Cluster Gateway (OpenWrt)

Instead of configuring Ubuntu OS, running on a Raspberry Pi to provide Router/Firewall capabilities, which procedure is described in “Cluster Gateway (Ubuntu OS)”, a embedded device or Raspberry Pi, can be used to run OpenWRT

OpenWrt (from open wireless router) is a highly extensible GNU/Linux distribution for embedded devices to route traffic. OpenWrt can run on various types of devices, including CPE routers, residential gateways, smartphones and SBC (like Raspeberry Pis). It is also possible to run OpenWrt on personal computers.

For my homelab, the router need to be able to support WiFi connectivity as uplink (Wan interface), so Raspberry Pi 4B can be used to run OpenWRT-based router/firewall. Raspberry PI will be connected to my home network using its WIFI interface (wlan0) and to the LAN Switch using the eth interface (eth0).

As an alternative to Raspberry PI, a wifi pocket-sized travel router running OpenWRT as OS can be used. For example, Slate Plus (GL-A1300) from GL-Inet can be used for this purpose.

OpenWRT installation in Raspberry Pi

This is the process to flash OpenWRT into SD-Card that can be used to boot Raspberry Pi

• Step 1. Download the appropriate bcm27xx image for your Raspberry Pi and desired OpenWrt release from Firmware Selector.

  

  Note: Supported versions per Raspberry PI model can be found in https://openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/raspberry_pi

  Important: Download factory image that allows to install OpenWRT for the first time: For example, this is the image name to install OpenWRT 23.05.5: openwrt-23.05.5-bcm27xx-bcm2711-rpi-4-ext4-factory.img.gz

• Step 2. Flash the image to a micro SD card using a disk imager, such as the open source one from the Raspberry Pi team

  Use Raspberry PI Imager to flash the OpenWrt image to an SD card Unzip downloaded image

  gunzip openwrt-23.05.5-bcm27xx-bcm2711-rpi-4-ext4-factory.img.gz
  

  Open RpI Imager

  • Select Raspberry Pi Model

    

  • Select “Use Custom” when specifying “Operating System”, and the .img file previously unzipped.

    

  • Select SD Card when choosing “Storage”
  • Click on “Write” to start the SD-card flashing

• Step 3. Once SD Card flash is complete, insert the SD card into your Raspberry Pi and power up. OpenWrt will boot.

• Step 4. Connect laptop directly to Raspberry PI ethernet port or via LAN switch OpenWRT will assign the laptop a IP via DHCP

• Step 5: Open Luci interface at http://192.168.1.1

  Login as root user, no password is needed the first time.

  

• Step 6. Configure a password for root user.

ssh root@192.168.1.1

OpenWRT installation in GL-iNet hardware

Gl Inet A-1300 support latest release of OpenWrt (23.05) but latest GL Inet firmware (4.17.5) comes with old version of OpenWrt (21.02) which is EOL release. Latest firmware version available can be downloaded from here: https://dl.gl-inet.com/router/a1300/

OpenWRT firmware cannot be upgraded without losing GL Inet customized version and functionalities provided on top of OpenWrt.

Reinstall Router with Updated version of OpenWRT

The procedure is the following

1. Download firmware from https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-a1300

   Note: Download Uboot firmware image In following image: Firmware OpenWrt Install URL

2. Remove the power of router.
3. Connect your computer to the Ethernet port (either LAN or WAN) of the router. All other ports MUST remain unconnected.
4. Press and hold the Reset button firmly, and then power up the router. GL-A1300(Slate Plus) the LED flashes slowly 5 times, then stays on for a short while, then flashes quickly all the time. Release reset button after flashing sequence changes.
5. Manually set the IP address of your computer to 192.168.1.2.
6. Use browser to visit http://192.168.1.1, this is the Uboot Web UI
7. Click Choose file button to find the firmware file. Then click Update firmware button and select firmware image downloaded in 1.
8. Wait for around 3 minutes. Don’t power off your device when updating. The router is ready when both power and Wi-Fi LED are on or you can find its SSID on your device.
9. Revert the IP setting you did in step 4 and connect your device to the LAN or Wi-Fi of the router. You will be able to access the router via 192.168.8.1 again.
10. OpenWrt admin console is opened.

