# Libre Router and the COWs

# Meeting with Nico and Sarbani 16th June 2021
nico: pirania dev notes (not public) https://hackmd.io/@P73CMg6lQ_6xtcFTdQnxDQ/ryrqgQGVd / https://hackmd.io/2SUbUbu4Rwi3y_g4EUJSDA / angie now working on this https://blog.freifunk.net/?s=portal / if we are not interested in mesh solns, available captive portals are many eg., nodogsplash but they likely need an ip that is mesh visible to access the server

1. Pirania
only add voucher works. everything else such as edit, delete seems to be not working. #issues

After enabling pirania
* ssh was throwing broken pipe error even with the active session. Mosh command didn't give any error.
* video calls would break. The sesssions would just drop. Tested with zoom, jitsi, google meet.
* mcast increase to fix above issues was not tried
* one node we disabled pirania to test and the ssh issue vanished. Other 3 nodes dhalli, Thalli and crafterspace has still pirania running.
* The captive portal redirection works on phones. Not on laptops (ubuntu - firefox and chromium).
https://foro.librerouter.org/t/pirania-observations/234

Features we need
* Tracking/logging bandwidth usage per user
* Voucher should be active for a duration of say 30mins after the first entry of the voucher by the user
* Limiting bandwitdth/speed per voucher
* GUI interface to generate vouchers (not released but seems to be in development)
* Apply MAC ID exceptions to certain devices to bypass Pirania (for admins in the network)
* Block Pirania based users access to [e-mail]
* Many commercial routers have a hotspot point where the users cannot access the router page

2. We have put up parabolic antenna(23db) instead of the sector antenna to boost up the signal strength. changed from -65:-75 to -45:-57 db #observations


3. Maximum power consumption - Now we enabled TZ. What is allowed in India. #issues

4. Wlan1 and Wlan2 issue fixed in v1.3 - wlan1 was pairing wlan2. Randomly channels were assigned. After the upgrade the channels were fixed. #observations

5. No Labelling of Wlan1 and Wlan2 on the LR box

7. No Labelling of POE LAN and WAN

8. Openwrt support - Need to try
https://foro.librerouter.org/t/can-i-put-my-own-firmware-on-it/34

9. How other communities are using libre router. Use cases.

10. DC powered POE adaptor like the one below. We will need this when our routers are powered using only Solar.
https://mikrotik.com/product/RBGPOE

11. LR boards. status.
12. Alternative to RPI board

### Password on Lime node or Lime community

New nodes will pull from Lime community
Individually it will apply to local
DDhills lime node
Durgadahalli is lime community
stop pirania on kotemane
change mcast rate to high on kotemane and ddhills

# aside
Check readme at cowdenet > needforspeed for the speedtest fix

udpair=$(speedtext -csv | cut -d "," -f 7,8)
Upld=$(echo $udpair | cut -d "," -f 1)
upld=$(echo ${upld%.*})
dnld=$(echo $udpair | cut -d  -f 2)
dnld=$(echo ${dnld%.*})

# cowmesh-broken-pipe May2,2021

Msg to coolab group
Hi all. Our netspeed is generally showing 5 to 25 Mbps. But ssh to an outside computer breaks in a minute with message "broken pipe". Any insights? Thanks
nico: And you have pirania installed? Or plain librerouteros?
luandro: are you getting lots of duplicate packets? I believe it could be related to mcast_rate or wifi distance option right
nico: hmmm... Loks like @spiccinini (San?) mentioned something in this (spanish) post in the forum about mcast_rate, but not sure if it relates to what you are saying @luandro : https://foro.librerouter.org/t/cual-seria-la-manera-de-cambiar-el-canal-wifi-de-una-o-ambas-radios-de-5ghz/139/2

https://wirelesslywired.com/2019/05/02/multicast-over-wireless/

Emery: I recommend using [Mosh](https://mosh.org/) rather than SSH in this situation. SSH uses TCP, and if the TCP connection times-out because of a drop in the connection, the session will die. Mosh uses UDP so the session can persist if the connection drops.

