[olsr-dev] I'm thinking about putting a patched - unofficial - version of olsrd-0.4.10 online

[elektra]

Hi -

first of all: Please correct me if I'm wrong in anything stated here.

I wanted an up to date version of olsrd to build into a upcoming release 
of Meshlinux. I learned recently that many important patches didn't make 
it into CVS yet.  Sven-Ola has a collection of patches at 
http://212.222.128.68/sven-ola/nylon/packages/olsrd/files/

Since it is cumbersome to apply them one by one in the correct order I 
asked for a patched version of the code.

I think it is high time that an up-to-date resource 'ready to compile' 
is published somewhere - at the moment getting a reasonable and stable 
working version of olsrd is something that only an insider can achieve. 
To exaggerate a bit:  you have to be in a certain club in Berlin at 
night on a certain day and drink beer with the right guys to get the URL 
where you find the pieces of a puzzle... Not to mention that you have to 
be aware first of all that you need exactly this code, because it:

* consumes a fraction of cpu-load
* doesn't crash if it has to calculate more than 31 hops between two 
destinations - believe it or not, Freifunk really ran into this problem...
* LinkQualityDijkstraLimit switch works

to mention a few.

This code is tested in Berlin and many other cities that have meshes 
working 24/7 since it is included in the Freifunk Firmware. A vague 
estimation claims that between 1000 and 5000 people use the mesh in 
Berlin every day for their communication.  The Berlin Freifunk mesh has 
400+ nodes - running mostly on of-the-shelf hardware for 40-60 Euro per 
unit. There is no central administration - individual people 
administrate their own routers. This is the situation here - other 
Freifunk networks (Leipzig for example) are closing up to this figures.

I have seen the big excitement and enthusiasm in Dharamsala/India that 
people have about their - yet small - mesh. And I learned that they were 
not able to configure it properly. The participants of the 
WSFII/AirJaldi Summit faced instability of the internet connection - 
since the Tibetan Technology Centre didn't know which configuration file 
to use and that they had to enable FishEye to get rid of routing loops 
under payload.  Many people from India/Pakistan/Nepal/Bangladesh (...) 
are looking forward to roll out meshes to mitigate their lack of 
communication infrastructure. I was approached by people that are in 
need for information and working code.

I think it is high time to state: There is an enormous communication 
problem.  Mesh development is important for many people on this planet - 
especially the poor (telemedicine a.s.o.). People need a new release *now*.

Governments - especially in developing countries - need a well working 
open-source solution to provide mesh communication infrastructure.  The 
government of India has launched an ambitious program to connect 600 000 
villages in rural India. A part of the job can be done with wireless 
mesh and the Indian Ministry of IT is interested in this.

Ok - that was a long introduction. Here is why I wrote this: I'm 
thinking about putting the patched source archive of olsrd on line 
somewhere. There is no point that a well-configured and up-to-date 
working version of olsrd is only available if you install Freifunk 
Firmware or Meshlinux. That would be  a good marketing strategy of course.

I don't want to start a new development branch/fork/whatever of olsrd. 
Or become a maintainer. I want to avoid doing unnecessary work or 
pissing anyone off. I just want to have a URL with up-to-date code that 
I can point people to. And I - finally - want to get rid of RFC3626 in 
this version. I have made a change to the archive on my harddrive: I 
altered the behavior of the Makefile and naming of the daemon. So far 
olsrd-0.X.X always installs by default a configuration file that is 
RFC3626-compliant. I consider this is a bug, not a feature... By default 
the changed Makefile will install LQ with FishExe - because it is the 
way to go. Since this modified bit would now do what we discussed about 
0.5.0 one year ago - I would publish it as 0.5.0-unofficial...

Please tell me you opinion.

cu elektra