Backfire on 520gu, no space!

Discussion about my Wifi Radio project at http://mightyohm.com/wifiradio/ or my WL-520gU talk at NOTACON.
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scales11
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri May 04, 2012 6:07 am

Backfire on 520gu, no space!

Post by scales11 »

Hi all.

I am followed the wifi radio tutorial and can happily report that the instructions were great and I was able to get everything working.

However, I have attached a usb hub and would like to use a usb stick to store my music locally so that the router does not always need to stream radio. I was having trouble finding the partion of the usb stick so I tried to install fdisk. Unfortunately, MightyOhm did not have it in its repos and I figured that maybe I should just update the whole thing to the Openwrt - Backfire -10.03.1 so that I would have access to more packages. I had no issues following the same procedure with the newer firmware until I went to install mpd and the router told me that I was out of space. After a quick search I found that Backfire is bigger than the pre-compiled Kamikaze image MightyOhm hosts and I figured that was where my problem was.

So I thought that perhaps I should mount an additional usb stick and use it as the external source for mounting the file system or pivoting the overlay partition, allowing me to have plenty of room to install any and however many packages I wanted.

Does anyone have any experience/tips to offer while I am figuring out how to do this?

here are the wiki links I was reading:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/extroot
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/extro ... oot.theory
jeroen94704
Posts: 109
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:27 am
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Re: Backfire on 520gu, no space!

Post by jeroen94704 »

Here are the instructions I posted here some time ago (note the scrollbar!), specifically to accomplish what you describe:

Code: Select all

Install OpenWrt 10.03 (follow instructions on the OpenWrt website)

opkg install kmod-usb-core
opkg install kmod-usb2
opkg install kmod-usb-storage
opkg install kmod-usb-uhci
opkg install kmod-fs-ext2
opkg install kmod-fs-ext3
opkg install kmod-fs-vfat
opkg install kmod-sound-core
opkg install kmod-usb-audio
opkg install alsa-lib

Prepare a USB stick, making sure it has an ext3 filesystem. Then:

mount -t ext3 /dev/discs/disc0/part1 /usb    # <-- In your case, /dev/discs/disc0/part2 may need to be something different

In the file /etc/opkg.conf, add the line "dest usb /usb"

opkg install -d usb mpd # <-- This also installs a bunch of dependencies, which don't all fit on the on-board flash

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usb/usr/lib/:/usb/lib/
Hope this helps. If you get stuck, don't hesitate to ask for help.

Jeroen
scales11
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri May 04, 2012 6:07 am

Re: Backfire on 520gu, no space!

Post by scales11 »

Thanks for the reply and tip. So I figured out how to pivot the /overlay and mount it on boot to a usb.

I have a USB drive with two partitions (one ext2 and one fat32). I am able to mount the ext2 partition upon boot to the /overlay but unfortunately I am having trouble mounting the USB with a fat32 partition (with fstab as well).

Here is my post at openwrt:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=36631

Any chance you can help me on this?
jeroen94704
Posts: 109
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:27 am
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Re: Backfire on 520gu, no space!

Post by jeroen94704 »

Yeah, mounting fat32 never worked for me either. I never seriously investigated this though, and simply used ext2 or 3.
scales11
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri May 04, 2012 6:07 am

Re: Backfire on 520gu, no space!

Post by scales11 »

Ok so I tried to mount ext2 upon boot (failed)...cept that is no longer as big of a concern because I think I can figure something out

My BIG problem which I overlooked, is that because I grabbed the brcm-2.4 in Backfire, it does not have oss support rolled into it (ie. mpd will not work with the sound card used in MightyOhm's how-to)

So I know that I would need to compile it again, as mentioned here:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=33332

Unfortunately I have never compiled anything and am a bit scared from this. Maybe I will revisit MightyOhm's wifi radio how-to and see if it has enough detail for me.

Any other tips are greatly appreciated!
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mightyohm
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Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 10:29 pm
Location: Seattle, WA
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Re: Backfire on 520gu, no space!

Post by mightyohm »

I had problems with fat32 support as well, but my experience is very outdated now (2009?)

The bloat in OpenWrt and the various packages is a big issue that affects routers with small flash (like the 520gu).

I would suggest preparing the USB stick on another computer running Linux and then installing the minimum set of packages on the router - you could even go back to using my kamikaze image.
mcc253
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:48 pm
Location: Portugal

Re: Backfire on 520gu, no space!

Post by mcc253 »

Hi guys,

I have my 520 GU working perfectly as a Wifi Radio thanks this wonderful Forum and to MightyOhm's Tutorial. Now I'm planning to move to the next step that would be the capability of playing Microsoft ".ASX" or Apple ".AAC" audio streams. For that, I know that due to memory limitations I have to install MPD in a USB stick drive that would be shared in a USB Hub with the USB audio adapter. I would like to ask if anyone has done this on the 520 GU, how to install MPD in the USB stick and which version, and if should I use other Linux image than the one I'm using now (openwrt-brcm-2.4-squashfs.trx precompiled image).
If someone could help me I would appreciate a lot.

Many thanks.

Miguel
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