GL-AR750S various suggestions

Technical Support for Routers
1

Hello Everyone.

First post here. Not sure if this is the best place to share my thought, so please let me know if there is a better place/way to do it. After reading some reviews I purchased one unit to give it a test and see how it works before I get more. Here are my observations.

  1. First thing after looking at my unit I noticed that BETA label in the top/left corner. How far are we from actual release?
  2. Next, I noticed that you can go to the Advanced section which is for advanced users. Great. Since current default UI is missing some features (which I will get to in a second), is there a way to set up permanent Default vs Advanced UI? So on next login, I go directly to Default vs Advanced. Don’t get me wrong I think default UI is great default work.
  3. If I decide to stick with Advanced, is there a way to remove Default UI permanently? What is the plan in the long term? Keep both or one will replace the other? How much storage and RAM could be saved?
  4. In default UI I see an option to clone LAN MAC. Would it be possible to add WLAN cloning there as well?
  5. What does the Update button actually do in plugins section? Does it automatically update what is available? or it does check what is available for update?
  6. Plugin section is a little confusing to me. The filter only has ‘All’ or ‘Installed’. Would be great to expand and add Uninstalled as well Update. The first is self-explanatory but the other would show all packages which are available to updates. My first reaction after pressing the Update button was, the filter automatically jumped to “installed” and all packages had a button “Install” next to them. My first reaction was that this means “install” update. But actually, it is installed package which was not installed yet.
  7. It would be great to see the package size when clicking on the package name (description). Maybe add link to openwrt package info like [OpenWrt Wiki] package: tcpdump
  8. Before powering up my unit I inserting 128 SD Card, I wanted to format it as ext4. There is nothing in UI to allow formatting. Think this would be a great addition for some users. Id did see some other posts where people are confused about this as well.
  9. After ssh to my unit, I did not see mkfs / mkfs.ex4 utility so I could format it manually. I did search in packages section and did only find mkf2fs package. How do you format SD for supported file formats? I decided to remove SD card and format it on my Linux workstation and reinsert it for next boot.
  10. After booting up with newly formatted SD card and connected ethernet port 1 (wired) I do not see any shared volume in my Mac OS X Finder. I see that smbd is running.
  11. Also, File Sharing section I have ‘Share via LAN’ option that it is always on. I can not toggle this on/off. Is that an indication of some problem? For above point #10, Wifi Sharing and Writable are off on my system.
  12. Would it be possible to add SD Card space used on Default UI? Maybe add Status page above Internet, Wireless, etc where you could see all information like connection status, SD Bard Used, Internal Storage used for packages, etc. The Advanced move has memory used but I dod not see internal or external storage. Right now you have to ssh to the unit.
    Perhaps there are some packages to address some of my suggestions?
  13. Will this unit function with lighthttpd uninstalled? Does anyone know of good CLI FAQ/list to do everything from SSH is lighthttpd can be removed?
    If not do you what section would be best to create such FAQ?
  14. Is there was to modify default action when toiling physical switch on the side of unit. Script of some kind?

If I would like to help with adding some options to Default UI which project on github is for default UI?

Perhaps others have some other ideas to add?

2
  1. The beta label had been removed in the latest firmware.
  2. If you want to get advanced web directly, you can enter http://192.168.8.1/cgi-bin/luci in address bar, there haven’t any other quick way, unless you flash a clean firmware, which doesn’t contain any GL packages.
  3. You can build a firmware or flash a clean firmware. http://download.gl-inet.com/firmware/ar750s/clean/
  4. Clone LAN MAC? It only has an option clone mac address to WAN interface.
  5. You have click on “update” button before installing packages, otherwise, you can only see the installed packages.
  6. You should refer to the online instruction at first. https://docs.gl-inet.com
  7. If you want to install a package, you usually won’t to care its size, isn’t it?
    8, 9. You should format it in your PC.
  8. You can try to enter the router’s gateway in the path bar.
  9. It is make sense. LAN is your local network, if you don’t want to share in your local network, how can you access the storage?
  10. We will develop NAS function later, this feature might be archive.
  11. The default webUI depends on lighttpd, so you can’t remove it.
  12. Please edit the file /etc/rc.button/BTN_0.
3

  1. “The beta label had been removed in the latest firmware.”
    Are you referring to one that is being tested right now? Since trying to update from unit does not show anything newer then 3.009. I am assuming you takin about GL.iNet download center 3.013? Should I go by version or date of these files?

  2. “Clone LAN MAC?”
    Sorry, I was asking about clonig WLAN.

  3. “It is make sense. LAN is your local network…” I am lost what you trying to say here. Also I think your point 9 is trying to answer my point 10? So after resetting my unit 10 sec and setting it up again I can see SD card in Finder. Now Why can’t I toggle off Share via LAN. It is a case when I do not want my SD card be visible Let’s say I might work with different group of people and I would like to make this not accessible.

I did read your included links. I still do not see how do you update already installed packages. Upgrade button seems like it is catching only metadata? Correct? I noticed after ssh to my unit and using ‘okpkg update’ followed with ‘opkg list-upgradable | cut -f 1 -d ’ ’ | xargs opkg upgrade’ Is this the only way to upgrade all packages.

4
  1. You can try this one: http://download.gl-inet.com/firmware/ar750s/snapshots/
  2. No, it doesn’t support change the WLAN’s mac address, but you can do it in Luci, the option is available for each interface.

Sorry, there haven’t such feature. In fact, you only can install or remove a package. If you want to upgrade a package directly, that’s what you said.

5

@kyson-lok

Thank you for your help. One more questions about snapshots. Is there a way to track what hanged fin last official release vs blindly install? I do not see git SHA included in file name.

Also Is it safe to update packages at anytime? Or somehow they are bound to firmware release. I do not think so but just want to make sure.

6

I presume you mean “changed”?
Answer is no, changes are only given in release firmware.

7

Not clear what’s it. Do you mean MD5 for firmware?

The snapshot firmware usually has bugs, which hasn’t tested more, but new feature included.

8

Sometimes snapshots do contain their commit SHA-1 hash so this way I could go and do git diff and see what changed in that snapshot or nightly.
I am aware that snapshots do have bugs. That is why I do not want to update unless I want to try it to see what i coming or after checking change log I can decide that it is worth upgrading/checking out

9

But you can’t see the code. It is GL’s private software.

10

You can get a rough changelog looking at the commits here:

Be sure to change branch too, as commits don’t all go to master.

As Kyson said, the GL UI is closed source, you will only be able to see the source of the OpenWRT base system, but that does not change in GL firmware until a new version is pushed.