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Install on the TomatoUSB

amurabito edited this page Aug 11, 2016 · 9 revisions

Introduction

This how to describes installing Entware-ng for the Tomato open-source router firmware. Originally posted here.

Requirements

  • USB stick - 8MB or more in size (keep in mind this becomes your main hard drive, choose size appropriately)
  • USB-capable router running TomatoUSB.

Install Entware-ng

Pick a USB stick that you can dedicate to your router since it will be completely erased by the following process.

Configure the GUI for Entware-ng

In the web GUI, go to the "USB and NAS->USB Support" section and tick the following options:

[x] Core USB Support
[x] USB 2.0 Support
[x] USB Storage Support
[x] Ex2/Ext3 File Systems Support
[x] Automount

Paste this text into the "Run after mounting" box:

#!/bin/sh
/opt/etc/init.d/rc.unslung start

Paste this text into the "Run before unmounting" box:

#!/bin/sh
/opt/etc/init.d/rc.unslung stop
sleep 15
umount /opt

Click the "Save" button and then check the "USB Status" at the bottom of the screen. If your USB stick is mounted, click "Unmount". In subsequent steps, we are going to format the USB stick, so we don't want it mounted.

Go to the "Administration->Scripts->Init" page. Paste the following into the "Init" script section:

echo "LABEL=ENTWARE /opt ext3 rw,noatime 1 1" >> /etc/fstab

Click the "Save" button.

For reference, most of the above is taking from the entware USB setup instructions.

Prepare the USB stick

Plug the USB stick in and ssh to the router. Remember, the next steps will completely erase the USB stick!

Find the device name for your USB stick

Run "fdisk -l" to display all the block devices and their partitions. Here is an example:

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdb: 16.2 GB, 16231956480 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15480 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/sdb1               1       15480    15851504  83 Linux

You can see that the disk /dev/sdb is a 16GB block device. Since there are no other 16GB devices on my router, I can be pretty sure that the 16GB stick that I plugged in is mapped to /dev/sdb.

Partition the USB stick

Use fdisk to delete all the partitions on your USB disk. Then create a single partition spanning the entire drive and set its type to 83 (Linux). Write the partition table and exit fdisk.

Format the USB stick

Replace the /dev/sdb1 below with the path to your newly created partition.

mkfs.ext3 -L ENTWARE /dev/sdb1

Mount the /opt partition

Mount the newly created partition as /opt. The installer in the next step will need /opt mounted.

echo "LABEL=ENTWARE /opt ext3 rw,noatime 1 1" >> /etc/fstab
mount /opt

Perform the entware install

After reboot, Open telnet/ssh console and type following command.

  • On ARM devices:
wget -O - http://pkg.entware.net/binaries/armv7/installer/entware_install.sh | sh
  • On MIPS devices:
wget -O - http://pkg.entware.net/binaries/mipsel/installer/installer.sh | sh

Verify the installation

Reboot the router by clicking the Reboot... option in the web GUI. Once it restarts, ssh to the router and run opkg list. You should get a list of possible packages that you can install. If you don't, something went wrong. Make sure that /opt is mounted (use the df command).