Johnathan Corgan
6a564e26ac
Everything the release needs except the version number, which stays at 0.5.0-dev until the tag. The changelog entry covers only the work that is new on this line. The point release's forty-six entries arrived under their own heading with the forward merge and are left alone; the twenty that remained are regrouped by topic and eight more added for changes no entry covered. Three of those eight matter to someone upgrading. Five root modules and four re-exports left the public library surface and Node::connections narrowed, none of it recorded anywhere; the entry names what to use instead and distinguishes the removed connection-phase enum from the Noise type of the same name, which is a different type that still exists. Tracing targets moved, so an existing RUST_LOG filter stops matching rather than erroring. And the handshake resend interval key no longer governs the first resend, which is now a constant, though it still governs later ones. Seven more entries cover the work that landed after the first content pass was written: the experimental native datagram API, the fipsctl probe diagnostic, per-instance transport addressing, the app-owned UDP socket seam, and the connect, disconnect and path-MTU fixes. The four bug fixes among them all reach the deployed line, so the release notes no longer claim this release carries exactly one fix for a shipped bug; it carries four. There is no security section, because after the split every security entry belongs to the point release. The release notes say so plainly rather than leaving a reader upgrading across both releases to conclude this one carries no security work. The notes are organized by audience, since the release spans OpenWrt routers, embedders, FreeBSD, and the existing platforms, and a single list serves none of them. The native datagram API is given a section of its own rather than folded into the embedding seam: it is a client-facing API rather than a way to host a node, and its one rule with no Berkeley-socket counterpart, that the v1 wire carries no half-close, needs to be somewhere a client author will read it. FreeBSD is advertised as supported on x86_64 only, stated wherever the platform appears. Android is advertised as an embedding seam and not as a supported platform: a compile-gated library surface with no artifact and no host application guide. The configuration table rename is carried through every shipped file that taught the old spelling: nine documentation files, the OpenWrt sample config and a test generator, twenty-two sites in all. Guides written this same cycle were among them, which is how the omission was found. The documentation that arrived with the native API was checked for the same omission and was already clean. The compatibility tests keep the old spelling deliberately, since they exist to test the fold. The changelog section is the fold of master's [Unreleased], not a snapshot of it. An earlier version of this commit took a copy that then drifted, so each section ended up holding a bullet the other did not and re-folding them would have picked a winner silently. Both causes were fixed on master instead — the NixOS module had never been recorded there, and the pre-release batch of fixes was new — so [Unreleased] is a strict superset and this is a copy rather than a merge. [0.5.0] carries all forty-six bullets byte for byte, [Unreleased] is empty, and [0.4.2] is untouched, checked by hashing it against master's copy. The BLE work landed after the content pass and gets one summary entry in the changelog and one section in the release notes rather than nine bullets: the ble_available gate replacing target_os = "linux", packet-boundary recovery for stream-oriented backends, peer recognition by node identity instead of a rotating link address, the L2CAP PSM moving into the backend seam and onto the advertisement, the embedder-supplied Android radio, bounded probe retry, and inbound handshakes moved off the accept loop. The two release-notes copies no longer share their link paths. Relative links resolve from one directory only, so the seven written for docs/releases/ all 404ed from the root copy. The root copy now uses paths from the repository root and the versioned copy keeps the ../ form; both sets were resolved against the tree. The same two links are broken the same way in the v0.4.0 through v0.4.2 notes, left as shipped history. The contributor tallies are re-derived against maint..HEAD rather than adjusted: twenty commits from outside the project and 171 from me, with Arjen at fifteen and fr34aky at two. An earlier count of twelve and 138 was carried from a measurement taken three days before this content was written, and the BLE branch widened the gap after it. Arjen's NixOS flake module, the UDP sin6_scope_id fix and most of the BLE rework were uncredited, as was fr34aky's L2CAP PSM seam. They want one last re-derive at tag time if anything lands before the tag. A sweep of all 99 tracked markdown files against the tree corrected fifty-three of them. Four told the reader to run a build.sh that does not exist; the only harness builder is testing/scripts/build.sh. The BLE build prerequisites were described as optional on the strength of a probe that build.rs does not perform, and bluez was named a build prerequisite when libdbus-sys asks only for libdbus-1-dev and pkg-config and bluez is the runtime daemon. Link cost is the primary sort key in next-hop ranking, not reserved for future use; Ethernet runs on macOS as well as Linux; the BLE MTU is the L2CAP CoC MTU rather than a negotiated ATT_MTU; effective Ethernet MTU is 1497; the LAN discovery subsystem is src/mdns and eight citations still named a src/discovery that never existed here. The connectivity states in three tutorials were invented, and their jq filters matched nothing including healthy peers. One command filtered on a literal fd97: address prefix, which only the first byte of fixes, so it returned empty for all but