---

(thanks Nico)

Wlan1 vs Wlan2 fixed in 1.4
(ref discussion Sk and San)

Pirania vouchers
(ref chat with Nico and Luandro - march 22nd 2021)

Pirania git hub link:
https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/tree/cli-readme/packages/pirania

Luandro, [23.03.21 00:36]
add_voucher creates a voucher, you then give the secret to whose gonna be using it to authenticate with their device
Luandro, [23.03.21 00:36]
add_voucher creates a voucher, you then give the secret to whose gonna be using it to authenticate with their device

Luandro, [23.03.21 00:38]
no need to use auth_voucher only if the device doesnt have a screen (like a headless Raspberry or smart tv)
Luandro, [23.03.21 00:36]
add_voucher creates a voucher, you then give the secret to whose gonna be using it to authenticate with their device

Luandro, [23.03.21 00:38]
no need to use auth_voucher only if the device doesnt have a screen (like a headless Raspberry or smart tv)

What's the top right button next to pirania logo for?
Luandro, [23.03.21 01:08]
for authenticating another device, but I think there was a bug with it

Luandro, [23.03.21 01:18]
oh, and having the db on /etc may hurt the routers
I never totally understood this, but saving things to /etc slowly eats up the routers memory (not sure which one)

Luandro, [23.03.21 01:18]
it's good practice to move to /tmp

Luandro, [23.03.21 01:18]
but in /tmp it gets erased after reboot

Luandro, [23.03.21 01:18]
if there are more then one node, other nodes will re-populate the db through shared-state

Luandro, [23.03.21 01:19]
but if all nodes are shutdown at the same time (power outage to exampe) then db is lost

Luandro, [23.03.21 01:19]
you can format a usb drive to FAT32 and stick in the router, pirania will then automatically save the db to the usb stick

Luandro, [23.03.21 01:20]
having at least one node in the mesh with a usb drive guarantees that the db will be safe, even if all others have it on /tmp

Luandro, [25.03.21 00:01]
in /etc/config/pirania there's a list whitelist_ipv4 option
Luandro, [25.03.21 00:01]
in /etc/config/pirania there's a list whitelist_ipv4 option

Luandro, [25.03.21 00:01]
in /etc/config/pirania there's a list whitelist_ipv4 option

Luandro, [25.03.21 00:01]
in /etc/config/pirania there's a list whitelist_ipv4 option

=================================================================
https://foro.librerouter.org/t/cual-seria-la-manera-de-cambiar-el-canal-wifi-de-una-o-ambas-radios-de-5ghz/139/2

Translation to the above link

To change the channel of the radios is done with the config lime.wifi.channel_5ghz. For example you can change the configuration of the wiffi section in the node's lime configuration file (/ etc / config / lime-node) the following:

config lime 'wifi'
list channel_5ghz '36'
list channel_5ghz '157'

That sets radio1 to 36 and radio 2 to 157 (default is 48 and 157)

And then run lime-config and reboot (although in this particular case if you do lime-apply it should work without rebooting).

Regarding whether there is a better way, I think it depends a lot on the network and the dedication time of the people who can help solve technical problems (for example, a neighbor who wants to join the network does not work because he is not using the default channels, etc).

Another way to avoid bad connections is to increase the minimum operating speed (to decide whether or not a link is working).

Quoting Nicolás Echaniz:

The routing protocols that we use (batman-adv), to choose paths, send multicast packets (“to many”) and measure how many packets are lost. But the speed that the network uses for these packets is not the same as for unicast (single destination).
That makes the packets to be measured arrive (slow) without getting lost.

But when you want to use the link at a higher speed, it doesn't work well, that's why we raise that value, which is called mcast_rate. That makes the bad links unviable for routing and chooses the others. The downside is that if a node has only bad links, it is isolated. in my experience that is convenient and you have to ensure that the links are good

This is also done in the wifi section of the node with the option ieee80211s_mcast_rate_5ghz (by default it is 6000):

config lime 'wifi'
list channel_5ghz '36'
list channel_5ghz '157'
option ieee80211s_mcast_rate_5ghz '24000'

Chat Session during the 16Jun2021 meeting

> **Sarbani Belur**
Congratulations
What will you name her?
We can suggest an Indian name
**dinesh**
https://hackmd.io/Vz9bI_HaTi21ybxLi46zGQ?view
**nicopace**
https://blog.freifunk.net/2021/06/10/libremesh-pirania-ui-an-overview/
https://blog.freifunk.net/author/angieog/
pirania hacking group hackmd:
https://hackmd.io/2SUbUbu4Rwi3y_g4EUJSDA
https://hackmd.io/@P73CMg6lQ_6xtcFTdQnxDQ/ryrqgQGVd
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&u=https://hackmd.io/@P73CMg6lQ_6xtcFTdQnxDQ/ryrqgQGVd
**dinesh**
web session read only:
https://tmate.io/t/ro-H3VVHS6JrP8UjaL56TebkWDTD
ssh session read only: ssh
[e-mail]
web session:
https://tmate.io/t/bPUQNgzKE8dq82CSKnvFjZ4EM
ssh session: ssh
[e-mail]
**Sarbani Belur**
I have another meeting. I will leave now
Bye
**dinesh**
pi shortcomings
https://blog.janastu.org/the-pi4-debacles/
**nicopace**
https://sbcfinder.com/home
https://www.armbian.com/download/
https://www.olimex.com/