At this point the 2GB SD Card has a Lost+Found folder on it, but nothing else. That's common with linux-formatted disks. No need to worry about it. According to your instructions I should now connect my Linksys WRT54G-TM to the Internet. I assume to do this I would use the units WAN port and connect it to my home network switch. If I am correct there is a setting in setup that will allow the Internet connection to act as a gateway for the MESH network, but assume changing this setting would not be required. Is this correct? That is correct. Ticking the Mesh Gateway box will allow other nodes access to the internet through your node. If the WRT54G-TM router is plugged into the internet via the WAN port, no need to tick this box. Next in the process is connecting to the WRT54G-TM and making it receive files from the Internet? I assume the ssh -p 2222 root@localnode will connect my Ubuntu system PC to the WRT54G-TM. Is this correct? Yes. However, you can also go to the Setup --> Administration page (http://localnode:8080/cgi-bin/admin) and install the modules via the Package Management section. I assume ssh works very much like telnet except that it is secure. Am I correct there too? Yes. But how does one then install them on the WRT54G-TM? Do I use the get-apt install <software> commend? If you want to do it through the command line, you'd use ipkg install <package name>.
I next assume the sdhc.o and sdhcd.o modules get relocated to the Ubuntu machine's /lib/modules/2.4.34 directory rather than a directory on the WRT54G-TM? Am I right?. Negative. They are copied and pasted onto the WRT54G-TM's /lib/modules/2.4.34/ folder. You can SCP the files to this directory. Use this command from your linux machine while you are physically connected to the LAN port of the WRT54G-TM mesh node: scp -P 2222 <path to file>/sdhc.o root@localnode:/lib/modules/2.4.34
Your instructions then say the modules are hard coded for a particular set of pinouts. How do I check to make sure my card was installed using those correct pinouts? Check the link, http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_WRT54G-TM_SD/MMC_mod, and make sure that the wires match up to the correct pins. If they don't, you'll either need to change the values in source code and the cross-compile the modules (which is beyond the scope of this reply), or un/resolder the wires to match the correct pinout found at the link above. I hope I don't get too lost checking pinouts. Also if the pinouts are easily changed, how do I actually do that if I must? You should not have too much trouble checking the above link with what is found in the router. It would be easier to just un/resolder wires, as needed.
Then you say I must go to where I want the SD Card mounted. After reading this about 4 times, I now assume you mean the SD Card gets mounted on my Ubuntu machine in order to receive files. Is that correct? Negative. The only thing that is done using your ubuntu machine is partitioning the SD card. Everything else is done on the WRT54G-TM router itself. You can find out where the SD card is mounted by typing dmesg. Chances are, it will appear as /dev/sdcard/partX (where X are numbers coorsponding to the individual partitions you created at the very beginning of the instructions).
I assume if I'm not making more swap space, I can skip the mkswap and swapon commands. Correct. I still don't get exactly why I'd want extra swap space. It'd give you more "RAM" to work with when more resources are needed. I also don't get why I would install the swap space and memory onto the SD Card while it is still mounted on my Ubuntu PC. Every step (except partitioning) is done on the mesh node itself. So I then use ssh to log into the Linksys WRT54G-TM, ask it to tell me all about disk space, using df and cat proc/meminfo commands. Correct, you use the df -h command and cat /proc/meminfo (for swap) to see the additional space.
I would also like your opinion on using a 4GB SD Card instead of the 2GB that came with it. I would also like to know how much swap space you might recommend for the WRT54G-TM assuming I need more of it for use on the router. Depends. This module is quite old. It's the only one I have found that works with the router. At the time this particular module was written, 2GB SD Cards were the norm. If you can get your 4GB card to be recognized, all the better! Just keep in mind, that the module was designed to provide support to the non-SDHC cards. As for how much swap space, I did 0.5GB, but that's a bit overkill. You can choose any value you would like. 64MB would probably even be enough.
Oh and thanks for the reference to the instructions for using the space to create an FTP server. Your welcome! Just try not to transfer large files. I have had it hang before.
I am sure your instructions were perfectly clear to those of us who are Linux experts. Linux Experts...maybe...I created this during the summer of 2012. I got into BBHN during the summer of 2012 and BBHN (believe it or not) taught me Linux. This guide was written with less than one month experience using the operating system. If I wrote it again, I'd change a couple things, but what I have done is pretty stable. You can do it!
Let me know how it goes! Paul, KF5JIM
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