Hi,
Yeah, I'm trying to build my own image now to solve this using
ImageBuilder, but the built image won't load in as a .trx using mtd, or
through the web interface. The image is currently 3.67M. which should be
OK, but it's cutting it fine.

I nearly bricked my router trying to install the bin image using tftp.
Probably need another thread for this now!

I appreciate I'm nowhere near an expert with this but trying to feel my
way through it,

Thanks,
Jim

On 13/12/10 21:09, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> Could someone explain more what the overlay does, is this a temporary
>> area for installation or is it where additional installed material is
>> kept?
> 
> To maximize the amount of stuff you can cram into the limited amount of
> flash space, OpenWRT uses a highly-compressing filesystem (squashfs) for
> the builtin files (mounted on /rom), and another (still compressing, but
> not quite as much, because of the need to be able to modify it somewhat
> efficiently) for the config files and the extra packages installed after
> the fact (mounted on /overlay).
> 
> Then the two filesystems are magically merged into one (mounted on /) to
> give you the best of both worlds: a highly compressed filesystem that
> you can somewhat efficiently modify.
> 
> So if /overlay is small, it's because all the space is already used by
> all the built-in files (the kernel, the built-in kernel modules, the
> http server, the web-config tool, the ssh server, the WPA client
> and server, you name it).
> 
> You can make /overlay bigger as follows:
> - add flash space to your device (usually either requires good hardware
>   hacking skills, or otherwise buying a different machine).
> - remove stuff from /rom: by building your own firmware (which is easy
>   with OpenWRT), you can choose exactly what gets built-in and what
>   doesn't, so you can throw out stuff you don't need and you can add the
>   stuff you do need (by adding it into the set of built-in files, you
>   let it benefit from the improved compression).
> 
> So I'd recommend you build your own OpenWRT firmware and that you
> include ntpd and openvpn directly in your firmware image.
>   
>> From googling, it seems that it's possible to mount /overlay using
>> NFS, is this practical/possible or are there any pitfalls?
> 
> You can definitely do that, and you can even mount / via NFS if
> you want.  To mount /overlay from NFS, you'll definitely need to build
> your own firmware (since everything else than /overlay is frozen at the
> time of building the firmware, so you have no other place to configure
> from where to mount /overlay).
> 
> 
>         Stefan
> 
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