127 lines
5.2 KiB
Markdown
127 lines
5.2 KiB
Markdown
# Liminix
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A Nix-based system for configuring consumer wifi routers.
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## What is this?
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This is a Nix-based collection of software tailored for domestic wifi
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router or IoT device devices, of the kind that OpenWrt or DD-WRT or
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Gargoyle or Tomato run on. It's a reboot/restart/rewrite of NixWRT.
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This is not NixOS-on-your-router: it's aimed at devices that are
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underpowered for the full NixOS experience. It uses busybox tools,
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musl instead of GNU libc, and s6-rc instead of systemd.
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The Liminix name comes from Liminis, in Latin the genitive declension
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of "limen", or "of the threshold". Your router stands at the threshold
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of your (online) home and everything you send to/receive from the
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outside word goes across it.
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### What about NixWRT?
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This is an in-progress rewrite of NixWRT, incorporating Lessons
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Learned. That said, as of today (September 2022) it is not yet
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anywhere _near_ feature parity.
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Liminix will eventually provide these differentiators over NixWRT:
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* a writable filesystem so that software updates or reconfiguration
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(e.g. changing passwords) don't require taking the device offline to
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reflash it.
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* more flexible service management with dependencies, to allow
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configurations such as "route through PPPoE if it is healthy, with
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fallback to LTE"
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* a spec for valid configuration options (a la NixOS module options)
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to that we can detect errors at evaluation time instead of producing
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a bad image.
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* a network-based mechanism for secrets management so that changes can
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be pushed from a central location to several Liminix devices at once
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* send device metrics and logs to a monitoring/alerting/o11y
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infrastructure
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Today though, it does approximately none of these things and certainly
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not on real hardware.
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## Building
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These instructions assume you have nixpkgs checked out in a peer
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directory of this one.
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You need a `configuration.nix` file pointed to by `<liminix-config>`, a
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hardware device definition as argument `device`, and to choose an
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appropriate output attribute depending on what your device is and how
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you plan to install onto it. For example:
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NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=../nixpkgs:$NIX_PATH NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNSUPPORTED_SYSTEM=1 nix-build -I liminix-config=./tests/smoke/configuration.nix --arg device "import ./devices/qemu.nix" -A outputs.default
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`outputs.default` is intended to do something appropriate for the
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device, whatever that is. For the qemu device, it creates a directory
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containing a squashfs root image and a kernel.
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## QEMU
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QEMU is useful for developing userland without needing to keep
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flashing or messing with U-Boot: it also enables testing against
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emulated network peers using [QEMU socket networking](https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Networking#Socket),
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which may be preferable to letting Liminix loose on your actual LAN.
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We have some tooling to make this easier.
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### Networks
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We observe these conventions for QEMU network sockets, so that we can
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run multiple emulated instances and have them wired up to each other
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in the right way
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* multicast 230.0.0.1:1234 : access (interconnect between router and "isp")
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* multicast 230.0.0.1:1235 : lan
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* multicast 230.0.0.1:1236 : world (the internet)
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### Running instances
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`./scripts/run-qemu.sh` accepts a kernel vmlinux image and a squashfs
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and runs qemu with appropriate config for two ethernet interfaces
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hooked up to "lan" and "access" respectively. It connects the Liminix serial console
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and the [QEMU monitor](https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/monitor.html) to
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stdin/stdout. Use ^P (not ^A) to switch to the monitor.
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If you run with `--background /path/to/unix/socket` it will fork into
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the background and open a Unix socket at that pathname to communicate
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on. Use `./scripts/connect-qemu.sh` to connect to it, and ^O to
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disconnect.
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### Emulated upstream connection
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In the tests/support/ppp-server directory there are instructions and a script
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to configure [Mikrotik RouterOS](https://mikrotik.com/software) as
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a PPPoE access concentrator connected to the `access` and `world`
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networks, so that Liminix PPPoE client support can be tested.
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_Liminix does not provide RouterOS licences and it is your own
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responsibility if you use this to ensure you're compliant with
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the terms of Mikrotik's licencing._
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This may be supplemented or replaced in time with configuurations for
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RP-PPPoE and/or Accel PPP.
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## Running tests
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Assuming you have nixpkgs checked out in a peer directory of this one,
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NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=../nixpkgs:$NIX_PATH ./run-tests.sh
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## Articles of interest
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* [Build Safety of Software in 28 Popular Home Routers](https://cyber-itl.org/assets/papers/2018/build_safety_of_software_in_28_popular_home_routers.pdf):
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"of the access points and routers we reviewed, not a single one
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took full advantage of the basic application armoring features
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provided by the operating system. Indeed, only one or two models even
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came close, and no brand did well consistently across all models
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tested"
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* [A PPPoE Implementation for Linux](https://static.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/als00/2000papers/papers/full_papers/skoll/skoll_html/index.html): "Many DSL service providers use PPPoE for residential broadband Internet access. This paper briefly describes the PPPoE protocol, presents strategies for implementing it under Linux and describes in detail a user-space implementation of a PPPoE client."
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