A Simple How to use MiniDLNA on OpenWRT

SSH/Telnet into the Router
The configuration file is located at /etc/config/minidlna
The database file is located at /var/run/minidlna/files.db
An example config file as shown below:

config minidlna 'config'
    option port '8200'
    option interface 'br-lan'
    option db_dir '/var/run/minidlna'
    option log_dir '/var/log'
    option inotify '1'
    option model_number '1'
    option root_container '.'
    option album_art_names 'Cover.jpg/cover.jpg/AlbumArtSmall.jpg/albumartsmall.jpg/AlbumArt.jpg/albumart.jpg/Album.jpg/album.jpg/Folder.jpg/folder.jpg/Thumb.jpg/thumb.jpg'
    option enabled '1'
    list media_dir '/home/Share/Movies/'
    option notify_interval '3600'
    option friendly_name 'MiniDLNA Server'
    option serial '13847284'

You can change the friendly_name which will be displayed in your network on Windows 7.
Also you can change the media directory.
It should be located on your external harddisk.
The example above shows it is at /home/Share/Movies/
What happens when your files does not show?

First check if the service is started or do the following

/etc/init.d/minidlna enable && /etc/init.d/minidlna start
/etc/init.d/miniupnpd enable && /etc/init.d/miniupnpd start

If it still does not show the files but you can access the collection it means the database has been populated with an empty file.
To rectify the issue delete the database file do:

rm /var/run/minidlna/files.db

Then restart MiniDLNA and it will rescan your Harddisk Drive for Media

/etc/init.d/mindlna restart

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OpenWRT TL-WDR3600/4300/4310 Release

Finally after some testing and being quite satisfied by the results I release the firmware for TL-WDR3600/4300/4310.
Although they seemed like 3 Router but they are actually based on the same SoC Platform.
WDR4310 is the China Local version, WDR4300 is the International version and WDR3600 is the International version with 1 antenna not connected.
Basically after customizing the configs and build flags (it is targeted at mips74kc processor) it can achieve 400+Mbps after disabling MSS Fix and Layer 7 Filtering.
Binaries and Source available here.
Revert to factory also available in the backup folder.
Note that factory firmware due to the use of the Atheros Switch Hardware NAT module can achieve higher rates of 800+Mbps compared to OpenWRT.
The feature set in this firmware is identical to that of TL-WR1043ND that I have compiled.
Any brilliant feedback is welcome =)

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Important video everyone should watch and think about

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Retards From DMCA Microsoft

This is a shame post, to shame the retards at Microsoft who DMCA anything they can get their dirty hands on without even bothering to check.
I got this stupid DMCA notice just today.

Dear MediaFire User:

MediaFire has received notification under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") that your usage of a file is allegedly infringing on the file creator's copyright protection.

The file named Activator.zip is identified by the key (mnzdmwwymzw).

As a result of this notice, pursuant to Section 512(c)(1)(C) of the DMCA, we have suspended access to the file.

The reason for suspension was:

URL: http://mediafire.com
DATE: 16 October 2013

Dear Sir or Madam,

Microsoft has received information that the domain listed above, which appears to be on servers under your control, is offering unlicensed copies of, or is engaged in other unauthorized activities relating to copyrighted works published by Microsoft.

1. Identification of copyrighted works:

Copyrighted work(s):

Office 2013
Windows XP Professional

Copyright owner: Microsoft

2. Copyright infringing material or activity found at the following location(s):

http://mediafire.com/?mnzdmwwymzw <- This file is mine
http://mediafire.com/?40xekevo25gqn8k <- This file does not belong to me
http://mediafire.com/?mf8k7rqy5zvatar <- This file does not belong to me

The above computer program(s) is being made available for copying, through downloading, at the above location without authorization of the copyright owner.

3. Statement of authority:

The information in this notice is accurate, and I hereby certify under penalty of perjury that DtecNet, Inc. is authorized to act on behalf of Microsoft, the owner of the copyright(s) in the work(s) identified above. I have a good faith belief that none of the materials or activities listed above have been authorized by Microsoft, its agents, or the law.