one reader in 256 and every later step using the variable failed silently. transports.tor.advertise_on_nostr was undocumented despite being validated against node.rendezvous.nostr.enabled. The transport design document gains the BLE section it never had, written from the source: the backend cascade and its compile_error tripwire, the platform gate, the PSM advertisement wire layout and the byte budget that forces a 16-bit service-data key, and the probe and admission bounds. Three source files carried the same class of staleness and are corrected with the documentation: the OpenWrt ipk usage line and Makefile error text both named a packaging/openwrt that does not exist, and chaos.sh parsed --subnet without listing it. Folded in with the content commit, having been prepared alongside it: The three GitHub Action pins that had gone stale. Every third-party action is pinned to a commit SHA, nothing reports that a pin has aged, and re-resolving all ten against their tags found dorny/test-reporter@v2, taiki-e/install-action@v2 and vmactions/freebsd-vm@v1 had moved. The three install-action@nextest references stay unpinned, since that action reads the tool to install from the ref name. check-action-pins.sh passes at 75 references and all nine workflow files parse. The lockfile refresh, which is the mutating half of the dependency sweep. Thirty-six packages move to their latest semver-compatible versions and every one is transitive; nothing declared in Cargo.toml changes version. No advisory forces any of them. It was taken before the validation battery, because a gate run against a lockfile that later moves proves nothing about what ships. The sha2 0.10 to 0.11, hkdf 0.12 to 0.13 and bech32 0.11 to 0.12 majors, three of the four deferred at v0.4.0 for change surface rather than security. All three land with no source change. sha2 and hkdf must move together, since both depend on digest 0.11, and neither changes an algorithm. That matters because the chaining-key KDF in the Noise handshake is built on Hkdf::<Sha256>, where an output change would be a wire break rather than a compile error; no known-answer vectors exist for that path, so the wire-compatibility gate is what covers it. secp256k1 0.31 is deliberately absent, since nostr's own requirement would leave two copies of the ECC library in the tree. The README support matrix, rebuilt as one feature table broken out by Linux variety. A single Linux column hid that Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and NixOS are one glibc build differing in packaging, that OpenWrt is musl and drops BLE, and that Android is not a daemon platform. Transport rows sort by how many platforms carry them. A Native API row reads its platform set from the cfg gates. The installer row becomes a package format row naming the artifact, and only the .deb is exercised per release. Four changelog and release-note gaps the BLE re-walk found: a Bluetooth LE bullet stranded inside the released 0.4.2 section, a missing Fixed entry for the scan and probe loop counting a pool-refused connection as an established link, the unnamed embedder call that installs an application-owned radio, and the fact that stopping the transport now stops scanning as well as advertising. Three release-document gaps found walking the unsurveyed commits: the UDP reuse-flag fix stated in the direction opposite to the one it was made, with the silent second-daemon bind it prevents left unsaid; the corrected native-API socket paragraph carried into both release-note copies, which still named SOCK_SEQPACKET on FreeBSD and two kernels where three are handled; and the coordinate-cache hardening, which shipped with no text anywhere despite adding four operator-visible status fields. That last entry states plainly that the checks are mitigations and not a closure, since the coordinate is still not authenticated. Also folded in, the documentation pass that followed the content commit: A stage-pipeline diagram for the probe, embedded in the fipsctl reference under the five-stage list. It draws the five stages left to right with each stage's failure reasons below it, and the bypass that skips both lookup stages when the coordinates are cached or the target is a direct peer. Its branches come from the probe state machine rather than from the report, so the path stage is drawn as the one failure that does not stop the probe. A rewrite of the README's "What FIPS does" section. It now opens with what a machine running FIPS gets, rather than with the two deployment modes, and gives the self-organizing and permissionless property its own paragraph since it holds for both modes. A regrouping of the README's feature list into the mesh, getting traffic onto it, and running a node, with a bullet added for the native datagram API, which had none despite sitting in the support matrix. The Quick start now leads with the released packages rather than a source build. It also fixes a real defect: the package enables fips.service and fips-dns.service and starts neither on a fresh install, so .fips name resolution was silently dead until the next reboot and neither page said to start the service. A rewrite of the release notes. They opened with seven subsections of upgrade caveats and reached the first feature two hundred lines in; they now open with a summary of the release and elaborate below it in the same order. Android is stated as supported through an embedded crate rather than as a standalone daemon, consistently across all three documents. The OpenWrt pair is corrected: it is 802.11s between routers with FIPS supplying encryption, authentication and routing, plus a convention of an open !FIPS SSID a client joins over WiFi, not meshing over a router's own radios. The probe's path output is described as the least-common-ancestor walk, which is the worst-case fallback route rather than the route a packet takes. Detail that did not change what a reader does was cut from the notes and kept in the changelog.
