Creating packages for openwrt requires ipkg-utils and the procedure is debian style using a control file:

cat >> soft/CONTROL/control <<EOF
Package: soft
Version 0.1
Architecture: mipsel
Maintainer: john <john@mail.com>
Section: base
Priority: optional
Description: the soft package adds nothing
Source: http://john.net/soft
EOF
ipkg-build -o root -g root soft

OpenWrt scripts can add a TAP interface to a bridge on boot, however tap interfaces are usually created on demand rather than persisting across reboots. To make sure that the TAP interface is brought up on boot, create a script at /etc/init.d/createtap with the following contents:

#!/bin/sh /etc/rc.common
 
START=30
SERVICE_USE_PID=0
 
TAP=`ifconfig -a | grep tap0 | wc -l
 
start() {
    if [ $TAP -eq 0 ]; then
        ip tuntap add mode tap tap0
    fi
}
 
stop() {
    if [ $TAP -eq 1 ]; then
        ip tuntap del mode tap tap0
    fi
}

and possibly change tap0 to a desired interface name.

In order to activate the script, issue:

/etc/init.d/createtap enable

The interface should now be created on reboot.

Once TAP interfaces are created the MAC address is randomly generated such that unless you are sending a DHCP client ID, the interface will be difficult to track. To set a permanent MAC address for the TAP interface, edit /etc/config/network and add a MAC address for the TAP interface.

For example, the snippet:

config interface 'tap'
        option ifname 'tap0'
        option proto 'dhcp'
        option macaddr 'ca:36:40:4a:79:5e'

configures a TAP interface tap0 that will retrieve its address via DHCP by sending the MAC address ca:36:40:4a:79:5e.

The configuration combined with the script above work perfectly well together: the script takes care to create the interface and the OpenWrt network configuration will set the MAC address when the interface is brought up.

If you access OpenWrt from a cygwin shell, you will notice that running ncurses-based programs (for instance, joe, pico or nano editors) will mess up the lines. This is due to cygwin setting the terminal type to cygwin which is not contained in the terminfo OpenWrt package.

To resolve the issue, the cygwin terminal information from C:\cygwin64\usr\share\terminfo\63\cygwin (assuming the cygwin install root is at C:\cygwin64) should be copied over to /usr/share/terminfo/c/cygwin. Note that the terminfo OpenWrt package does not contain the c directory under /usr/share/terminfo such that it will have to be created before copying over the file.

On OpenWrt version 18.06.1, the Samba template files contains a variable that should be interpolated:

interfaces = |INTERFACES|

unfortunately, the interfaces do not seem to be configurable via LuCi and even using uci to set the variable samba.@samba[0].interfaces to some value will only make OpenWrt interpolate an empty string instead of the configured value.

Seeing that the interfaces to listen on cannot be configured via LuCi, removing the interfaces = |INTERFACES| line and hardcoding the interfaces to listen on seems to be the best option.

Unfortunately for quite a few releases (LEDE), the python setuptools package seems to be broken such that running depending software may bomb out with:

pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: The 'setuptools' distribution was not found and is required by

The solution is to install pip via:

opkg install python-pip

and then reinstall pip and setuptools:

pip install -U pip setuptools