Openwrt on raspberry pi

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Hello everyone,

First of all, I hope I am in the right section. Please feel free to move the topic in the right place.

I’m a new balenaCloud User, I knew it because I was using balenaEtcher to flash my sd card and I saw the multiroom audio system offered by balenacloud, named balena-sound (https://www.balena.io/blog/diy-raspberry-pi-multi-room-audio-system/).
I already have some Rpi running openwrt on SDcard (to broadcast a wireless 802.11r (Fast BSS transition) compatible network). But it uses a very few part of the capabilities of my Rpis.

Seeing the opportunities offered with balenaCloud, I was wondering if I could execute an OpenWRT container (such as this one (wich mention balenaOS) : https://hub.docker.com/r/nmaas87/docker-openwrt/) beside some other containers running occasionally Kodi, steamLink, balena-sound or even a small container to control my projector with serial command over usb.
I use all my pi connected to a wired network so I hope that I will be able to configure the WirelessNetwork Adaptater through the openwrt running under balenaOS.

In balenaCloud, I added a device, I downloaded the appropriate BalenaOS’s Image, powered on the pi with the balenaOS and pushed the openwrt docker build thanks to the balena-cli on my computer.
On my dashboard, I can find my device running (only with openwrt for now) and can access the “ssh” remote acces on the device’s page.

Here is were I’m stuck. I didn’t found the way to communicate with the Openwrt system (openwrt cli) so I wasn’t able to execute opkg (apt-like for openwrt) to install the LuCi web interface.
That may be because I don’t know enough the docker environment.

If someone could help me pass this step, by orienting me in the right doc section if I missed it in the doc.
If you have an opinion on my project (controlling Integrated Network Interface in a docker system on raspberry pi) (running several container on the same Pi, some always up and others only on-demand), I’ll take them in consideration.
If you want to have a feedback / a tuto if I succeed it, feel free to write it down and I’ll try to make a regular feedback.

Finally, I would like to thank you for the time you took to read my topic and for your consideration.
Have a nice day

PS: Sorry for the different Englishes mistakes I could write…
PS2: I think I will try to follow the balenasound installation to understand how balenacloud/os works.
PS3: I have to read and make this work https://www.balena.io/blog/two-projects-one-device-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-multitool/

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Hi @Math0u. Welcome to the Balena forums.

It should be fine to run an openwrt container on balenaOS. Firstly you will have to make sure that your docker-compose.yml has the openwrt service marked as privileged so that it can access the hardware directly. You should also be able to get a shell inside the service container from the device summary view in the balenaCloud dashboard, or by using the balena ssh command if you have balenaCLI installed.

Regarding installing software inside a running container - this is possible but it’s not a good idea; the container will be reset back to it’s default state whenever it is restarted. If you need additional software or configuration done then you should put the commands to do this inside the service’s Dockerfile to ensure that they’re “baked in” to the container that is deployed onto your device.

Let us know how you get on.

Good luck!
James.

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@ Math0u did you sort this out? im tyring to run openwrt in a multi-service env too.