SMG3 as booster plugged in WAN port on main, shows 0 boosters?

[bt]

Hello,

I'm configuring an SMG3 that I recently purchased as a Booster in my home. I've followed the wiki to do so, and everything seems to be working fine however, when I plug a LAN port from main -> WAN port on booster, the interface on the main will show 0 Boosters connected. In addition, the "booster" will fail to sync the SSIDs from the main.

If I however plug in the LAN port on main -> LAN port on booster, the interface will show 1 Boosters connected and the SSID will sync correctly. That comes with a cosmetic side-effect in which the LED in the front will show red though.

This issue is referring to the step in the wiki that mentions the following:

After running the script, you can move the cable from the LAN port to the WAN port if you wish. This is not mandatory, as when the device is running in bridged mode, all 5 ports are effectively LAN ports.

Might I be doing something wrong?

[seud0nym]

No, I have my Gen 3 booster connected to the main Gen 3 via the WAN port.

What does the following command return on the booster?

uci show network.lan.ifname

[bt]

root@mymodem:~# uci show network.lan.ifname
network.lan.ifname='eth0 eth1 eth2 eth3 eth4'

[seud0nym]

Well, that looks fine. It says the WAN port (eth4) is part of the LAN bridge. We should double check with:

brctl show

It should show eth0-eth4 plus the WiFi interfaces (including backhaul), so wl0, wl0.1 and wl1.

What firmware version are you running?

What options did you use when you ran the bridged-booster script?

[bt]

root@mymodem:~# brctl show
bridge name bridge id       STP enabled interfaces
br-Guest        7fff.a0b53cc167d5   yes     dummy0
br-lan      7fff.a0b53cc167d5   yes     eth0
                            eth1
                            eth2
                            eth3
                            eth4
                            wl0
                            wl0.1
                            wl1

Version: Bootloader: 21.4.0439-5940000-20230531230645-6689aedff4a3c73b4211a14f1cd9a3ba4ffcd825

bridged-booster was just run with -y -i 192.168.0.50 (to set the IP address)

Could it be on the main SMG3 side? Anything I can check on that side?

[seud0nym]

No, if it works on a LAN port then the main SMG3 sounds like it is fine.

The only difference in my install is that I used -d instead of -i ip and I also added -6 to add IPv6.

I also don't have a Guest bridge in brctl. Not sure why - I have not removed the Guest WiFi (although it is disabled) because I was trying some things to see if I could have Guest propagated in the same way the main SSIDs do (that doesn't work so far).

I will double check the instructions to see if something doesn't work on the SMG3. I will just have to pull out my test device, so it might take me a while.

[seud0nym]

Well, I can reproduce it on my test SMG3, but I can't work out why at this stage. I will keep looking.

[bt]

Well, I can reproduce it on my test SMG3, but I can't work out why at this stage. I will keep looking.

Thanks mate, I appreciate it 😀

[seud0nym]

I have no idea.

On my "real" booster, I have the cable connecting to the controller plugged into the WAN port and it works fine. All other LAN ports are used for other devices and all also are fine.

My "test" SMG3 will not connect the the controller on the WAN port. I have tried every configuration change I can think of. I have even restored the configuration backup from my working booster to the test device (so they are effectively the same) and it still won't connect as a booster. Using any of the LAN ports works, and the WAN port works with any other device plugged in (they connect and get a DHCP IP address without any issues).

I am thinking it might be hardware specific? Something slightly different in the internal switch between my current booster and my test/you booster SMG3? I just don't know.

Does your WAN port work as a LAN port if you connect to the primary with one of the LAN ports?

[seud0nym]

As a follow up, I tried my spare SMG3 and I get the same result: it will not connect as a booster over the WAN port.

I think that the best thing to do is to update the booster README to say that it may not work on the SMG3.

[bt]

Sorry for the late reply, got a bit bogged in work.

On my "real" booster

Your "real" booster is an SMG3 right? Not the Wi-Fi Booster Gen 3?

Does your WAN port work as a LAN port if you connect to the primary with one of the LAN ports?

Yeah it does, maybe the Airties meshing binaries are not specifically looking at the WAN port to sync?

Now given this is the new suggestion -- it brings up a cosmetic issue which is the fact that without the WAN port plugged into something, the LED light in the front will always be red. Is there any script/code/hack that can just force it to be green?

[seud0nym]

Your "real" booster is an SMG3 right?

Yes.

Yeah it does, maybe the Airties meshing binaries are not specifically looking at the WAN port to sync?

There is something blocking the IEEE1905 packets over the WAN port, the same way that older/cheaper switches don't work between the controller and the booster. I just can't work out what it is.

There are config files in the airites directories, but they don't appear to be used.

The binaries themselves are the same on the device that works and the ones that don't.

Is there any script/code/hack that can just force it to be green?

If you plug a LAN device into the WAN port, it will go green.

If you don't want to do that, this should probably work (I can't test it right now):

echo none > /sys/class/leds/front:green/trigger
cat /sys/class/leds/front:green/max_brightness > /sys/class/leds/front:green/brightness

You can use blue, cyan, magenta or orange (or red, of course) instead of green. max_brightness is 255, so use a number less than that to dim the led.

You may need to set the trigger on the other colours to none as well, to stop your choice being overridden. Or maybe stop and disable the led and ledfw services. Not sure.

[seud0nym]

This will permanently set the front LED to green, whether or not anything is plugged into the WAN port:

sed -e '/bridge_o[nf]*line =/,/}/{
  s/true/false/
  /blue/a\           staticLed\("front:green", true\),
}' -i /etc/ledfw/stateMachines.lua
/etc/init.d/ledfw restart

If you want to restore it to default actions, then:

cp -p /rom/etc/ledfw/stateMachines.lua /etc/ledfw/stateMachines.lua
/etc/init.d/ledfw restart

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