OpenWRT configuration

Configuring hostname

• Go to “System” -> “System”
• Select “General Settings” tab
• Update hostname and apply changes

Securing access

Securing SSH acess

Configure SSH keys

• Go to System-> Administrator
• Select “SSH Keys” tab
• Copy and paste SSH public key

Try ssh connection using SSH private key

ssh root@10.0.0.1 -i <ssh_private_key_file>

Disabling SSH using password

• Go to System -> Administrator
• Select “SSH Access” tab
  • Unchek “Password Authentication” and “Allows root login with password”

  

Securing LuCi console access

LuCi HTTP access can be secured applying the following configuration¹.

Enable HTTPs

• Go to “System” -> “Administration”
• Select “HTTP(S) Access” tab
• Click on “Redirect to HTTPS”

Install a valid TLS certificate

• Generate a TLS certificate. Self-signed TLS or signed by LetsEncrypt.

  Tip: Certbot tool can be used for this purpose

• Copy private key and public key into /etc

  rsync /tmp/gateway.homelab.ricsanfre.key gateway:/etc/uhttpd.key
  rsync /tmp/gateway.homelab.ricsanfre.crt gateway:/etc/uhttpd.crt
  

• Restart uhttp process

  /etc/init.d/uhttpd restart
  

See further details in “OpenWrt documentation: How to get rid of LuCI HTTPS certificate warnings”

Configuring LAN

By default Router LAN IP is configured to use 192.168.1.0/24, network and 192.168.1.1 as router IP address in LAN.

Default LAN subnet and router IP addresseed must be changed to use homelab LAN subnetwork.

• Go to System -> Interfaces
• Edit lan (lan-br) interface
• In General settings, this interface is configured with a static address 192.168.1.1
• Assign an IP address in a different subnet (e.g. 10.0.0.1). Click Save.
• Click Save and Apply.

• Reconnect to Luci web UI using new IP 10.0.0.1

Configuring wireless WAN

Use one of the wifi interfaces to connect to home wifi²

• Go to Network -> Wireless

  The list of available wifi interfaces is displayed. The number and type of wifi-interfaces depends on the hardware used to run OpenWrt.

  GL.iNet GL-A1300(SlatePlus) Wifi Interfaces

  

  GL.iNet GL-A1300 (Slate Plus) has two wifi interfaces:

  1. radio0: 802.11 a/b/g/n, 400Mbps (2.4GHz)
  2. radio1: 802.11 ac, 867Mbps (5GHz)

  For the wan up-link we can select 5GHz interface to connect to my home network. Other wifi interface can be used to access vi WiFi to the homelab.

  Raspberry Pi (4B) Wifi Interface

  Raspberry Pi 4B model only has one wifi interface:

  1. radio0: 802.11 a/b/g/n, 400Mbps (2.4GHz)

  

• Select radio interface and click on “Scan” The available list of Wifi networks is displayed:

  

• Choose the Wi-Fi network you want to connect to from the page and click “Join Network”.

• Wifi connection configuration window is displayed

  

  • Recommend to tick the ‘Replace wireless configuration’ to delete the wireless access point (Master) for the chosen radio.
  • Enter the Wi-Fi password, leave the “name of new network” as “wwan” and select wan firewall zone.
  • Click Save.

• Client Wi-Fi settings page is opened.

  • Leave default values
  • Click in Save and apply

  

Configure static IP for wireless WAN

After connecting OpenWRT to a WIFI network as a client, a new wwan (phy1-sta0) interface is created in System->Interfaces

• Click on Edit to set a static IP address
• Select static IP address, and click on Switch Protocol confirmation button
• Select wwan (phy1-sta0) Device
• Set a static IP address that is available in your home network (i.e. 192.168.1.21)
• Click on Save and Save and apply

Configuring Default route

A default route need to be configured so Router can access to internet

• Go to Network->Routing
• Click on Add.
• Specify default route (0.0.0.0/0) through home router ip gateway (192.168.1.1 in my case) assigned to wwan interface

Firewall

OpenWrt uses the firewallX application netfilter/nftables rule builder application. It runs in user-space to parse a configuration file into a set of nftables rules, sending each to the kernel netfilter modules.

