Cross compile packages for OpenWRT / LEDE

For this tutorial I'll be using Fedora 29 for the build host.

We'll install the necessary dependencies firstly:

sudo dnf install asciidoc binutils bzip2 flex git gawk intltool zlib gmake ncurses openssl-devel patchutils p5-extutils-makemaker unzip wget gettext libxslt zlib-devel boost-jam perl-XML-Parser libusb-devel dev86 sharutils java-1.7.0-openjdk-devel b43-fwcutter zip

The next step is to obtain the OpenWRT SDK which will allows us to cross-compile packages that we require on OpenWRT.

I'll be using a BT Home Hub 5A for this exercise - so I browse the releases:

https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/17.01.4/targets/lantiq/xrx200/

Under the supplementary section you should find the SDK e.g.

lede-sdk-<version-number>-<vendor>-<model>_gcc-<version number>_musl-<version number>.Linux-<architecure>.tar.xz

We'll proceed by downloading and extracting it:

wget https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/17.01.4/targets/lantiq/xrx200/lede-sdk-17.01.4-lantiq-xrx200_gcc-5.4.0_musl-1.1.16.Linux-x86_64.tar.xz

tar xvf lede-sdk-17.01.4-lantiq-xrx200_gcc-5.4.0_musl-1.1.16.Linux-x86_64.tar.xz && cd lede-sdk-17.01.4-lantiq-xrx200_gcc-5.4.0_musl-1.1.16.Linux-x86_64

The default feeds will be targeted at 17.01.4 and hence be missing fping - however the current master branch has fping available - so we'll add the following line to feeds.conf.default ensure it's indexed / available:

src-git fping https://github.com/openwrt/packages.git

Update the feeds (as defined in feeds.conf.default):

./scripts/feeds update -a

and grab fping with:

./scripts/feeds install fping

We'll generate our config file:

make menuconfig

Select 'Network' and ensure the fping package is marked with an 'M' and then save the changes to '.config'

Also make sure that cryptographic signing is disabled (otherwise the build process will fail): 'Global build settings' > Untick 'Cryptographically sign package lists' and hit Save.

We'll now attempt to compile fping:

make -j1 V=s

The binary is created in the following directory:

bin/packages/mips_24kc/fping/

Finally upload the package via SFTP/SCP to the router and install it with opkg:

opkg install fping_4.2-1_mips_24kc.ipk