While OpenWrt can be managed completely using SSH and the terminal, the LuCI web interface makes many administration tasks easier. The OpenWrt full releases, such as the current 18.06.x series, ship with the LuCI web interface installed. But for lower-memory devices, such as those with 4MBytes Flash and/or 32MBytes of RAM, the full install may fail because of lacking sufficient Flash memory so you will have to build your own image with LuCI included. More info on this can be obtained here.

In case you are not familiar with a CLI, check out command-line HELP and/or opkg.

This installs the essentials of the Web User Interface LuCI. See opkg update && opkg list luci-* for all available packages to administer OpenWrt through LuCI.

This is not recommended, as it sends root's password via plaintext

1. Open an SSH session to 192.168.1.1
2. Enter the following

   opkg update && opkg install luci

3. After the installation has completed, the LuCI web GUI will be available at 192.168.1.1

Preferred & Secure

1. Open an SSH session to 192.168.1.1.
2. Enter the following
   

   opkg update && opkg install luci-ssl-openssl

3. After the installation has completed, the LuCI web GUI will be available at 192.168.1.1

The basic LuCI web user interface is in English. However, it is being actively translated into many languages by volunteers. See https://github.com/openwrt/luci/wiki/i18n and get involved! For a list of available packages, do

opkg list | grep luci-i18n-

You will see a list of the available language packages. To install your native language, do e.g.

opkg install luci-i18n-hungarian

You can also install language packs utilizing the WebInterface and you can install multiple LuCI language packs at the same time and switch between them in the LuCI-WebInterface or by editing the file → /etc/config/luci

The web server software uHTTPd is a dependency of the LuCI package and is automatically installed when you install LuCI. After installation the web server is not running! You need to manually start the web server. You should also enable the web server, so that it automatically starts up whenever you reboot the router. The first command below starts the web server, the second enables it across reboots.

/etc/init.d/uhttpd start
/etc/init.d/uhttpd enable

Now you should be able to connect to the web server serving LuCI at http://192.168.1.1.

LuCI is installed as a 'meta package' which installs several other packages by having these defined as a dependency. Notably, it installs the uHTTPd web server, configured for use with LuCI. The dependent packages are the following (see the LuCI technical reference for more information):

• uhttpd
• uhttpd-mod-ubus
• luci-mod-admin-full
• luci-theme-bootstrap
• luci-app-firewall
• luci-proto-core
• luci-proto-ppp
• libiwinfo-lua

In case you want to use uHTTPd for the web interface there is little configuration necessary as uHTTPd is configured with CGI to make LuCI work with the Lua interpreter. By default this is organised as follows. By default /www is the standard document root. Thus, by requesting this docroot (by pointing your browser to the devices IP address) an index file such as index.html is searched for (per uHTTPd settings). The file /www/index.html (installed with LuCI) is prepared such that when requested, it redirects you to /cgi-bin/luci, which is the default CGI gateway for LuCI. This is just a script, which basically calls Lua at /usr/bin/lua. uhttpd is configured by default to load pages as CGI in the /cgi-bin path, and thus starts serving these pages with the /cgi-bin/luci script.

It is also possible to run LuCI with Lua as an embedded process. uhttpd supports this; see the corresponding section of the uHTTPd Web Server Configuration article on the UCI configuration of uhttpd.

The default web server software uhttpd is configured in the file /etc/config/uhttpd.
The LuCI web interface is configured in the file /etc/config/luci.

→http.overview

→luci.on.lighttpd

LuCI on nginx is currently supported by using uwsgi as plain-cgi interpreter. You need to install one of this 2 variants of the LuCI meta-package:

• luci-nginx – Autoinstall nginx, uwsgi-cgi and the default config file to make luci work on nginx
• luci-nginx-ssl – Autoinstall nginx-ssl, uwsgi-cgi and the default config file to make luci wok on nginx. It does also create a self-signed certificate for nginx and redirect http traffic to https by default

Currently LuCI on nginx is fully supported (maybe only in master snapshots for now, as of 16-Feb-2019). If any problem is found, report them to the support forum.

• Support forum for LuCI on Nginx

1. Go to the package download page of the distribution in question: (for ar71xx - generic “18.06.2” packages use: https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06.2/targets/ar71xx/generic/packages/)
2. Download the following packages: (The extension “ * ” will show package versions and targets (such as ar71xx) depending on the system page)
   • luci_*.ipk
   • luci-app-firewall_*.ipk
   • luci-i18n-english_*.ipk
   • luci-lib-core_*.ipk
   • luci-lib-ipkg_*.ipk
   • luci-lib-nixio_*.ipk
   • luci-lib-sys_*.ipk
   • luci-lib-web_*.ipk
   • luci-mod-admin-core_*.ipk
   • luci-mod-admin-full_*.ipk
   • luci-proto-core_*.ipk
   • luci-proto-ppp_*.ipk
   • luci-sgi-cgi_*.ipk
   • luci-theme-base_*.ipk
   • luci-theme-openwrt_*.ipk
3. Connect the router to the computer and copy the packages to the router using file transfer. For example the following command can be used via the command prompt in windows 10:
   

   scp luci_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-app-firewall_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-i18n-english_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-ipkg_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-nixio_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-sys_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-web_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-mod-admin-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-mod-admin-full_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-proto-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-proto-ppp_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-sgi-cgi_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-theme-base_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-theme-openwrt_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk root@192.168.1.1:\root

