[ArborMesh] Arbormesh Hackathon: What needs doing?

[Andrew Surratt]

does someone already have a host to put up an arbormesh.org (I assume) 
website?  I can put it here at my house, but my up-speed is 768k, and I 
saturate that pretty well during the daytime.  I can run jboss, apache, 
drupal, or whatever else.  I don't know from django, but my web server 
is running ubuntu, so shouldn't be a problem.  I don't host my own dns, 
but I can get that done (for free) through my extensive underworld 
connections.

I'm up for a clinic, but other commitments (kids, mainly) may make it 
difficult for me, so it'll depend on when it happens.  I have blocked 
off the hackathon night, though.

re: cronned script to poll for internet connectivity...  what 
environment is available in openwrt?  I can do bash scripts for that, 
assuming all the "normal" networking tools are there -- mainly ping, I 
guess.

I'm also up for luci/lua stuff, mainly since I know jack about it at 
present, yet wouldn't be outside of my comfort zone.

fwiw, I have no opinion on the routing protocol.  I guess I lean 
slightly on the conservative side, i.e., OSLR.  but that's mainly based 
on my ignorance and not wanting to fight with b/leeding edge stuff. 
that said, I'm not likely to be that valuable in that arena anyway, so 
I'd yield to any better informed opinions.



On 04/20/11 22:10, Ryan Hughes wrote:
> Hi. So I wanted to get the ball rolling on the discussion of what should
> happen at the ArborMesh hackathon, Friday, May 6.
>
> We could use a website! Also, artwork, logo, and so forth!
>
> There are things to be done on the firmware.
>
> I got openwrt configured to speak OLSR and Batman-adv, both. It uses two
> different network prefixes (one for each protocol). I was wanting to do
> that so we could do tests/upgrades on one routing protocol while the
> other makes the actual network happen. That sort of thing.
>
> One thing that olsr does that batman-adv does not is this: It detects
> whether the router has access to the internet. If it does, it reports
> itself as a gateway. It periodically pings a set of hard-coded addresses
> to test whether it can get to the internet.
>
> I'd like us to implement a cron script that would do the equivalent for
> batman.
>
> Perhaps, before the hackathon, we should have a little "clinic" on how
> to work with openwrt, and a more in-depth technical introduction to the
> routing protocols. I can show you what I've been doing, and we can get
> y'all up to speed. If anybody would like to attend such a "clinic", tell
> me and we can arrange a time.
>
> We could also do this type of thing at the hackathon itself. I just
> thought that if anybody wanted a pre-introduction, they could do a
> little tinkering before we got there, and then we could get more work
> done at the hackathon.
>
> I'm gonna try to convert what I've been doing into an "OpenWRT
> ImageBuilder script". Right now, I've got a .config file and so forth,
> so you need a full OpenWRT source tree. But an imagebuilder script is a
> little easier to share and faster to produce.
>
>
> Now, in addition to the router firmware, we will probably want a web-app
> that can do some of the central management tasks. I was thinking we'd
> use "Nodewatcher" for this purpose. The central management tasks include
> such things as assigning IP addresses and showing a cool map with our
> nodes and connections, to brag. Nodewatcher is a django app.
> http://dev.wlan-si.net/wiki/Podrobnosti/Nodewatcher
>
> Here's a live sample of nodewatcher being run on wlan-slovenia.
> https://nodes.wlan-si.net/
>
> Nodewatcher needs to be installed and configured for us, but it's also a
> pretty new software project. Only recently has it gained the ability to
> operate outside of wlan-slovenia. We will almost certainly have to add
> features.
>
>
> Also, we will probably want to add some stuff to the web-UI that's on
> each router. This would be done in OpenWRT's "LuCI" environment. LuCI is
> a web-app framework written in lua that runs on each router.
>
> Some of the things to add: Maybe some kind of "configuration wizard",
> like what Freifunk has.
> http://wiki.freifunk.net/Freifunk_Firmware_%28English%29
>
> Also, there is already a luci app to show a visualization of the olsr
> topology, but I don't think there are any luci apps to deal with batman
> at all. It'd be nice if we could start one -- at least as a topology
> visualizer, but also to see other status information and do some
> configuration, maybe.
>
>
> Also, it'd be sweet if we had one of those "welcome screens". Like, when
> you first log into the network and it's like "You are about to use
> ArborMesh. Plz to agree to our policies." There are openwrt packages
> ready to use, but we'd have to configure them, and put our own artwork
> and info inthere.
> But this would also be cool if we could use that space to advertise
> hyperlocal things, like "You are about to use arbormesh. Here's a cool
> irc channel and mailing list. Y'know what's cool? AHA. And other
> community organizations and stuff. Oh, and look: These are some network
> services being run on the inside of the network! Check out this website
> without even going down to the copper at all!".
>
> We could come up with some sort of broadcast mechanism that we could use
> to push out changes to the welcome page.
>
>
> This is my brainstorm. Anybody else got any ideas? List 'em, here. When
> we get to the hackathon, we can prioritize.
> --Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> ArborMesh mailing list
> ArborMesh at iheartryan.com
> https://iheartryan.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arbormesh