Upgrading to OpenWRT 12.09 on Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH

I still use a Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH as my home router, although I no longer use it as a wireless AP*. Tonight I upgraded it to OpenWRT 12.09 “Attitude Adjustment”. These are my notes on the upgrade.

I used LuCI, the OpenWRT web interface, to flash new firmware with openwrt-ar71xx-generic-wzr-hp-g300nh-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin. As this was a major version upgrade, I unchecked “keep settings”. As such, I made sure to make a backup of all settings before beginning. The easy way is to open all the relevant settings pages in tabs, and do a side-by-side comparison afterward.

I installed my preferred software packages from the CLI, as follows. I no longer install packages for mounting USB filesystems, as I’ve never actually used that feature in the four years I’ve owned this hardware.

opkg update
opkg install --force-overwrite avahi-daemon bind-dig bwm conntrack-tools fdisk fping iftop ip kmod-ipv6 kmod-pptp libnl lft lsof luci-app-ntpc luci-app-openvpn luci-app-upnp luci-proto-ppp luci-ssl miniupnpd mtr net-tools-hostname ngrep nmap ntpclient openssh-client openvpn ppp-mod-pptp rsync screen snmpd sshfs tcpdump vim

* I have since purchased a TP-Link TL-WA901ND to use as a dedicated wireless AP. After all the wireless difficulties I’ve had with OpenWRT on the Buffalo hardware, I decided that I wanted a simple AP using the manufacturer’s firmware. It’s much easier to experiment with routers without worrying about wireless support.