4. Log into the router. For example by entering the following command into command prompt in windows 10
   

   ssh root@192.168.1.1

5. Packages can be installed using the following command
   

   opkg install PACKAGE_NAME

6. Install the packages in the following order
   • luci-proto-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-lib-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-lib-sys_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-lib-nixio_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-sgi-cgi_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-lib-web_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-i18n-english_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-mod-admin-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-lib-ipkg_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-mod-admin-full_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-theme-base_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-theme-openwrt_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-app-firewall_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci-proto-ppp_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
   • luci_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk
7. The LuCI web GUI will be available at http://192.168.1.1
8. To clean up, remove the packages with the following command
   

   rm luci_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-app-firewall_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-i18n-english_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-ipkg_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-nixio_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-sys_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-lib-web_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-mod-admin-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-mod-admin-full_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-proto-core_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-proto-ppp_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-sgi-cgi_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-theme-base_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk luci-theme-openwrt_0.11.1-1_ar71xx.ipk

You can also install a minimal version of LuCI with following packages selected for installation. Download and transfer the packages to your OpenWrt router onto the RAM disk in /tmp/luci-offline-packages

mkdir -p /tmp/luci-offline-packages; cd /tmp/luci-offline-packages

• liblua
• lua
• libuci-lua
• libubus
• libubus-lua
• uhttpd
• rpcd
• luci-base
• luci-lib-ip
• luci-lib-nixio
• luci-theme-bootstrap
• luci-mod-admin-full
• luci-lib-jsonc

and install them with:

opkg install /tmp/luci-offline-packages/*.ipk; done

Or use this script bellow. Note, the script assumes you have internet access through the router where you are installing Luci. If you do not, then you will need to either manually download required .ipk packages, or run the script in two parts. First part till the last Done statement to be executed when connected to Internet.:

#!/bin/sh
#assumes the user has egrep, wget, ssh, and scp
 
set -e
 
# Change this to match your router
architecture="brcm63xx"
 
# These should be fine unless you've changed something
user="root"
ip_address="192.168.1.1"
 
url="https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/packages/${architecture}/"
tmpdir="/tmp/luci-offline"
packages_base="liblua lua libuci-lua libubus libubus-lua uhttpd rpcd"
packages_luci="luci-base liblucihttp liblucihttp-lua luci-lib-ip luci-lib-nixio luci-theme-bootstrap luci-mod-admin-full luci-lib-jsonc luci-mod-status luci-mod-system luci-mod-network libiwinfo-lua libiwinfo-lua"
 
mkdir "$tmpdir"
cd "$tmpdir"
 
wget -N --quiet "${url}base/Packages"
for pkg in $packages_base; do
    pkgfile="$(egrep -oe " ${pkg}_.+" Packages | tail -c +2)"
    pkgurl="${url}base/${pkgfile}"
    wget -N --quiet "$pkgurl"
done
 
wget -N --quiet "${url}luci/Packages"
for pkg in $packages_luci; do
    pkgfile="$(egrep -oe " ${pkg}_.+" Packages | tail -c +2)"
    pkgurl="${url}luci/${pkgfile}"
    wget -N --quiet "$pkgurl"
done
 
wget -N --quiet "${url}luci"
for pkg in $packages_luci; do
    pkgfile="$(egrep -oe " ${pkg}_.+" Packages | tail -c +2)"
    pkgurl="${url}luci/${pkgfile}"
    wget -N --quiet "$pkgurl"
done
 
ssh "${user}@${ip_address}" mkdir -p /tmp/luci-offline-packages
scp *.ipk "${user}@${ip_address}":/tmp/luci-offline-packages
ssh "${user}@${ip_address}" opkg install /tmp/luci-offline-packages/*.ipk
ssh "${user}@${ip_address}" rm -rf /tmp/luci-offline-packages/
 
ssh "${user}@${ip_address}" /etc/init.d/uhttpd start
ssh "${user}@${ip_address}" /etc/init.d/uhttpd enable
 
cd
rm -rf "$tmpdir"

If you want to configure Luci webserver for secure access, read the explanation here.

• LuCI is developed at Github: https://github.com/openwrt/luci
• Please file LuCI specific bugs at the LuCI issue tracker
• LuCIs old web-presence at LuCI website

LuCI Technical Reference