OpenWrt

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What is OpenWrt?

What is OpenWrt?

OpenWrt is a Linux distribution for embedded devices and routers. People use OpenWrt because it has the best combination of supported router types, the ability to run on embedded systems, up-to-date software (both kernel and optional packages), and a vibrant community in the OpenWrt Forums where people use, develop, and find solutions using OpenWrt. There's lots more on the Wiki.

Why should I use OpenWrt?

Your router will work better. Why? Router manufacturers work with incredibly low profit margins so they often skimp on the development and testing of their stock firmware. Without naming names, most vendor firmware is buggy, insecure, and not well maintained.

On the other hand, we love to write software, and take pride in making really good software. People who use OpenWrt get tremendous benefits in stability of their network connection, rarely have to reboot their router, have excellent security, and often get higher speeds with low latency. The router just works better with OpenWrt.

Is it easy to use?

Yes. After you flash the OpenWrt firmware, you can use a web-based GUI to configure your router. Don't worry, there are good guides that list the steps for popular routers. Once it's installed and running, most people can simply forget that it's there.

What's my next step?

OpenWrt runs on hundreds of different routers and computers. Most equipment (and most current routers you can purchase today) with a modern processor, 32 megabytes of RAM and 8 Mbytes of flash memory can run the current Barrier Breaker build. The earlier OpenWrt builds are available to install on older or lower-powered routers or equipment.

If you want to try OpenWrt on your home router, read the Newcomer's Guide to OpenWrt.

You can use OpenWrt on other kinds of equipment as well. The Table of Hardware/Supported Devices page lists many other platforms where OpenWrt runs.

Why did you create OpenWrt?

As we said, we love to write software. We got started in January 2004, when Linksys/Cisco released the source code for their WRT54G router (from which OpenWrt gets its name). We were excited by the opportunity to replace the Linksys software with a more fully-functioning feature set "right out of the box."

Today, you can start using OpenWrt without a lot of fuss. And it provides thousands of optional packages to add additional capabilities that aren't available with stock firmware.

Furthermore, OpenWrt is built for dozens of different kinds of processors and architectures. This cross-platform capability means that you can migrate to different hardware if you need additional performance. And if you need to combine a specialized set of features for a project, OpenWrt's development environment allows you to create custom builds for any of the supported architectures and combinations of packages. See the Developer Guide in the wiki for details.

How can I learn more about OpenWrt?

The Documentation page on the OpenWrt wiki has a number of guides to get you started. The OpenWrt Forum lets you ask questions and read current information about the project.

Chaos Calmer 15.05-rc3 - 15 July 2015

15 July 2015: The OpenWrt developers are proud to announce the third release candidate of OpenWrt Chaos Calmer.

   _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 -----------------------------------------------------
 CHAOS CALMER (15.05 RC3)
 -----------------------------------------------------
  * 1 1/2 oz Gin            Shake with a glassful
  * 1/4 oz Triple Sec       of broken ice and pour
  * 3/4 oz Lime Juice       unstrained into a goblet.
  * 1 1/2 oz Orange Juice
  * 1 tsp. Grenadine Syrup
 -----------------------------------------------------

Chaos Calmer (CC) is the name of the newest release of OpenWrt. It provides a modern Linux kernel with the latest set of tools and packages to provide a stable, powerful, robust platform for software. It is useful for routers (home and commercial) as well as embedded systems. This announcement is for the third "release candidate" (rc3) - the final CC release is expected be available in mid-2015.

The full set of downloadable images is available from: http://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05-rc3/ Most of the detail pages linked from the Table of Hardware for well-supported routers also have links to the proper image.

Highlights since the previous (Barrier Breaker, 14.07) release

• Linux kernel updated to version 3.18
• Improved Security Features
  • Rewritten package signing architecture based on ed25519
  • Added support for jails
  • Added support for hardened builds
• Improved Networking Support
  • Added or improved support for lots of 3G/4G modems (MBIM, QMI, NCM, ...)
  • Added support for 464XLAT (CLAT) [RFC 6877 + RFC 7050]
  • Improved support for self-managing networks [draft-ietf-homenet-hncp]
  • Netfilter performance enhancements (conntrack route cache)
  • Better multi-core support for the network stack
  • Improved support for MAP-E, MAP-T and LW4over6 IPv4 transitioning technologies [draft-ietf-softwire-map, -map-t, -map-dhcp, -lw4over6]
  • Improved network auto-setup capable of detecting and bootstrapping IPv4-only, 6rd, Dual-Stack, IPv6-only, DS-Lite, LW4over6, MAP-E, MAP-T, 464XLAT and combinations without explicit configuration [based on RFC 7084]
  • Added support for Smart Queue Management (SQM) QoS, AQM and Traffic Shaping
  • Improved support for DNSSEC
• Platform and Driver Support
  • Added support for feeds of externally maintained targets
  • New mt7621 subtarget for Mediatek 11ac SoC
  • New mt76 mac80211 based wifi driver for MTK 11ac cores.
  • New mwlwifi mac80211 based wifi driver for the Marvell 88W8864
  • New bcm53xx target for Broadcom ARM BCM47xx/53xx devices
  • New mxs target for Freescale i.MX23/28 family and various boards
  • New sunxi target for AllWinner A10/A13/A20 family and various boards
  • brcm2708: support for Raspberry Pi 2
  • brcm63xx: support for BCM6318 and BCM63268 family
  • brcm63xx: improved fallback sprom support with bcma support
• And lots and lots of other advancements...

