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1. Bootup

On routers with DMZ LED OpenWrt will use the LED to signal bootup, turning the LED on while booting and off once completely booted.

Once booted, you should be able to telnet into the router using the last address it was configured for:

telnet 192.168.1.1

Trying 192.168.1.1...
Connected to 192.168.1.1.
Escape character is '^]'.
 === IMPORTANT ============================
  Use 'passwd' to set your login password
  this will disable telnet and enable SSH
 ------------------------------------------


BusyBox v1.00 (2006.03.24-09:16+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

  _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 WHITE RUSSIAN -------------------------------------
  * 2 oz Vodka   Mix the Vodka and Kahlua together
  * 1 oz Kahlua  over ice, then float the cream or
  * 1/2oz cream  milk on the top.
 ---------------------------------------------------
root@OpenWrt:~# passwd
Changing password for root
Enter the new password (minimum of 5, maximum of 8 characters)
Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.
Enter new password: 
Re-enter new password:
Password changed.
root@OpenWrt:~# 

2. Setting a password

At this point we strongly suggest setting a password. Depending which firmware image you have installed, you can set the password either via OpenWrt WebIf or via telnet using the passwd command. After setting the password, any attempt to telnet in will result in a "Login failed" message.

2.1. Why no default password?

People are lazy. We don't want to give people a false sense of security by creating a password that everyone knows. We want to make sure you know that it's insecure by not even prompting for it.

2.2. What if I can't access telnet when first booting?

This may very well be a problem with your firewall settings in linux or windows. If you have any firewalls, you may disable them.

However once OpenWRT is installed and you do the first reboot, telnet no longer functions (reason of security). Use SSH as the alternative. There are good clients out there (Tunnelier, Putty, etc).

2.3. What if I can't access SSH after setting a password?

Try again after a minute or two. On the first bootup OpenWrt will be busy setting up the filesystem and generating SSH keys; the SSH server won't start until after the keys have been generated.

2.4. Why does it reject my password or display SSH warnings after upgrading?

Upgrading OpenWrt completely replaces the filesystem. This means that your previous password and ssh keys will be erased and you will have to set your password again.

3. Package management

The ipkg utility is a lightweight package manager used to download and install OpenWrt packages from the internet. (GNU/Linux users familiar with apt-get will recognise the similarities)

The firmware itself is designed to occupy as little space as possible while still providing a reasonably friendly command line interface or web administration interface. With no packages installed, OpenWrt will configure the network interfaces, setup a basic NAT firewall, a secure shell server, a DNS forwarder and DHCP server.

More options can be found via ipkg --help.

The configuration file for ipkg is /etc/ipkg.conf. Before you can install any addon package, you need to freshen the package list with

root@OpenWrt:~# ipkg update

Upgrade with ipkg

Never ipkg upgrade a whole release. You can upgrade addon-packages, but you should always reflash if you are switching between releases and release candidates.

ipkg-link

If you have USB storage, or install packages to a destination other than root, the shell script ipkg-link will create automatic symlinks to the root filesystem for those packages. See the info on ipkg-link on the UsbStorageHowto.

Proxy support

To use ipkg through a proxy, add the following to /etc/ipkg.conf

option http_proxy http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:port/
option ftp_proxy ftp://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:port/

these are for if you need authentication

option proxy_username xxxx
option proxy_password xxxx

If the authentication with the above options in /etc/ipkg.conf is not working, try the following format:

option http_proxy http://username:password@aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:port/
option ftp_proxy http://username:password@aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:port/