Default configuration

Zones

A zone groups one or more interfaces and serves as source or destination for forwardings, rules and redirects . Two zones are configured by default:

• lan: all LAN interfaces belong to this zone
  • All traffic from LAN to WAN is ACCEPTED by default
• wan: all WAN interfaces belong to this zone
  • All traffic from WAN to LAN is REJECTED by default

Configure firewall rules

Go to “Network” -> “Traffic Rules”

Enabling HTTP/HTTPS traffic WAN to LAN

Enabling HTTP/HTTPS traffic (TCP 80/443) to cluster nodes from WAN interface

Enabling SSH traffic WAN to LAN

Enabling SSH traffic (tcp port:22) to cluster nodes from WAN interface

Enabling HTTPs traffic to Kube API

Enabling HTTPS traffic to Kube API (TCP 6443) running in 10.0.0.11 (HA Proxy load balancer)

Enabling SSH connection to OpenWRT device from WAN

This is needed to enable SSH connections to OpenWRT router from WAN interfaces

Enabling HTTPS connection to OpenWRT device from WAN

This is needed to enable HTTPS connections to OpenWRT router from WAN interface

Enabling DNS connection to OpenWRT device from WAN

Enable DNS traffic to OpenWRT router from WAN interface. Use Homelab DNS from my home lab network

Summary of firewall rules added

DNS/DHCP service

Configuration is stored in /etc/config/dhcp/

Further details in OpenWrt-DNS/DHCP configuration documentation

DNS server configuration

Configure Local domain

• Go to Network -> DHCP and DNS
• In Tab “General”
  • Set “Local Domain” to internal DNS subdomain (homelab.ricsanfre.com)
  • Set “Resolve this locally” to empty

  Local DNS domain will be added to DHCP DNS search domain

Configure DNS Forwarders

• Go to Network -> DHCP and DNS
• In Tab “Forwarders” add all upstream DNS servers
  • Forward DNS queries for domain homelab.ricsanfre.com to internal DNS server (Bind9)
  • Use CloudFlare (1.1.1.1) and Google DNS (8.8.8.8) servers

  

• In Tab “Filter” configure Rebind protection

  Add homelab.ricsanfre.com to “Domain Whitelist”

  

  Important:

  OpenWRT, by default, configures DNS Rebind protection. This is designed to protect against this type of attack by blocking DNS resolution for domains that point to private IP addresses. All request to homelab.ricsanfre.com, since resolve private IP address, are rejected unless “rebind protection” is disabled or homelab.ricsanfre.com domain is added to the whitelist.

DHCP interfaces configuration

Enable DHCPv4 and disable DHCPv6 in lan interface

• Go to System -> Interfaces and edit lan (lan-br) interface
  • Go to “DHCP Server” Tab and “General Settings” subtab
    • “Ignore Interface” option has to be unchecked. This is default option
    • Set “Start”, “Limit” and “Lease time” options Start option set to 100 and limit set to 150 => pool IP (10.0.0.100-10.0.0.249)

    

  • Go to “DHCP Server” tab and “IPv6 Settings”
    • Select “RA Service” and “DHCPv6 Service” as disabled

    

Configure DHCP Boot/PXE options

• Go to Network -> DHCP and DNS
• In Tab “PXE/TFPT” configure
  • Configure dnsmasq PXE boot options
  • Do not enable TFTP server