We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the material described above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of this copyrighted work via your company's network.

We appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Please advise us regarding what actions you take.

If you have some issues please reply to info.antipiracy@dtecnet.com, reply to no-reply@dtecnet.com will be ignored.

Yours sincerely,

MarkMonitor Anti-Piracy Team

On behalf of Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
United States of America

E-mail: info.antipiracy@dtecnet.com

Information about the party that filed the report:

Company Name: Microsoft LCA World Wide Anti-Piracy Team
Contact Address: One Microsoft Way, Redmond WA 98052
Contact Name: Peter Anaman
Contact Phone: +1 (425) 705-4165
Contact Email: panaman@microsoft.com

Copyright infringement violates MediaFire's Terms of Service. MediaFire accounts that experience multiple incidents of alleged copyright infringement without viable counterclaims may be terminated.

If you feel this suspension was in error, please submit a counterclaim by following the process below.

Step 1. Click on the following link to open the counterclaim webpage.

<Link to Counter Claim>

Step 2. Use this PIN on the counterclaim webpage to begin the process:

*****

Step 3. Fill in the fields on the counterclaim form with as much detail as possible.

This is a post-only mailing. Replies to this message are not monitored or answered.

The problem is that the file does not contain any

Office 2013 and Windows XP Professional Software/Cracks.
If you bothered to open up the file you will find it is a fscking BOOTDISK CREATOR for upgrading BIOS you retards! 
Nothing to do with your crappy Software!
With this I am convinced that DMCA notices are being filed indiscriminately worldwide by automated bot.
I think everyone should be allowed to ignore such notices.
There should be some law for compensation for filing invalid notices.
Since when was guilty until proven innocent the default?

PS: If you want to see how a retard looks like here is a picture.

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A possible solution to reduce frequency of TX DMA errors

A possible solution to reduce the frequency of the TX DMA errors is as follows:
Log in via SSH/telnet,
Copy and paste the following line

uci set wireless.radio0.diversity=1 && uci set wireless.radio0.rxantenna=0x7 && uci set wireless.radio0.txantenna=0x3 && uci commit wireless && wifi

The command forces diversity and makes txantenna 0x3 and rxantenna 0x7

You should see this when you cat the /etc/config/wireless file

    ..............................
    option diversity '1'
    option rxantenna '0x7'
    option txantenna '0x3'
    ..............................

This might help as well:

option disassoc_low_ack '0'

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How to block advertisement using OpenWRT

This is how I block advertisement at DNS level on OpenWRT.
Blocking at DNS level is advisable because it does not impact bandwidth and latency.
Simply said it tricks your computer that your loopback address is where adserver are located but cannot be found so adservers are ignored totally.
AdServers are becoming more and more of a nuisance.

1. They serve up malware advertisement, 
2. They load flash advertisements which waste bandwidth and increase latency. 
3. They run javascripts to try and "take over" your web browser via redirection and popups.

If you run adblocker on client computers it becomes harder to manage when the number of client systems increase.
Fortunately OpenWRT makes this easy with the use of dnsmasq.
My web surfing experience has since greatly improved since
Here is how to do it in 2 steps(Yes it is that simple and powerful with Linux):

1.  SSH into your router
2. Copy and paste this Command into the terminal

wget -O /etc/dnsmasq.conf "http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=dnsmasq&showintro=1&startdate[day]=&startdate[month]=&startdate[year]=&mimetype=plaintext" && /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

What this script does is telling your Router to http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ to get a list of known adservers in a dnsmasq friendly format and save it to /etc/dnsmasq.conf if that command is successful then restart dnsmasq.

After that you will soon notice the disappearance of many irritating advertisement when using the web .
Hopefully this improves your web surfing experience as well as let you realise and embrace the power of shell scripting.

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Unscientific Comparison Between Router Firmwares

Before you continue reading, this piece is written by a OpenWRT user so you should expect some degree of bias towards OpenWRT specifically my builds but I backed this up with data. It should be reproducible.
LAN to WAN methodology is described here.