9.9 KiB
Set Up an 802.11s Mesh Backhaul (OpenWrt)
Link FIPS routers over radio — no cables, no APs, no shared infrastructure — by running the Ethernet transport on an open 802.11s mesh interface. The radio layer provides nothing but L2 frames to direct neighbors; FIPS provides everything else: encryption and authentication (Noise IK), peer discovery (Ethernet beacons), and routing (the spanning tree).
For the transport design, see
../design/fips-transport-layer.md.
For all transports.ethernet.* configuration keys, see
../reference/configuration.md.
Why open, why forwarding off
Two deliberate choices distinguish this from a stock 802.11s setup:
encryption none— the mesh is open on purpose. Every FIPS peer link is already authenticated and encrypted by the Noise IK handshake, so SAE at L2 would duplicate that work, add a shared credential to provision across routers, and (on ath10k) force the firmware into its slower raw Tx/Rx mode. A stranger can form an 802.11s peering with your router and a FIPS peer link on top of it — the same open model as mDNS and BLE discovery, where the advert is only a hint and the handshake authenticates each link (no impersonation, no MITM) rather than gating who may peer. Admission is open up to the daemon's max-peers cap. What you concede: any nearby radio can peer and reach the FIPS overlay surface; L2 metadata (MAC addresses, frame sizes) is visible in the air; a hostile radio can burn airtime — all inherent to an open radio link.mesh_fwding 0— disables 802.11s's own HWMP routing so each mesh link is a plain neighbor link. FIPS is the routing layer; two routing layers would fight, and broadcast discovery beacons would flood the whole mesh instead of reaching direct neighbors only.
The interface is not bridged into br-lan — the FIPS Ethernet
transport binds it directly.
When to use
- Two or more OpenWrt FIPS routers within radio range of each other, where running cable is impractical.
- You want the mesh segment to keep working with zero shared credentials or per-site configuration ("flash and drop in").
It is not for connecting phones or laptops — client devices cannot join an 802.11s mesh. They enter the mesh through a normal AP on the same router (see constraints below), or over BLE.
Requirements
-
OpenWrt 22.03+ with the FIPS package installed.
-
A radio whose driver supports mesh point interfaces. Check with:
iw list | grep -A 10 "Supported interface modes" | grep "mesh point"The mainstream OpenWrt chips (ath9k, ath10k, mt76) all qualify.
-
Ideally a dual- or tri-band router, so one band can be dedicated to the backhaul (see constraints).
Step 1 — create the mesh interface(s)
On each router, run the helper once per radio you want in the backhaul:
fips-mesh-setup radio1
This creates an open 802.11s interface with mesh ID fips-mesh and
HWMP forwarding off, attaches it to an unmanaged netifd interface (no
IP configuration — none is needed), uncomments the matching meshN
transport entry in /etc/fips/fips.yaml (see Step 2), and reloads the
radio. Interfaces are named by radio index: radio0 → fips-mesh0,
radio1 → fips-mesh1. Pass a second argument to use a different
mesh ID.
Note: the helper runs wifi reload, which re-applies the whole
wireless config and so briefly drops every client AP on all radios for
a few seconds. fips-mesh-setup remove reloads the same way. Expect
the blip if clients are connected.
On dual-band routers, meshing both bands is worth it: 2.4 GHz reaches further at lower rates, 5 GHz carries more over shorter links. Note this is failover, not multipath: FIPS keeps one active link per peer, so traffic uses one band at a time — the other is a standby that re-establishes the peer if the active link dies (detection via keepalive timeout, so a cutover takes seconds, not milliseconds):
fips-mesh-setup radio0
fips-mesh-setup radio1
Pin the same channel on every backhaul router, per band. Mesh
points only peer on the same channel, and the mesh inherits whatever
the radio is set to — with channel 'auto' (the default on many
devices) each router picks its own and the mesh silently never forms.
The script prints the radio's current band and channel and warns on
auto:
uci set wireless.radio1.channel='36'
uci commit wireless && wifi reload
Prefer a non-DFS channel (36–48 on 5 GHz): on DFS channels the radio must wait ~60 s in CAC before transmitting after every reload.
