WIP: LibreMesh updater CLI

Install

Download an executable for your system from the release page.

Or, if you have NodeJS installed, just install the cli with npm i -g lime-updater.

Usage

It's best if the machine you'll run this command has it's ssh key in all nodes in the mesh, or provide the path to the private-key file with the flag --ssh_key.

To set same password for all nodes:

lime-updater --firmware=/home/user/firmware --password=super-secret

To set a different password for each node, or to run without authorized_keys:

lime-updater --firmware=/home/user/firmware

Options

• --firmware can be an absolute path in your system of a url where the firmware live. The program expects the files to be arranged as they are cooked ex.: targets/ar71xx/generic/..

• --password is used to set the same password for every node in the mesh

• --ssh_key can be an absolute path in your system of a url where the private ssh key file lives, defaults to your system's id_rsa file

• --nodes limits the upgrade to only the listed ones separated by , wihout spaces; ex.: lime-updater --firmware=/home/user/firmware --nodes=san,nico,marcos

• --post_install only run post install, copying files and setting configs to the nodes

After upgrade

If you have acess points which aren't running LibreMesh, and just connect to a node thru ethernet, you'll have to reboot them manually. In case sending the backups back to the nodes fail, you can use --post_install to only run the post-upgrade part.

How it works?

• checks for the most current LibreMesh release from https://github.com/LibreRouterOrg/openwrt
• ssh's into each node in the mesh and finds out their model and checks if they are using outdated firmware
• creates a backup up of their Lime, Pirania and Dropbear configs, as well as Pirania's database and Dropbear's authorized_keys in ~/.libremesh
• finds the distance between the node you're running this from and all the other nodes
• starting from the most distant nodes, it copies the firmware according to the node's model and does a sysupgrade -n
• after all nodes have been upgraded it copies the backups back to each one, applies the settings and sets again the password

Future plans

Ideally this should also be an Android application so that community members can run it on their phones. There should be a social network layer on top for sharing firmware files, making something like a distributed Chef able to provide even offline community networks with new LibreMesh releases.