Installing Third Party Applications on your Asuswrt-merlin router

If you have the Asuswrt-merlin router, then you have a world of possibilities unlike before.

In order to install third party applications you will need to enter the world of Entware. Entware is a software repository for devices such as routers.


To get into the world of Entware you will need to :

1. Be comfortable with using SSH
2. Have a USB flash drive/disk connected to your router.

For 1 - Turn on SSH on your router. You can enable this under Administration > System > Enable SSH. I would enable this for LAN Only at this stage. To connect to your router via SSH use a SSH client or your terminal (MACOSX, Linux), and type in "ssh admin@routerip". Enter your password and if it is your first time trust the connection.

For 2. Get a USB disk, format it to ext4 and pop it into your router. If your router doesn't mount the drive then check the system log to see what the error is. If the error is regarding features not being supporter then you might need to format the drive on the router - see my other article regarding this.

Now, step 1 is to install amtm.

1. log in to your router via ssh.
2. curl -Os https://raw.githubusercontent.com/decoderman/amtm/master/amtm && sh amtm 
3. amtm should load, goto install scripts then install Entware
4. once you have entware installed you can exit amtm, you can always come back to amtm by typing "amtm".


Looking at the available packages on entware
opkg list

Installing a package
opkg install <package_name>

Removing a package
opkg remove <package_remove>

Asuswrt-merlin mounting a USB device

So you've formatted your USB drive to ext4, stuck it into your router and your router recognises the plugged in USB device but it sez that it is unmounted. What gives ?


Well, first step is to check the system logs (see the left hand side menu options).

If the logs states something like "couldn't mount RDWR because of unsupported optional features" then most likely what's happened is that you've formatted your USB drive on your computer which is supporting features than what can be recognised by your router.

A simple way to fix this is to format it on the router - follow these steps:

1. Enable SSH on the router (Administration > System > Enable SSH - enable Lan only).
2. Open up terminal or an SSH client and fire the following command "ssh admin@yourrouterip", and enter your password. If it is your first time then it may ask you a couple of questions.
3. Run the command "mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/sda1"  asssuming that /dev/sda1 is where your drive is mounted. It will ask you whether you are sure, if you are then type "y" and it will proceed to format the drive to ext4.


At this point you can manually mount the usbdrive using mount .