This post is about my testing of various firmware available for TL-WR1043ND Router.
Since the Router is TP-Link branded, all comparisons will be using TP-Link factory firmware as a standard.
The performance comparison would be LAN to WAN over Gigabit Ethernet Static NAT Routing.

I tested a total of 5 firmwares:

1. Stock TP-Link firmware
2. DD-WRT
3. Gargoyle
4. OpenWRT
5. OpenWRT with tweaks

Observations

 TP-Link firmware

My assessment on this firmware is that it is targeted as a standard multimedia Router, offering MediaServer, Samba and FTP on a Single Router.

It is a firmware with fixed flash partitions with a small sector for storing your Router settings persistently.The webserver uses a frame layout to reload only a single page, the setting page in the center. There is not much I can say about it except the Routing Performance.

It averages below 140Mbps. Performance may vary based on the running processes but by default there is very little running processes to tune so you can estimate the max to be 150Mbps. It uses the standard GCC mips cross compiler to generate the firmware which partly explains the mediocre performance. It would be suitable for users with a subscription line of 100Mbps.

DD-WRT firmware

Now DD-WRT is a very interesting software. Yes I first started on 3rd Party firmware on DD-WRT which I later moved on to OpenWRT. However DD-WRT firmware was quite interesting I took a closer look at it.

DD-WRT is structured very much like TP-Link firmware it has only 64KB fixed partition for storing user settings, although there are ways to enable optware.

All the features seen on the webserver is all the features you can access.

1 thing is for sure, it is jam packed with features. 1 feature which stock I could not find on DD-WRT but could find on stock firmware is the media server. This however does not come as a surprise, the biggest package to enable mediaserver feature is the ffmpeg codec which is impossible to fix into DD-WRT which is already jam packed with features.

When I telnet into router it shows that the router uses GCC linaro 4.8 compiler to optimize the firmware as the same as OpenWRT.

It uses some of OpenWRT's components and also a updated kernel version 3.5.7.

The web interface while it looks nice seems messy to someone using OpenWRT for a long time. By default all additional features are disabled so the Routing test below is probably the best you can get. Performance isn't bad.

It maxes at below 250Mbps so it will be good for 200Mbps lines.

Gargoyle

Gargoyle is based on OpenWRT with its own javascript based user interface on top. It prides on its control over QoS Services. It uses linaro gcc 4.6 like OpenWRT. Technically speaking it should perform around the same as OpenWRT however this is not the case as I have seen later. Some differentiating features not found by default on other firmware is the Tor routing function. It allows installation of addition software as like OpenWRT JJFS persistent storage is mounted on top of the read only squashfs but the software repository is limited. This Gargoyle firmware which I tested is based on OpenWRT Attitude Adjustment. After disabling MSS Fix a optional iptable feature which slows down routing the results are as shown.

As shown in the chart routing performance averages above 170Mbps. If a bandwidth margin is considered it would be good for 150Mbps connection.

OpenWRT Attitude Adjustment

This is the standard OpenWRT Attitude Adjustment release, it comes bare with very little features out of box. After disabling MSS fix the following result is obtained.

It averages below 250Mbps like DD-WRT so it should be good for 200Mbps line.

OpenWRT Attitude Adjustment Optimized

This is my build of OpenWRT Attitude Adjusment for WR1043ND.

Basically I added features functionally equivalent to stock firmware, added a couple of additional features like L7 filter(also found in DD-WRT but disabled by default). The build is platform specific optimized and targeted at MIP24Kc Processor. I also included Web Optimizations and Fixes and stripped out all debugging features I can find. You can either have debug or performance but not both. Basically this is OpenWRT on steroids. After many trial and error I finalised it when there is consistent observable improvement.

To make the comparison fair I disabled L7 filter and MSS fix(Actually it outperforms the rest even without it at 270Mbps!).

So below is the result of it without L7 filter and MSS fix.

So this goes to show how optimization can improve performance on embedded system. This post might invite flaming between 3rd party firmware die hard fans but I think the graphs speak for themselves.

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