I had some issues and had to debrick uboot then reinstall the gli net custom interface which I like. (Because for some reason it disappeared during debrick.)
The storage is so full I can’t install anything. The I am wondering if maybe there are extra files left over from all the installing? I never had this situation on the other one, which also had only 16mb nor flash even though I used it a lot and did install packages.
I did a factory reset again and after installing just luci and nothing else, not restoring any configs. I am at 1.9 MB free.
Is there a way to really clear it completely to make sure there is nothing left over?
thank you for any advice!
having a hard time searching because it’s such a weird question
I have been trying to troubleshoot to my limited ability. I flashed the minimal firmware gl-ar750-3.0-1011_clean.bin and it did seem to to free up a bunch of space. Could not do anything with it tho. opkg was not able to obtain package lists so could not install anything, and it is “minimal” soooo…
From that reflashed openwrt-ar750-3.201-0402.bin which I think is the correct up to date one. Before proceeding it said there is 15.62 MB free and the firmware will need 12.31 MB which should leave 3.31 MB, but really there was just 2MB (might be approximate; this is before installing Luci).
There is approx 1 MB in /tmp every time I look. Can I safely delete all that? Or will it just re populate?
It’s like 1991 over here worrying over 1 MB of space. Make me feel young again.
The /tmp directory is a file system in RAM and not Flash, so it will not help to delete it, and as it is where the running profile info is kept for several needed programs, it would be harmful to delete it.
Using df from the shell prompt, the file systems listed as tmpfs are all in RAM:
You are correct that after adding LUCI, there is not much space left on a AR750. It would sure be nice if we could easily tailor what we wanted on the system, as there is a lot of bloat in the 3.201 firmware that many users do not need in a travel router.
I found an sd card and was eventually able to add it. now need to learn how to have it backup regularly for when it fails.
I wonder what is the difference between the glinet install and the bare bones one. I found this page on openwrt.org that has easy ways to list, install, uninstall etc packages. Here is described how to create “profiles” to easily install and uninstall collections of packages via textfile. So could first install minimal openwrt, make a list (save to computer), then install full glinet openwrt, make a list and compare. then remove pieces and see what happens.
It would sure be nice if we could easily tailor what we wanted on the system, as there is a lot of bloat in the 3.201 firmware that many users do not need in a travel router.
It is very easy to install the minimal image I linked at the top. Takes about 4 minutes, most of it spent waiting for reboot. Then you have lots of space. Can use the luci interface to re add packages you like.
I have several of my GL iNet devices running the generic OpenWRT 19.07.7 firmware, and I am waiting on OpenWRT 21.02 to get a little more mature, as it is currently at RC1 level, The 21.02 firmware supports all of my GL iNet devices. Overtime, I am planning on migrating all my devices to the generic OpenWrt firmware, as they fix security bugs much faster then GL iNet does, and I can customize the installs to easily fit into 16 MB of flash without having to add an additional USB or SD card and using extroot.
I don’t think /tmp is important, we’ve got lots of RAM. It’s /etc to focus on.
For my Mango,
using ssh, I removed /etc/tertf/mac_vendor.db, and then /etc/init.d/gl-tertf and rebooted.
back In luci|System|software i now had 73%/2.9MB free. I uninstalled gl-tertf.
Try at your own risk, your mileage may vary, but the vendor db is almost a meg, and I think is only used for reporting client statistics through the terminal traffic program. I didn’t need that.
I’d also ty deleting nodogsplash, as I don’t need a captive portal, but I haven’t done that yet.
Hi sorry I missed your note before. And also no I didn’t see that. To be honest I find this particular forum software confusing to navigate. I mostly will just search at the top and click links like the one you were kind enough to provide. So what you are getting at is this, ya?
I did reset everything everything to as basic as I could make it. Did not reapply the config backups. Did not keep settings
It seems to me that the source of this (if it is indeed not expected of this model/firmware combo) could be discovered by comparing the files from a brand new out of the box unit and then what happens when you perform various tasks. Here is a thread I found that have info on how this could be accomplished: directory - rsync compare directories? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange. Or a very rudimentary way maybe by sudo tree -aif --du / > output.txt or something less silly.
The thing that is required is an image or copy or smthg of the entire storage of a fresh device.
I can’t do this because my router is now contaminated and also I do not understand this filesystem at all. But maybe someone with a bit of know how and resources would figure it out.
That is very interesting and I have some questions for you or anyone who’d like to share:
Are there any other “pretty” interfaces for OpenWRT? I appreciate the slightly less utilitarian and friendlier way the glinet interface has. I found in opkg 2 other themes and they were both less attractive (imho; no shade) and didn’t do anything to reorganize the actual function; just different color, white space etc.
I often find myself going into Luci and so the 2 interface thing is kind of disjointed. Is there an easy way to merge them together somehow? (let me guess: No.)
My brief experience with the plain OpenWRT firmware (as linked above) was that it was missing so much that it was not functional. (I did not put any work into troubleshooting as troubleshooting other issue was reason for install.l) I imagine there are certain packages that many people always install on set up. Is there a list?
What is the difference between making an image and just installing packages after flashing? I did try to look through some of the OpenWRT docs on how to build an image and it was saying you need a lot of RAM to compile because somehow it makes the resulting image smaller even with same components. Sounds like to me! And the rest of it I could not grok even a little bit. Does anyone have a simple way to explain? Or can link to something more of an overview than so in depth?
Sorry, I don’t have a lot of answers to your list of questions, but maybe this will help. On the interface, LUCI and the CLI version UCI takes some time to learn, but they are functional, and I have not looked for another GUI interface. Normally once I figure out what config file changes LUCI/UCI makes, I just make notes of the changes, and if I need to do the same thing again, I just hand edit the config files. The GL iNet interface is nice, but if you try to setup something that is NON-Standard, like trying to add an additional WIFI interface, the GL iNet GUI has multiple times over-written my config files, causing me to have to reset then reconfigure the router from scratch. I always keep a tar file of the /etc directory, as this allows me to quickly get back to my last configuration.
For a basic router setup, I have not found that I had to add that much to the OpenWrt squashfs-sysupgrade.bin firmware image to get things to work. I normally add Wireguard for VPN, TravelMate to handle multiple APs, and https-dns-proxy so I can use Cloudflare’s DOH DNS servers.
I have never bothered to build a full custom OpenWrt image, as I have been able to fit everything I need into my routers just using the OpenWrt package manager. Hope this helps.
One case I found was if I unplugged the USB WIFI device, and then plugged it back in, it triggered something in the GL iNet code that caused it to rewrite my config files. This does not happen with the OpenWrt firmware. I sent a request to the list awhile back asking for better support of external USB WIFI adaptors. Support for USB WIFI Adaptors
to me! 
And the rest of it I could not grok even a little bit. Does anyone have a simple way to explain? Or can link to something more of an overview than so in depth?