Dear all,
below you can find the minutes of today's project meeting written by the
participants in the meeting.
The discussions have been extra useful, I hope that you can get most of
the juicy information reading the log :)
Also, you can find the previous meetings' logs online here:
https://pad.codigosur.org/LibreMesh_meetup_dic_2021
The next project meeting will be on:
Saturday the 4th of February 2023 at 13:00 UTC (14:00 CET, 10:00 ART)
Aaaaaaaaand we scheduled an online technical meeting for testing
LibreMesh on OpenWrt 22.03!!!!!!
This will happen on:
Wednesday the 4th of January 2023 at 13 UTC (15 CET, 10 ART)
Here you go:
====================
=== 2022-12-17 =========
====================
pedro, hiure, gio, ilario, cristina, luandro, duy
-- updates from Altermundi
-- future meetings schedule
-- website
-- list active LibreMesh communities on the homepage
-- next BattleMesh
-- recent development
-- technical meeting
------------------------------
updates from Altermundi
------------------------------
Gio: babeld is the one with active developing and we are using in the
framework of Libremesh.
NEW from dev side of Librerouter/Libremesh: - 2 MIMO antennas have 2
different perception of the quality of the signal and Konejo is working
on the UI in the Lime APP to give better feedback. The next interface
for antenna alignment in lime-app will show two signals for each antenna
that is MIMO 2x2, one signal for each "chain". This should work on most
wifi chipsets (most routers).
Cristina: Are you doing thid for all the devices that Libremesh actually
support or only for Librerouter?
Altermundi is focussing on LibreRouter (it has priority, if possible
things are implemented for working also on other routers or easy for
other people to adapt to every hardware) but Gio recognizes the
importance of supporting other routers.
Luandro: Is there a public roadmap for what u've been working?
Gio: I didn't have the time to write a public roadmap. Lime-app is an
important part of the roadmap.
Gio: a big hat that take together librerouter and libremesh
The goal of LibreMesh-LibreRouter developers is to make something useful
for communities where there are no specialized people able to go deep in
the networking.
Work on Alter Mundi roadmap:
- Lime-App: alignment with multiple chains
- Rewrite of shared-state
- Core parts: wifi driver, routing protocols (layer 2 & 3)
- El Repo
- Ad-hoc -> 802.11s -> Access Point Mode with mesh support
Alfred was the old tool we used for sharing information between nodes
implemented by the B.AT.M.A.N-adv developers
Alfred had problems on non-small networks and caused flooding in the
networks
"shared-state" is the new one implemented in the LibreMesh repository.
For example, one of the features it has is that in the lime-app you see
the information of the other antennas talking by "shared-state", like
the hostname, SSID, the mac address..
The improvements of shared-state are being written by Javier supervised
by Gio.
They will stop relying on OpenWrt's HTTP server
Ilario: this code wil be pushed on the openwrt upstream packages? at the
moment "shared-state" is a feature inside LIbremesh framework
Gio: at the moment not. Shared-state makes a lot of assumptions on how
the network is configured, so it is likely to work only for LibreMesh
networks, until now. There is work to do for making it general.
Luandro: will the plugins need to be rewritten with the next version of
shared-state?
Gio:
Gio: we want to allow the communities to edit more parameters in a
community-wide way from lime-app (not it is possible for the nodes'
password), for example the wifi channer and to flash all the routers at once
Gio: another thing I am doing is to ensure that the low level stuff
(wifi drivers, routing protocols) are improving. The problems could
arise from the batman-adv not receiving enough active support, and maybe
we could abandon L2 entirely. We also are looking into Babeld because it
is not designed for our usecase so maybe we will need to add stuff to it.
Gio: we are also working on elrepo.io, which is the app-level stuff for
network communities, for sharing contents between clients
Gio: regarding the wifi links, at the beginning we used adhoc that now
is quite abandoned, then 802.11s that also is on the way of getting
abandoned as in the new radios it does not work well. To avoid getting
stuck with old radios, which means old routers, I am looking in a way to
use Access Point mode instead of 802.11s, modifying it a bit so that we
use it in a mesh way using something that is very well supported (AP
mode). Anyway in LibreRouter we can always add PCI wifi cards.
-----------------------------
future meeting schedule
-----------------------------
next meeting schedules seems ok
* Saturday the 4th of February 2023 at 13:00 UTC (14:00 CET, 10:00 ART).
* Saturday the 1st of April 2023 at 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST, 10:00 ART).
* Saturday the 3rd of June 2023 at 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST, 10:00 ART).
* Saturday the 5th of August 2023 at 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST, 10:00 ART).
