How to install a program on a DDWRT hacked router

Question

I need to install a program on a linux router. Can this also be done on a linksys router that has ddwrt installed on it? How?

Answer 1

To install things on a router with DD-WRT, you must enable a few things in the router administration interface. First, enable JFFS2 on the Management tab of the Administration section. Second, enable SSHd on the Services tab of the Services section. If you need to access files from another computer, the easiest way is to share them via Windows File Sharing/SMB, and then mount it via the CIFS Automount section of the Management tab of the Administration section. You can also use SCP if you desire.

Once you've done that, you can access your router via SSH. To do so on Linux and Mac OS X, just run ssh [router IP address]. To do so on Windows, you'll need PuTTY or another SSH client.

Once you're on, you have access to a full Linux BusyBox shell. But, that's only half the battle. Routers don't come with x86-based processors, so you can't just copy a binary from a Linux machine and have it work. It has to be compiled for the processor included with your particular router and designed to work on BusyBox.

However, there are many packages compiled for routers, that can be installed with the package manager created by the OpenWRT project and included with DD-WRT, called ipkg (as another user indicated while I was writing this answer). The ipkg documentation has instructions for using the ipkg command and several sources of packages for DD-WRT.

Answer 2

You can use the ipkg package tool from openwrt: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Ipkg

Answer 3

if it's one of the micro versions of dd-wrt, your options are limited, since ssh and scp are not available. I've found one way that's fairly reliable if you have access to a machine you can use as a webserver; copy the file to the webserver, and wget it from the dd-wrt box:

jcomeau@aspire:~/rentacoder/jcomeau/ddwrt$ dd if=/dev/urandom bs=256 count=1 of=/tmp/test.dat
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
256 bytes (256 B) copied, 0.0012205 s, 210 kB/s
jcomeau@aspire:~/rentacoder/jcomeau/ddwrt$ scp /tmp/test.dat unixshell.jcomeau.com:/var/www/jcomeau/
test.dat                                      100%  256     0.3KB/s   00:00    
jcomeau@aspire:~/rentacoder/jcomeau/ddwrt$ telnet 192.168.151.1
Trying 192.168.151.1...
Connected to 192.168.151.1.
Escape character is '^]'.
DD-WRT v24-sp2 micro (c) 2009 NewMedia-NET GmbH
Release: 10/10/09 (SVN revision: 13064)

plinksys login: root
Password: 
==========================================================

 ____  ___    __        ______ _____         ____  _  _ 
 | _ \| _ \   \ \      / /  _ \_   _| __   _|___ \| || | 
 || | || ||____\ \ /\ / /| |_) || |   \ \ / / __) | || |_ 
 ||_| ||_||_____\ V  V / |  _ < | |    \ V / / __/|__   _| 
 |___/|___/      \_/\_/  |_| \_\|_|     \_/ |_____|  |_| 

                       DD-WRT v24-sp2
                   http://www.dd-wrt.com

==========================================================


BusyBox v1.13.4 (2009-10-10 04:23:29 CEST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

\u@\h:\w\$ cd /tmp                 
\u@\h:\w\$ wget http://unixshell.jcomeau.com/test.dat
Connecting to unixshell.jcomeau.com (207.210.74.124:80)
\u@\h:\w\$ wc test.dat
        0         6       256 test.dat
\u@\h:\w\$ 

to do the opposite, i.e., download a binary from the router, one may make use of the /tmp/www directory, which is mapped to /user by the dd-wrt httpd daemon. use a .gif extension to ensure that httpd doesn't make any attempt to modify it (as it would with an .asp extension).

jcomeau@aspire:~/rentacoder/jcomeau/ddwrt$ telnet 192.168.151.1
Trying 192.168.151.1...
Connected to 192.168.151.1.
Escape character is '^]'.
DD-WRT v24-sp2 micro (c) 2009 NewMedia-NET GmbH
Release: 10/10/09 (SVN revision: 13064)

plinksys login: root
Password: 
==========================================================

 ____  ___    __        ______ _____         ____  _  _ 
 | _ \| _ \   \ \      / /  _ \_   _| __   _|___ \| || | 
 || | || ||____\ \ /\ / /| |_) || |   \ \ / / __) | || |_ 
 ||_| ||_||_____\ V  V / |  _ < | |    \ V / / __/|__   _| 
 |___/|___/      \_/\_/  |_| \_\|_|     \_/ |_____|  |_| 

                       DD-WRT v24-sp2
                   http://www.dd-wrt.com

==========================================================


BusyBox v1.13.4 (2009-10-10 04:23:29 CEST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

\u@\h:\w\$ wc /dev/mtd/*
      751     12148    262144 /dev/mtd/0
      751     12148    262144 /dev/mtd/0ro
    11671     68047   3866624 /dev/mtd/1
    11671     68047   3866624 /dev/mtd/1ro
     4306     24098   1098752 /dev/mtd/2
     4306     24098   1098752 /dev/mtd/2ro
        0       551     65536 /dev/mtd/3
        0       551     65536 /dev/mtd/3ro
     4640     29046   2097152 /dev/mtd/4
     4640     29046   2097152 /dev/mtd/4ro
    42736    267780  14780416 total
\u@\h:\w\$ cp /dev/mtd/0ro /tmp/www/cfe.gif
\u@\h:\w\$ Connection closed by foreign host.  [after typing Ctrl-D]
jcomeau@aspire:~/rentacoder/jcomeau/ddwrt$ wget -O/tmp/cfe.bin http://192.168.151.1/user/cfe.gif
--2014-06-15 23:53:54--  http://192.168.151.1/user/cfe.gif
Connecting to 192.168.151.1:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 Ok
Length: 262144 (256K) [image/gif]
Saving to: ‘/tmp/cfe.bin’

100%[======================================>] 262,144      963KB/s   in 0.3s   

2014-06-15 23:53:54 (963 KB/s) - ‘/tmp/cfe.bin’ saved [262144/262144]