Exploring Your Node
So you just got your node running. You think. How can you tell what is going on in your node?
Remote Shell
You can use SSH to login to the node, but it is much less user friendly than the web interface. It is recommended that you use the web interface if at all possible.
To login over SSH, you should use the user name "guest" and the password "guest". If you were logging in from the command line, it would look like "ssh guest@10.A.B.254". The default root password is "changeme", but remote root login is disabled. If you are logged in as guest and you want root privileges, you can use the "su root" command.
Here is a list of fun commands for rooting out information about the node and network:
cat /var/run/dmesg.boot: This will print out all of the boot messages.ifconfig -a: This displays information about all interfaces in the system.netstat -rn -f inet: This displays your current routing table.
Changing Your Root Password
When you download one of the publicly available builds of CUWiNware, there is a standard root password "changeme". As requested, it is a good idea to change the root password to prevent others from doing interesting things to your node without your permission. Unfourtunately, any changes made to the system will be erased upon reboot unless you make the changes in writable memory. If you are using flash media, you can make the changes in "/permanent/" and they will be preserved. The following guide was taken from the forums.
$ su root: Gain root privileges.Password:: "changeme"# mount | head -1: Display how the current file system is mounted./dev/wd0a on / type ffs (read-only, local): Hrm, read-only. That will need to be changed.# mount -u -w /: Change the status of the filesystem at / (the root file system) to be read and write.# mount | head -1: Display current file system again./dev/wd0a on / type ffs (local): It's not read-only anymore.# passwd: Change the password for the current user.Changing local password for root.New password:: Find a creative password that no one will guess. "password" or "12345" are not good passwords.Retype new password:# cp /etc/master.passwd /permanent/etc: Copy the password files to the permanent directory.# cp /etc/spwd.db /permanent/etc# cp /permanent/etc/spwd.db /permanent/etc/garbage: Work around for old bug when writing to flash.# mount -u -r /: Change the root file system to be read-only again.# mount | head -1: Display that the file system is, in fact, read-only./dev/wd0a on / type ffs (read-only, local)# reboot: Reboot the node.
At this time, you cannot make changes to nodes booted from CD-ROM (ROM stands for Read Only Memory). There is talk about using a floppy drive to allow users to configure a node, but at this time (v0.5.8) no one has written the code for that.
Nodeconfig: A Web Interface
The easiest way to see how your node is set up is to view the web interface of your node.
If you are using your node as a router, you can type the address "http://192.168.0.1/" into your web browser to load the web interface. Currently the only feature for understanding your node is RouteViz. You can also use the web interface to configure your node.
To view the web interface on a remote node, you can use the command "ssh -L 8000:localhost:80 guest@10.0.A.B" to log in to the remote node. Replace "10.0.A.B" with the IP address of the ethernet interface of the remote node. When you are logged in, you can visit the URL "http://localhost:8000" on the machine that you logged in from to view the remote web interface.
Route Visualization
When you view the "RouteViz" page you will be shown a virtual map of the network as the current node sees it. This map is built from HSLSd's adjacency database. HSLSd one of the important programs used to build the routing table.
Unless you customize the installation of CUWiNware with a special local map file for the area around your community network, the layout of nodes will simply be what "looks good". RouteViz will attempt to make a best guess at where nodes are located based on the quality of the signal between each node. Walls (especially metal) greatly degrade the wireless signal, while open spaces will let a signal travel a long distance. Because the node has no way of determining the terrain around it, the locations of nodes on the RouteViz map may be skewed and are simply a best guess.
Click on a node to get information about it.
The links between nodes show the current link quality as measured by ETX. Red links are nodes a ways down the street, while green links are your near neighbors (in a wireless sense). If a node has only red links connected to it, it should be investigated to increase the quality of its connection to the mesh.
