While developing LuCI web services, I found this is quite annoying for moving codes back and forth from my machine to the router.
So, I decided to setup a LuCI development environment on my own machine. Below are steps for doing so.
Prerequisites
OS I have tested
If you havn’t installed, please refer to my another blog post
- Apache2 (Version: 2.2.22-1ubuntu1)
Version of Apache2 is not important if you can take care the PATH issues. For example, the HTML root directory.
Command to install apache2
apt-get install apache2
How it work
Below is a simplified diagram. I have not drawn all the components involved.
CGI
|APACHE| <-----> | LuCI |
# Inside LuCI
|cgi-bin/luci| <--> |luci.sgi.cgi| <--> |luci core|
According to above diagram, we only need to setup a CGI script for briding up apache and luci
Steps
1. Checkout cgi directory location
We need to put luci (a cgi script) in there such that Apache can run.
$> cat /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
...
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
...
ScriptAlias means apaches will run a corresponding script in /usr/lib/cgi-bin when there are requests to URL http://HOST/cgi-bin/ANY_CGI_SCRIPT
Therefore, we should put luci in /usr/lib/cgi-bin
2. Get a LuCI repository
I am using version LuCI.0.12 from the github here
3. Get luci from the luci repository
Define <LUCI> to be the path for luci repository
# Get CGI script
$> sudo cp <LUCI>/host/www/cgi-bin/luci /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
# Get CSS html template etc
$> sudo cp -r <LUCI>/host/www/luci-static /var/www
# Change permission
$> sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/luci-static
$> sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/cgi-bin/luci
4. Edit Apache configuration /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
Make sure you have been replaced LUA_PATH, LUA_CPATH, LUCI_SYSROOT and LD_LIBRARY_PATH with your own path.
....
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
SetEnvIf \
Request_URI ".*luci.*" \
LUA_PATH=/home/mondwan/Documents/git/luci/host//usr/lib/lua/?.lua;/home/mondwan/Documents/git/luci/host//usr/lib/lua/?/init.lua;$LUA_PATH; \
LUA_CPATH=/home/mondwan/Documents/git/luci/host//usr/lib/lua/?.so;$LUA_CPATH; \
LUCI_SYSROOT=/home/mondwan/Documents/git/luci/host \
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/mondwan/Documents/git/luci/host/usr/lib:
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
....
5. Restart apache
$> sudo service apache2 restart
6. Create a directory for LuCI
The directory /etc/config simulates a config system in OpenWRT which LuCI relies on.
$> mkdir -p /etc/config
7. Write following default contents into /etc/config/luci
config core 'main'
option lang 'auto'
option mediaurlbase '/luci-static/openwrt.org'
option resourcebase '/luci-static/resources'
config extern 'flash_keep'
option uci '/etc/config/'
option dropbear '/etc/dropbear/'
option openvpn '/etc/openvpn/'
option passwd '/etc/passwd'
option opkg '/etc/opkg.conf'
option firewall '/etc/firewall.user'
option uploads '/lib/uci/upload/'
config internal 'languages'
option en 'English'
config internal 'sauth'
option sessionpath '/tmp/luci-sessions'
option sessiontime '3600'
config internal 'ccache'
option enable '1'
config internal 'themes'
option Bootstrap '/luci-static/bootstrap'
8. View on browser
Errors are expected :)
Ubuntu and Openwrt are 2 different OS. They build up with different set of commands for managing computational resources.
In other words, most of the application from official repository cannot be reused here unless you have ported all the internal details from Openwrt to Ubuntu.
NOTE: Some of them have been port to Ubuntu in this PPA
9. Remove incompatitable components so that we can run admin interface
$> cd <LUCI>/host/usr/lib/lua/luci/controller
$> mv admin/ ..
$> rm -fr *
$> mv ../admin/ .
# Clean up cache
$> sudo rm -fr /tmp/luci-indexcache /tmp/luci-modulecache/
10. Try again
If you can see above picture, you can start developing your own LuCI application under folder <LUCI>/host/usr/lib/lua/luci/controller
NOTES
- ADMIN interface will not work as expected
As stated above, most commands from openwrt are not ported to Ubuntu (eg: ubus). The admin interface will not work as expected.
- Missing folders I mentioned above
Make sure you are using luci-0.12 since the latest luci alters the build process somehow.
If you are using GIT for downloading source codes, here are commands for checking out luci-0.12
$> cd PROJECT_ROOT
$> git checkout luci-0.12
Then follow my blog post for installation
- Apache CGI does not work as expected
Please take a look here and make sure cgi module has been enabled.
- Unable to run
/cgi-bin/luci due to permission problem
Try to replace these lines
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
to this
Require all granted
- Disable cache mechanism by comment 2 lines
By default, LuCI caches Lua files as binaries. Modification in your applications will be ignored if binaries had been created. Here is a way for disabling such mechanism.
$> vi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/luci
-- require "luci.cacheloader"
require "luci.sgi.cgi"
-- luci.dispatcher.indexcache = "/tmp/luci-indexcache"
luci.sgi.cgi.run()
References
Updates
2015/6/26
- Update notes contents about missing folder
2017/3/5
Fix a typo in the script
Add a link about enable Apache CGI
Add how to fix permission problems from Apache (Thanks +Anton Key )
Rewrite certain sentances and unify the style
- 2020/01/05
- Add a note on ubutnu PPA (from stokito)