Known Issues

• KALLSYMS is active causing some devices to fail

Improvements since RC2

• brcmfmac: support for BCM43602
• mt76: updated version with new firmware support, TX & DMA fixes
• Updated kernel to 3.18.17
• Fixed image builder generation
• Various security updates (e.g. openssl, curl)
• Minor fixes

Improvements since RC1

• Fixed broken ImageBuilders for most targets
• Updated kernel 3.18 to 3.18.14
• Fixed broken IPv6 downstream DHCPv6-PD and onlink-route handling
• Images (special format) for Asus brcm47xx and bcm53xx devices
• Improved stability of sysupgrade on brcm47xx and bcm53xx
• Added HTTPS enforcement option to uhttpd
• Fixed umask issue
• Added support for a few new boards

As always a big thank you goes to all our active package maintainers, testers, supporters and documenters. Have fun!
    The OpenWrt developer team

OpenWrt BarrierBreaker 14.07 - October 2014

October 2014: The OpenWrt developers are proud to announce the final release of OpenWrt Barrier Breaker.

   _______                     ________        __
  |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
  |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
  |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
           |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
  -----------------------------------------------------
  BARRIER BREAKER (14.07)
  -----------------------------------------------------
   * 1/2 oz Galliano         Pour all ingredients into
   * 4 oz cold Coffee        an irish coffee mug filled
   * 1 1/2 oz Dark Rum       with crushed ice. Stir.
   * 2 tsp. Creme de Cacao
  -----------------------------------------------------

OpenWrt Barrier Breaker (14.07) is the current stable version of OpenWrt. If you are just starting with OpenWrt, the Barrier Breaker (BB) release would be a good choice.

The full set of downloadable images is available from: http://downloads.openwrt.org/barrier_breaker/14.07/ Most of the detail pages for well-supported routers also have links to the proper image.

Highlights since the previous (Attitude Adjustment, 12.09) release

• Default configuration and images
• Linux kernel updated to version 3.10
• Procd: new preinit, init, hotplug and event system written in C
• Native IPv6-support
  • RA & DHCPv6+PD client and server
  • Local prefix allocation & source-restricted routes (multihoming)
• Extended IPv6-support
  • Added DS-Lite support and improved 6to4, 6in4 and 6rd-support
  • Experimental support for Lightweight 4over6, MAP-E and MAP-T
  • Draft-support for self-managing home networks (HNCP)
• Filesystem improvements
  • Added support for sysupgrade on NAND-flash
  • Added support for filesystem snapshot and rollback
  • Rewritten mounting system in C for rootfs and block devices
• UCI configuration improvements
  • Support for testing configuration and rollback to working / last working state
  • Unified change trigger system to restart services on-demand
  • Added a data validation layer
• Networking improvements
  • Netifd now handles setup and configuration reload of wireless interfaces
  • Added reworked event support to allow obsoleting network hotplug-scripts
  • Added support for dynamic firewall rules and zones
  • Added support for transparent multicast to unicast translation for bridges
  • Various other fixes and improvements
• Additional highlights selectable in the package feeds or SDK
• rpcd: new JSONRPC over HTTP-frontend for remote access to ubus
• mdns: new lightweight mdns daemon (work in progress)
• Initial support for the musl C standard library
• Support for QMI-based 3g/4g modems
• Support for DNSSEC validation
• Added architecture for package signing and SHA256 hashing
• ... and many more cool things

Package feed reorganization

For quite a while already we are not very satisfied with the quality of the packages-feed. To address this, we decided to do a fresh start on GitHub. The new feed https://github.com/openwrt/packages should be used from now on and package maintainers are asked to move their packages there. For the final release we will still build the old packages feed but it will be necessary to enable it manually in the opkg package list to be usable.

Additionally we would like to give a big thank you to all of our package maintainers working on our various feeds.

New build servers

We would like to express our gratitude to Imagination Technology for funding the 2 build servers that we used for the release.

Whats next ?

Have fun!
    The OpenWrt developer team

Changes leading up to the Barrier Breaker final build

These changes led up to the final Barrier Breaker release:

• Important changes since RC3
  • various ath9k related fixes
  • a few board related fixes
  • fixes for packages depdending on curl
  • per feed download folders
• Important changes since RC2
  • NAT & firewall throughput improvements
  • Security updates for OpenSSL & PolarSSL
  • Minor fixes in DHCP & DHCPv6 handling
  • Configuration support for GRE tunnels
  • Various other fixes
• Important changes since RC1
  • fix a long standing ath9k deadlock bug
  • all feeds are now built
  • image builder now works and RC2 contains all board specific images
  • various board/stability fixes

Earlier OpenWrt Releases...

OpenWrt has a long history of robust versions. Here are links to the announcements for these releases...

• Barrier Breaker 14.07 (BB) - 31 July 2014
• Attitude Adjustment 12.09 (AA) - 25 April 2013
• Backfire 10.03.1 - 21 December 2011
• Kamikaze 8.09.2 - 10 Jan 2010
• Kamikaze 7.09 - 30 Sep 2007
• WhiteRussion rc6 - 7 Nov 2006
• First Stable Release - 2004