# UEFI boot
dhcp-match=set:efi-x86_64,option:client-arch,7
dhcp-boot=tag:efi-x86_64,bootx64.efi

• Connect to OpenWrt through SSH

• Execute the following UCI commands

  uci set dhcp.@match[-1].networkid='bios'
  uci set dhcp.@match[-1].match='60,PXEClient:Arch:00000'
  uci add dhcp match
  uci set dhcp.@match[-1].networkid='efi64'
  uci set dhcp.@match[-1].match='60,PXEClient:Arch:00007'
  uci add dhcp boot
  uci set dhcp.@boot[-1].filename='tag:bios,bios/pxelinux.0'
  uci set dhcp.@boot[-1].serveraddress=10.0.0.11
  uci set dhcp.@boot[-1].servername=node1
  uci add dhcp boot
  uci set dhcp.@boot[-1].filename='tag:efi64,efi64/bootx64.efi'
  uci set dhcp.@boot[-1].serveraddress=10.0.0.11
  uci set dhcp.@boot[-1].servername=node1
  uci commit dhcp
  service dnsmasq reload
  

NTP Configuration

NTP configuration can be updated in “System” -> “System” Menu -> “Time Synchronization” tab

By default only NTP client is configured.

Enable NTP Server

To enable NTP server click on “Provide NTP server”. NTP server can be enabled only in a specific interface (i.e lan interface)

How OpenWrt keeps track of time

Most of OpenWrt hardware, including Raspberry PI or GL-A1300 does not have a RTC (Real Time clock), that means that it uses NTP to keep system time updated.

Even when NTP is used to synchronize the time and date, when NTP boots, it takes as current-time the time of the first-installation. As time goes after any reboot, NTP synchronization takes longer and longer because NTP adjust the time in small steps and the starting date to be synchronized is more distant in the past.

To remediate this, OpenWRT when booting updates system time to the most recently changed file in /etc directory. Script implementing this behavior is (/etc/init.d/sysfixtime). The problem is that if there is no configuration changes, the last update time won’t change between reboots. To mitigate this problem, a script to update a dummy file in (/etc) can be scheduled.

Go to “System” -> “Scheduled Tasks”

Add the following crontab task and apply save:

# Keeping time track file so sysfixtime can find a recent timestamp when rebooting 
*/5 * * * *  touch /etc/keepingtime

Scheduled tasks can be listed:

crontab -l

OpenWRT Operation

Software Management

Additional software packages can be installed in OpenWRT using OPKG packet manager⁴.

OpenWRT packages can be updated or new packages can be installed through LuCi:

• Go to System->Software
• Click on “Update List” to obtain list of packages

Packages can also be updated installed through command line:

All packages can be automatically uploaded with the following command

opkg list-upgradable | cut -f 1 -d ' ' | xargs opkg upgrade

Firmware Upgrade

Check latest version available for your hardware

Example:

• For Raspberry Pi: https://openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/raspberry_pi

• For GL-Inet A1300 model: https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-a1300

• Step 1. Download the appropriate Image for your Model and desired OpenWrt release from Firmware Selector.

  For example: For Rapsberry PI

  

  For GL. iNet A-1300:

  

• Step 2. Download “system Upgrade” image to update a router that already runs OpenWrt. The image can be used with the LuCI web interface or the terminal

• Step 3: Connect to LuCI Interface

• Step 4: Go to System->Backup/Flash Firmware

  

• Step 5: In Section “Flash new firmware image” Click on “Flash Image” and upload the new image.

Backup and Restore

• Configuration files can be backup up through console

  Go to “System” -> “Backup/Flash Firmware”

• To download backup files in tar file, Go to “Backup” section “Download backup” and click on “Generate Archive”

• To restore backup from archive file, Go to “Restore” section “Restore backup” and click “Upload archive…”

OpenWRT configuration files

OpenWrt’s central configuration is split into several files located in the /etc/config/ directory⁵. Each file relates roughly to the part of the system it configures. Configuration files can be edited:

• Using a text editor
• Using CLI uci
• Using various programming APIs (shell, Lua and C)
• Using LuCi web interface.

Upon changing a UCI configuration file, whether through a text editor or the command line, the services or executables that are affected must be (re)started (or, in some cases, simply reloaded) by an init.d call

References