LEDE/OpenWRT is a Linux-based operating system which can be used as an alternative to proprietary firmwares on a wide range of routers.
Installing it provides increased security, let us tweak our router and give us a wide range of software packages to install from the system repositories.
Installing packages is
very easy, thanks to the opkg package manager, but often the available
space on common routers is quite limited. In this tutorial we will see how to
extend the available system space using an USB device.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to use an USB device to extend the LEDE/OpenWRT system storage
- How to revert to stock configuration
Software Requirements and Conventions Used
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | LEDE/OpenWRT |
| Software | An SSH client to login into the LEDE system |
| Other | Familiarity with the command line interface |
| Conventions | # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Packages installation
In order to extend our router storage space, we first need to install some packages. To accomplish this task we can use opkg, the LEDE native and lightweight package manager, therefore the first thing we need to do is to connect to the system via ssh. For the sake of this article I will assume the IP of the router to be 192.168.0.1. We will login as the root user:
$ ssh root@192.168.0.1 root@192.168.0.1's password:
After we enter the root user password, (the one we set up the first time we configured the router – the same we use to login into the router web interface) we should be welcomed by the following message:
BusyBox v1.25.1 () built-in shell (ash)
_________
/ /\ _ ___ ___ ___
/ LE / \ | | | __| \| __|
/ DE / \ | |__| _|| |) | _|
/________/ LE \ |____|___|___/|___| lede-project.org
\ \ DE /
\ LE \ / -----------------------------------------------------------
\ DE \ / Reboot (17.01.4, r3560-79f57e422d)
\________\/ -----------------------------------------------------------
root@earendil:~#
Once logged in, we need to update the list of the available packages:
# opkg update
Once the list is updated we can install the packages we need:
# opkg install block-mount kmod-fs-ext4 kmod-usb-storage e2fsprogs kmod-usb-ohci kmod-usb-uhci fdisk
Notice that the fdisk package is needed only if we intend to partition the USB device used to extend the system storage space, directly on LEDE: we will perform this operation in the next step.
USB device preparation
We can manipulate the USB device we intend to use either on a separate machine, or directly on the LEDE system, using fdisk. For the sake of this tutorial we will choose the second option and create a single partition which will use all the space available on the USB device.
First we connect the USB to our device. To verify it is recognized by the kernel we can examine the last lines of the output produced by the dmesg command. We should observe a result similar to the following:
# dmesg | tail [ 91.701565] usb-storage 1-1.1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected [ 91.708962] scsi host2: usb-storage 1-1.1:1.0 [ 92.714770] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 [ 92.726372] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 1994752 512-byte logical blocks: (1.02 GB/974 MiB) [ 92.734814] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off [ 92.739691] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00 [ 92.745685] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] No Caching mode page found [ 92.751147] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 92.851061] sda: sda1 [ 92.858827] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
Our device has been recognizes as sda. To partition it, we launch fdisk and pass the USB device path as the utility argument:
# fdisk /dev/sda Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.29.2). Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them. Be careful before using the write command. Command (m for help):
The first thing we want to do is to create a new DOS partition table on the device, therefore we enter o as command, and press enter:
Command (m for help): o Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xd67f57f9.
Next, we want to add a new partition. We use the n command to perform the operation. We will be asked want type of partition we want to create: here we want a primary partition. We will also asked to enter the partition number and the partition first and the last sector. In all three cases we can just press enter and accept the defaults.
Command (m for help): n
Partition type
p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
e extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p):
Using default response p.
Partition number (1-4, default 1):
First sector (2048-1994751, default 2048):
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-1994751, default 1994751):
Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 973 MiB.
The changes we performed to the device are not effective yet. To confirm them we must use the w command:
Command (m for help): w The partition table has been altered. Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table. Syncing disks.
Now that our device is partitioned, we must create a filesystem.
Filesystem creation
The next step consists into creating an ext4 filesystem on the partition we created in the previous step. We just have to launch the mkfs.ext4 command and pass the path of the partition as argument:
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
mke2fs 1.43.3 (04-Sep-2016)
Creating filesystem with 249088 4k blocks and 62336 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 42109b6a-759a-48ba-a7b9-1508d0973131
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (4096 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
We take note of the filesystem UUID (42109b6a-759a-48ba-a7b9-1508d0973131): we need it to reference the fileystem in the next step.
Fstab setup
In this step we modify the system fstab file, which in our LEDE system is /etc/config/fstab. Inside the file, we append the following section:
config 'mount'
option target '/overlay'
option uuid '42109b6a-759a-48ba-a7b9-1508d0973131'
option enabled '1'
The filesystem identified by UUID, which is the one we created on our USB device, will be mounted on /overlay, so it will be used as the system storage.
Copying the content of the system storage on the usb device
In order for our setup to work we must copy the content of the current system storage on the USB device. We first mount the ext4 filesystem on /mnt:
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
Than, we copy the content on it:
# cp -a /overlay/. /mnt
In the example above, we used the cp command with two options -a option: it is the short version of --archive, and it is used to preserve the attribute of the copied files.
Reboot the system
At this point our setup should be complete. For the changes to become effective we need to reboot the system. We can turn the device off and on again from the physical switch, or we can issue the following command (the terminal will probably freeze once the device is turned off):
# reboot
Once the system is rebooted, to verify the additional space is used, we can login again into our router, and run the df command passing /overlay as argument. Here we also used the -h option in order to obtain human-readable sizes:
# df -h /overlay Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 941.7M 5.2M 871.9M 1% /overlay
As expected, we can see that /dev/sda1 is the filesystem mounted on /overlay: the size is 941.7M: only 5.2M are in use, which is approximately the 1% of the available space.
Back to stock
Returning to the stock system configuration is pretty simple, only few steps must be performed. The first thing we have to do is to identify the system partition originally mounted on /overlay. To do so, we must take a look at the /proc/mtd file:
# cat /proc/mtd dev: size erasesize name mtd0: 00020000 00010000 "u-boot" mtd1: 001333cc 00010000 "kernel" mtd2: 0069cc34 00010000 "rootfs" mtd3: 00460000 00010000 "rootfs_data" mtd4: 00010000 00010000 "art" mtd5: 007d0000 00010000 "firmware"
What interests us is the mtd file with the rootfs_data name, which in this case is mtd3. We must mount the corresponding block device, /dev/mtdblock3 on /mnt:
# mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock3 /mnt
Notice that we used the -t option of the mount command to specify the filesystem type, jffs2 in this case (a filesystem designed specifically for flash memory devices).
Once the partition is mounted, we must revert the changes previously made in the fstab file. At this point the original file should be accessible as /mnt/upper/etc/config/fstab. We open it with our favorite text editor and either delete, comment or modify the section we previously added, from:
config 'mount'
[...]
option enabled '1'
To:
config 'mount'
[...]
option enabled '0'
Once we are done, we save the changes. Finally, we unmount the block device and reboot the system:
# umount /mnt && reboot
Conclusion
In this article we learned how to expand the storage space of a LEDE system using a simple USB device. LEDE is an open source OS which can be installed on a variety of routers; with this simple procedure we obtain more space for the system data and use it, for example, to install additional packages which would not fit on the usually small storage space available on routers. To know more about the LEDE project, please visit the LEDE documentation.
