Docker container/image to make an OpenWRT build

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4/BPI-R4 Pro(MT7988)
1

Firstly, thanks for at least trying to make things open source and publishing the code to GitHub, both are better than nothing.

How do I go about building https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-R4PRO-4E-OPENWRT-V24.10.0-Master-Devel and generating something (images) which I can then flash to a micro SD card? There isn’t any information on how to go about doing this I’m afraid.

What I think most people want is a set of instructions to use Docker or Podman to generate the various images:

  1. BPI-R4Pro-4E-BE14-MT76-OpenWRT24.10-emmc-260325.

  2. BPI-R4Pro-4E-BE14-MT76-OpenWRT24.10-sdcard-260325.

  3. BPI-R4Pro-4E-BE14-MT76-OpenWRT24.10-snand-260325.

Just by a. checking out https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-R4PRO-4E-OPENWRT-V24.10.0-Master-Devel, b. installing Docker/Podman, c. running the commands as documented in https://github.com/openwrt/docker#imagebuilder-tags. For instance:

$ git clone https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-R4PRO-4E-OPENWRT-V24.10.0-Master-Devel.git
$ cd BPI-R4PRO-4E-OPENWRT-V24.10.0-Master-Devel
$ docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)"/bin/:/builder/bin -it openwrt/imagebuilder
# inside the Docker container
[ ! -d ./scripts ] && ./setup.sh
make image PROFILE=generic PACKAGES=tmate
exit
# Flash the image generated from the step above.
$ sudo dd status=progress if="$(pwd)"/bin/<FILE>" of=/dev/<BLOCK_DEV>

Simple. Does it really need to be more complicated?

Questions

  1. Does anyone know how to figure out what is different from upstream OpenWRT and https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-R4PRO-4E-OPENWRT-V24.10.0-Master-Devel? Again, this is another one of those things that doesn’t make sense to me, or that I’m simply missing something, but why was this repository not just forked from OpenWRT so everyone could see what is really happening in the repository. Again, I’m sure there must be some justification for it but this seems really odd.

  2. I want to switch to 10G SFP WAN port without entering uboot as documented in https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-R4_Pro/GettingStarted_BPI-R4_Pro#_r4pro_4e_switchable_combo_network_port. How can I do this without using the serial console?

  3. Does the BPI-R4 Pro WiFi7 Router Complete Assembly Package, https://www.bpi-shop.com/products/bpi-r4-pro-complete-assembly-package.html, come with a default factory image? If so, what exactly is flashed on there?

Many thanks!

- Bana (reach out to me at [email protected] if you want to collaborate on anything)