Wich OS are you recommending for the BPI R4? With OpenWRT i have issues to install it, because i can’t compile the 21.0 GIT Version. And with the OpenWRT latest Snapshot for SD i dont know what Packages are missing, the preinstalled Nand Images looks a lot better but updates etc. dont work. Is there a Guide to install OpenWrt on BPI R4 with the right packages? I don’t get it.
Hello WolkiReaper,
the answer I can give you, is a more general:
The compiling question you have I can’t help you.
Yes, on the official openwrt snapshot (OpenWrt Firmware Selector) you may have to install additional packages! Depending on your project!
dont know whats your goal. do you want to run it on sd or on nand? do you have a .config for the r4? you can use the generic one from the official build process. are you familiar with menuconfig? usually, the openwrt snapshot has all thats needed. how do you know if there are packages missing? did you miss something? its a bit hard without knowing anything what you tried or even what your goal is.
usually, its very simple with openwrt to build it for a sd card. clone the github openwrt repo, go into it, ./scripts/feeds upate -a && ./scripts/feeds install-a && make menuconfig, configure it to use the r4, then run make -j$(nproc)
after it finished, you have openwrt/bin/targets/mediatek a file called something like mediatek-sdcard.img.gz, gunzip that and dd it to sd, then the r4 can boot from that and you should be able to access it on http://192.168.1.1 (when compiled with luci)
Im not familiar with the menuconfig, i want to install on sd and i thougt something is missing because the stock openwrt on the nand had other menus, features and so on.
I recommend archlinuxarm, because I do every board I have archlinuxarm, but it is in an early stage for R4…
Interesting news! Who or which team is working on Archlinux for ARM for R4?
what do you understand with “stock” openwrt? the vendor one or the open source one (the real openwrt)? If you dont have very specific reason, i would go with the latest snapshot of openwrt, you can download the sdcard.img.gz and flash that to sd and boot from it. it should include everything thats needed
And if you miss a package, opkg install usually helps (or inject it into a custom firmware in firmware selector, which is what I generally do for upgrades). And if there is no package, you might still use a container, 4G RAM allows that…
As said above, hard to say if you don’t specify what you are trying to do.
Just me, with the help of dangowrt’s linux fork and frankw’s examples in debian image
I share my install script on github, have an example image for download.
Setup is very limited for now. Only a lan-bridge. See networksetup for R3/R64 for an example to setup network as router.
Bold effort, especially if only for personal joy.
I’ve been pondering of enabling ‘ext4 rootfs’ for OpenWrt R4 build. But I don’t want to maintain it by myself forever. So if it could become part of standard OpenWrt for R4…
I’m sure I may be able to borrow your u-boot if I proceed.
Most of my machine runs Arch Linux. Don’t know if I should just run it on R4 too. Interesting option that pops up now.
Can’t decide at the moment. But I’ve been building OpenWrt images in the past week. Did lot of catch up as a newbie. Pretty much up to speed. And now…archlinux…lol Hmm…let me think
What I’ve done on mine is as follows:
- Grab an old micro SD card, 8gb or higher.
- Use SD card formatter to clear any previous wrongdoings on the card.
- Burn the current openwrt snapshot sd card image using balena etcher, remove the microsd and insert it in the router board.
- Set up the router board as a “client” of your current router, with a home lan wire to r4 wan and another wire direct to your pc. Power it up and wait a couple of minutes (if you see a 192.168.1.x address on your pc you can proceed).
- From your pc, execute “ssh [email protected]” and from the router image set up a valid password for the root user using “passwd”.
- Update the package list using the command “opkg update”.
- Install the gui using the command “opkg install luci”.
- Add whatever packages you will need (like wireguard, ddns or wake on lan) using the same opkg command from point 7.
- Reboot the board.
You are now set to do whatever configuration you will need but keep in mind that snapshot packages compatibility is not perpetual and you might want to update the system image, so keep up to date configuration backups.
I have no experience on the 5G modem front since my r4 is used for a gpon setup, so I have no idea which package are required for your scenario 
.