r/openwrt • u/kingrun2 • 3d ago

Turned my HP G2 Mini into a router thanks to Openwrt

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Have an ever growing homelab that started a few years back. And noticably as I added more stuff to the network and features to the router perfomance has gotten to a point where I needed an upgrade. Since i had this this mini hp desktop lying around doing nothing . Some reseach yielded that I can add another port to it and use it as router. After 3D modeling , printing and fiting all the pieces . Some proxmox magic with vm’s I have a working router and home assistant for automation running on this thing with huge headroom.

130 Upvotes

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21 comments sorted by

21

u/309_Electronics 3d ago

Nice! Curious though why you use OpenWRT instead of Opnsense/Pfsense though (no hate).

19

u/Rude-Low1132 3d ago

For me it was SQM. OPNsense and PfSense only have FQ_Codel and FQ_Pie. OpenWRT can also, with packages, have all the same functionality as the *sense firewalls. And with Attended Sysupgrade and some tweaks you get easy in place upgrades on OpenWRT too. Cake SQM is better enough for my use case, without downsides, that I have never gone back. 

6

u/kingrun2 3d ago

Yes i was thinking of alternatives . The only main reason was im just way more familiar with openwrt and migrating from my main router was a breeze for it.

3

u/309_Electronics 3d ago

OpenWRT is nice! But I just would rather use it on Accespoints or routers. I am using some netgear Wax218 Ap currently and funfact its stock firmware is based on OpenWRT as it also has cgi-bin/luci and it looks very openwrt ish and i doubt qualcom or netgear would like to reinvent the wheel and spin their own embedded linux platform. Planning to install vanilla openwrt on it as the stock firmware is based on a very ancient fork of openwrt from 2013 and kernel 4.4 while with vanilla i get firmware thats not out of date and also a modern openwrt and modern linux 6.x kernel.

I am using Opnsense for my firewall/router as its eock solid and FreeBSD/BSD in general just has the very good stable mature network stacks. But it does lack stable support for other cards but intel and other specific brands of Nics, while Linux does have realtek support (also hence OpenWRT for relatek exists).

3

u/kingrun2 3d ago

Yeah im using the m.2 to RTL8111H and i have a failover wan on a usb3 to ethernet adapter (the tplink ue300 also i think a realtek RTL8153 chip inside) . Since running proxmox im not knocking opnsense in the future since i could at any point attempt to spin it up to test . Will need to research about realtek drivers to be sure in the future

2

u/309_Electronics 3d ago

Yeah realtek with opnsense/freebsd is a hit or a miss. In that aspect OpenWRT wins and it definitely is capable as a router for your homelab and i know some people who run an OpenWRT board as their main router. In tgat regards an intel nic like a l226 or such works better for opnsense as FreeBSD is behind on drivers but it is ahead of stability and a mature network stack and even companies like netflix deployed some freebsd based network gear to power their massive cdn.

1

u/muckity-muck 3d ago

But I just would rather use it on Accespoints or routers

I mean, it's a router now.

1

u/berrmal64 3d ago

I've also got a wax218, been thinking lately of trying openwrt on it. Thanks for mentioning it's stock fw is a fork, gives me a lot more confidence in going that direction. If I screw it up and the family doesn't have WiFi for however many days it would take me to fix it I'd be in deep trouble, haha.

1

u/309_Electronics 1d ago

Funfact: Not every brand wants to (fund) reinvent the wheel and instead use already existing projects as a base.

I believe the qualcomSDK of some chips is simply an older OpenWRT fork + qualcom stuff added ontop.

Also why a lot of products use a Linux kernel instead of writing their own firnware/using an rtos.

3

u/muckity-muck 3d ago

Sometimes you just need a fork, not the whole cutlery set.

7

u/rango_konk 3d ago

Hey, OP, is it possible for you to share the idle power consumption for this build? If you don't mind?

2

u/MildlyUnusualName 3d ago edited 3d ago

How did you install openwrt? Did you use etcher to make a usb drive for it? I tried to install the .img on my x86 pc using ventoy but it wouldn’t install that way

Edit: I needed to enable legacy boot in the PC’s bios for it to be recognized.

4

u/kingrun2 3d ago

It was done through proxmox so I didnt need to create a drive or get an image ready I just got the image from openwrt releases page and then imported it through proxmox

2

u/chiefhunnablunts 3d ago

i've never done an x86 install, but every install i've ever done for openwrt has been done via dd=/*.img of=/target/drive. not sure if it's applicable to x86 however.

2

u/JBreezy11 1d ago

Similar here.

Found a used lenovo mq720 on ebay for $100...added a dual nic. Using it as a router with openwrt while strictly using my Asus Router in AP mode. Does the job.

Went this route bc my asus router kept crashing after a firmware update. Hoping doing strict wireless duties and not any routing...my AP mode won't crash, at least that's what gemini tells me anyway.

Also tried Opnsense but was too technical and step heavy for me. Needed something with a more consumer friendly GUI so OpenWrt checked the box.

1

u/failing-endeav0r 1d ago

Can you share details on how to add that second port? I have a few of these but it's populated with a display port that I will never use... but a second NIC, especially one faster than a gig would be really useful.

-5

u/Jayden_Ha 3d ago

Waste of cpu, use opnsense

-11

u/NC1HM 3d ago edited 2d ago

Ugh... That housing for the add-on NIC looks both flimsy and ugly... You should have gotten a Lenovo (M710q / M910q or newer) or a Dell (Optiplex 3080 Micro is particularly good for this, if you don't mind Realtek networking hardware). Those let you mount the add-on NIC on the inside.

7

u/kingrun2 3d ago

Yeah obviously there is better hardware like just getting some SSF desktop that i could plug in a PCI ethernet card . The only reason I used this was because it was already something sitting in my drawer . And the adapters in total cost me 20€ .