Mesh Testbed Generator

Buildsystem to generate custom Lede-Firmware files for different nodes in a testbed.

Motivation

Having set up a mesh of 5 TP Link TL-WR842nd v2 in our hackerspace for testing and research, there's a need for configuration management. Configuration should be:

• Consistent / DRY
• Revertible - especially using first_boot
• Under version control

To archive these goals, a OpenWRT-configuration is generated based on Ruby .erb templates. A dedicated firmware file is generated for each node.

Structure

• `nodes.yml - inventory of all nodes. A firmware-file is generated per node
• files - Directory of .ERB-templates. After processing all ERB-templates, it is integrated into the firmware files
• bin - Output folder for firmware files
• Rakefile - Central build file

Usage

1. Adapt nodes.yml
2. Adapt templates in files
3. Run rake

OpenWRT Release (Chaos Calmer) and Platform (TL-WR842nd v2) is hardcoded in Rakefile. You have to change it to support other platforms.

Current Configuration

Current configuration includes

• Packages like ip, babeld, batman-adv for testing diffrent routing scenarios
• A collectd configuration ping'ing all nodes for measurements
• A wireless configuration putting the wifi into mesh mode while setting TX-power to a minimum
• IPv4 and IPv6 assignments for testing
• SSH-Key and root-password for accessing the nodes
• Firewall-Rules to allow connections via SSH from WAN