Equivalent manual UCI (per radio), if you prefer to see what it does:
uci batch <<'EOF'
set wireless.fips_mesh_radio1=wifi-iface
set wireless.fips_mesh_radio1.device='radio1'
set wireless.fips_mesh_radio1.mode='mesh'
set wireless.fips_mesh_radio1.mesh_id='fips-mesh'
set wireless.fips_mesh_radio1.encryption='none'
set wireless.fips_mesh_radio1.mesh_fwding='0'
set wireless.fips_mesh_radio1.ifname='fips-mesh1'
set wireless.fips_mesh_radio1.network='fips_mesh_radio1'
set network.fips_mesh_radio1=interface
set network.fips_mesh_radio1.proto='none'
EOF
uci commit
wifi reload
Step 2 — check the FIPS transport binding
The fips.yaml shipped in the OpenWrt package carries one transport
entry per radio, but commented out — so a stock install that never
runs this helper logs no per-boot "interface missing" warning.
fips-mesh-setup uncommented the matching meshN entry in Step 1, so
there is normally nothing to do here. If you maintain your own config
(or ran the manual UCI above instead of the helper), make sure the
entries are present and uncommented:
transports:
ethernet:
mesh0:
interface: "fips-mesh0"
listen: true
announce: true
auto_connect: true
accept_connections: true
mesh1:
interface: "fips-mesh1"
listen: true
announce: true
auto_connect: true
accept_connections: true
listen: was called discovery: before v0.5.0; the old spelling still
parses as an alias, so an existing config keeps working (see
../reference/configuration.md).
Step 3 — restart the daemon (order matters)
/etc/init.d/fips restart
Restart fips after the mesh interface is up. A transport whose interface is missing at startup is logged and skipped, not retried — so if the daemon comes up before the radio, the mesh transport stays dead until the next restart. (An interface that vanishes and returns after startup is recovered automatically; only the missing- at-startup case needs this ordering.)
Verify
L2 first — the 802.11s peering, with a second configured router in range:
iw dev fips-mesh0 station dump
You should see one station entry per neighbor router, with signal levels. No entries means a radio problem, not a FIPS problem — triage in this order:
-
Channel mismatch (the most common cause): compare
iw dev fips-mesh0 infoon both routers — mesh ID and channel must match exactly. -
The mesh interface never joined —
iw dev fips-meshX infoshowstype mesh pointbut no channel line, andstation dumpis empty. Usual cause: a client (sta) interface on the same radio. A STA must follow its upstream AP's channel, the whole radio follows the STA, and a mesh pinned to a different channel silently stays down. Check for a STA sharing the radio (iw dev, look fortype managedon the same phy), compareiw dev <sta-iface> info | grep channel, and re-pin the mesh channel to match — on every backhaul router. -
Is the other router transmitting at all?
iw dev fips-mesh0 scan | grep -i -B4 "MESH ID"Its mesh ID visible → transmission works, peering is failing (mesh ID typo, or one side has encryption set). Nothing visible → check
wifi statuson the other router, remember the ~60 s DFS CAC wait, and confirm the country code is set (uci get wireless.radio1.country) — an unset regdomain can block channels entirely. -
logread | grep -iE "mesh|fips-mesh0"on both sides.
Then the FIPS layer on top:
logread | grep -i beacon # beacons flowing on the new transport
fipsctl show peers # neighbor authenticated and connected
fipsctl show links # link on the 'ethernet' transport
Discovery is automatic: each node beacons its pubkey every few
seconds, and auto_connect initiates the Noise handshake on first
sight.
Constraints
- Airtime is shared per radio. All virtual interfaces on one
radio (AP + mesh) share one channel, and multi-hop forwarding on a
single radio roughly halves throughput per hop. On dual/tri-band
hardware, dedicate one band to
fips-mesh0and serve clients on the others. - AP + mesh coexistence is driver-dependent. It works on the
mainstream chips (this is the standard Freifunk/Gluon setup), but
check
iw listunder "valid interface combinations" for your hardware. - Clients can't join. Phones and laptops reach the mesh through the router's normal AP or via BLE — never through the 802.11s interface.
- Radio links are lossy. A neighbor at the edge of range will form an 802.11s peering yet deliver a fraction of its frames. Expect link-quality effects that don't exist on wired Ethernet.
- A client (STA) uplink on the same radio owns the channel. The
STA must follow whatever channel its upstream AP uses; every other
interface on that radio follows the STA. A mesh pinned to a
different channel silently never joins, and it does not recover
when the STA disconnects — a
wifi reload(plus a fips restart) is needed. A roaming uplink (travel-router / hotspot-chasing setups) is fundamentally incompatible with a fixed-channel mesh on the same radio: dedicate the mesh to the radio the STA never uses, and treat any mesh sharing a STA radio as best-effort.