[Freedombox-discuss] Joining a mesh network with BATMAN

[Bastien Rocheron]

While I try to understand what is wrong with the mesh setup in Plinth I
have successfully joined my mesh network from my freedombox manually.

The step that silently fails in Plinth is the creation of bat0 while
adjusting the wireless interface. I'm not sure the part that adds the
interface to batman automatically (when calling it with a name that ends
in 'BATMAN') really works.

So I have taken my wireless interface out of the network manager and set
it up manually and also create the bat0 interface at the same time.

Then the bat0 interface shows up while creating a new interface in the
Networks module of Plinth. And that one can be managed automatically as
any other.

Actually this means very few manual interaction:

I have just added the wireless interface setup in the
/etc/network/interfaces.d/setup file and that automatically removes it
from network manager.
My config looks like this:

auto wlxec086b18f829
iface wlxec086b18f829 inet manual
mtu 1532
wireless-channel 11
wireless-essid anything_will_work
wireless-mode ad-hoc
wireless-ap 00:11:22:33:44:55 # the mesh BSSID
post-up /usr/sbin/batctl if add dev wlxec086b18f829

Then after a network restart or reboot I go to Plinth, Networks, Add
Connection, chose Generic, and then enter my settings, in my case it's
an internet connection so I chose auto and put it in the external
firewall rule and then activate it. It shows up immediately.

Now I need to understand how to re-activate the newly created connection
after a reboot.

cheers

On 21/11/16 01:18, Bastien Rocheron wrote:
> Hello again,
> 
> Something very strange happened. As I was logged in through SSH trying
> to understand this issue, suddenly my user was not recognized any more
> and I received a message close to something like: user 1000 unknown, who
> are you?
> 
> Then I logged out from ssh, tried to login again but was unable. The web
> interface disappeared as well. That lasted for long enough that I gave
> up trying.
> 
> After an hour or two I tried again and was greeted again by the web
> interface. The weird thing is that it had changed. I had noticed that I
> did not have the 'Disks' module in the menu and now it is there.
> So I tried immediately to create a new network interface and now the web
> interface accepts the channel and BSSID settings.
> 
> I am really curious as to what happened. It is great that things get
> solved by itself but at the same time I fear automation is out of control.
> 
> Now I have followed the guide again and successfully created the first
> interface for ad-hoc wireless and I can see on my router that this
> interface is connected. But the bat0 interface did not get created in
> the process and the second step is thus not possible.
> 
> I have done a lsmod and realized that no batman module was loaded. So I
> first checked with modprobe that it can be loaded. Then I added
> batman-adv in my /etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf and rebooted.
> I now have batman_adv loaded along with its dependencies.
> But trying again from scratch does not bring up bat0.
> 
> If no suggestion is made I will try to bring it up manually. But I guess
> this will conflict with network manager. I need to understand how it is
> managed.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> On 20/11/16 17:59, Bastien Rocheron wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am trying to join an existing mesh network (I have created it and have
>> already various nodes in it) with freedombox.
>>
>> I am following the instructions found in the manual, specifically
>> 9.3.4.1. Joining a mesh network.
>>
>> The issue is that various settings are not available in the interface
>> while adding a network connection(I'm using the latest image).
>> For example I can't set the channel nor BSSID, without which, nodes
>> can't join the network (as far as I'm aware).
>>
>> And thus in the next step I can't locate bat0 as an interface.
>>
>> Do you have any recommendations?
>>
>> Cheers.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Freedombox-discuss mailing list
>> Freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org
>> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
>>
> 
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