* Saturday the 7th of October 2023 at 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST, 10:00 ART).
* Saturday the 2nd of December 2023 at 13:00 UTC (14:00 CET, 10:00 ART).
Remeber one with the others with an email just a week before, ad promemoria
---------
website
---------
Ilario: the website is not keeping up with the changes on
github/libremesh/lime-web
Gio: the website is hosted in Cordova but probably has not maintaince
for years, so we have to fix this issue, where host the website..
Ilario: maybe some other community can host?
Gio: temporarily we can have it hosted on Github or Gitlab, as the
website is generated as a static website, it should be enough to create
a continuous integration for that.
Cri: better if we avoid Github, but it is ok if it is temporary
Luandro: not a fan of Github either, but Github makes sense as the
repository is already on Github
Gio: not sure who is maintaining the DNS
Ilario: better to fix what we have before doing it somewhere else.
Ilario & Cri volunteer to maintain the server
Gio: the current maintainer for Altermundi's servers didn't mainain the
servers (did other useful stuff anyway). The machines are in a critical
state, many problems are there and some physical interventions are going
to be needed.
Ilario: ok, you know the situation firsthand and suggest to move it,
let's do it
Gio: when we will have the server working again, the current integration
stuff can be kept as a backup
Luandro voluntering to the CI for the website and Ilario will give the
access to the repo.
Documentation o how to setup Github pages:
https://docs.github.com/en/pages/getting-started-with-github-pages/configuring-a-publishing-source-for-your-github-pages-site
--------------------------------------------------------------
list active LibreMesh communities on the homepage
--------------------------------------------------------------
Comunity mesh network using Libremesh:
- https://antennine.noblogs.org d'accordo- contatto Cri
- https://moinho.app/sobre progetto interrotto, Luandro was envolved
- https://villagetelco.org/ (south africa) - Cri will contact send
a email to Erik
- https://www.redfusalibre.org (colombia) - Luandro will contact
- inethi (south africa) - Cri asks Erik
- ? https://docutopia.tupale.co/s/NuestraRedOrg# - Cri can send and
Email Cristina
- https://portalsemporteiras.github.io/
Duy: we can refer to these groups as "friends"
Organization promoting Libremesh:
- https://www.coolab.org/ - Luandro will confirm if they agree
- https://ibebrasil.org.br/ - They are more on political topics
than networks, Luandro will ask
- https://altermundi.org - They agree
- https://ninux.org - They agree
- wakoma - Cri will email Erik
- Librerouter.org - They agree --> 25 new community this year.. Gio
ask to the people of the Semillero
- Freifunk - They are already on the website...
- Guifi.net - They are already on the website...
- https://nupef.org.br - Luandro ask
- https://open.janastu.org/projects/cowmesh - They agree
------------------------
next battlemesh
------------------------
pedro: next battlemesh in calafou!
https://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV15
looking for funding, to facilitate the travel of the farer people,
Battlemesh will be between the 8 and the 14 of May.
Battlemesh has the intent to compare an dialogate between the diferent
community that develop the differents mesh protocols. In the pas
edition there where two firmware based on openwrt: libremesh and Gluon
develop from freifunk, and was interesting the meetings. here video of
the last
https://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV14
In the final assembly people move the attention on the community more
that on the performance of the routing protocols.
so is really good if we can yearly meeting in that event, in Battlemesh,
as Libremeshh community,
from 8 of 14 may in Calafou, bring hardwares! because the new calafou
network needs. Because BEFORE the event we want restyle the network of
the settlement (an old textile industry on a river) to give connectivity
to their workshape and residential, but also set a testbed for net.
There there is optical fiber, so we have to see how manage that expect,
and some problem with rats. Plan to deploy 7 or 8 routers on differents
levels of the building, some internal and some external. We have 5 good
outdoor routers (Plasma Cloud PA1200).
Duy, ilario and pedro are documenting in a private repository that
intend to be public at some point
https://0xacab.org/duy/wbmv15. Write
to duy at sytemli dot org if you would like to be added
------------------------
recent development
------------------------
Need to update LibreMesh to work with openwrt22, we will drop some
devices that will be abandoned after OpenWrt19
The outdoor routers that we are going to use in BattleMesh are supported
since OpenWrt 21.02, so that we need to update LibreMesh in order to use
them.
different people are touching files and testing, but need work together
---------------------
technical meeting
---------------------
Cri: we could have a meeting for testing LibreMesh on OpenWrt22
Ilario: important to test it on different routers (e.g. routers with
only one ethernet port or routers with only 2.4 GHz etc etc)
ilario proposes to have a technical online meeting the 4th of January
13 UTC -- 14 CET, 10 ART
