversion server
• Have I/O Unit added for traffic light in a Continous build environment
• Extra USB (internal Disk?)

Information points:

• http://wl500g.dyndns.org/
• http://wl500g.info/

Routerbots

The versatility of these routers keeps amazing me. As it turns out, they are also used to control robots. Two examples can be found here and here. Although they both use linksys routers, they use OpenWrt as their OS:


There is also a Canadian supplier of USB-based control and sensing boards, Phidgets Inc., which are apparently compatible with Asus wl500g routers. They provide motor control (including servo- and stepper-motors), analog sensors, RFID components etc. These components are fairly pricey, but look interesting for someone prepared to spend some money on building a robot.

Asus WL500g Deluxe 1.9.6.0 Power consumption

 

For almost 18 days my Asus has been running on the upgraded 1.9.6.0 firmware with a memory stick (256M) and it only consumed a total of 3.73 kWh. This results in server which only needs about 8.6 Watt. Amazing when you compare it to the old Pentium Tower I used as SVN sever, which I now realize was only a Watt to hot noise converter.

Has any body done some measurements on a mechanical disk? Does it power down when idle?

The photo shows the current configuration with the measurement running.

The consumption is (almost) too small to get a good reading.

Sioux Asus Router WL-500g gestart

Within Sioux a group of employees have access to the Asus WL-500g wireless router. This blog is intended for them, and others, who want to share their plans an experiences on using the standard software or alternative packages.

Share your dreams, share your results.