I have no easy way of giving feedback on your website, so forgive me for doing it like this. Related to your website's mesh networking article

[seemebreakthis]

Sorry, this isn't related to rpi-button-box at all.

In your website https://cgomesu.com/blog/Mesh-networking-openwrt-batman/ , there is a lot of useful info and I basically followed your guide to set up my batman mesh which runs really smoothly. I'd like to bring your attention however to the VLAN setup which has changed drastically for the recent Openwrt versions.

In https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/basic-networking#switch_configuration_dsabridge-vlan, it says "As of OpenWrt 21.02, swconfig is being phased out and is being replaced with DSA". With this comes a new approach of setting up VLAN, and mesh ports are also impacted by this update.

It is actually a more intuitive approach in my opinion, and I figured everything out pretty quickly without even searching for any info. Basically this is all you have to do (in LuCI's new "device VLAN Bridge VLAN filtering" page):

All tagged VLAN data will flow through the bat0 port to other mesh nodes. At the other mesh bridges you basically do the same thing so tagged VLAN data will flow through the mesh backhaul to the other (bridged) networks.

So basically there is no longer any concept of bat0.1, bat0.2 etc. bat0 is treated like a physical ethernet port in a sense. Since data that reaches the bat0 port already has tagged VLAN information (because you are never attaching any network client directly to bat0), you just need to select which VLAN data you need to carry through the mesh backhaul, and in my case above, both VLAN 1,2 are tagged meaning both VLANS will flow through the mesh to/from other nodes.

That's it ! And for the network interfaces (usually one per VLAN), you just need to attach the appropriate bridge VLAN device (br-lan.1, br-lan.2, etc) to each interface. No longer do you need to attach any bat0.1, bat0.2, etc there.

[cgomesu]

thanks for the heads up, @seemebreakthis . could please share your network configuration file and openwrt version used? it's been a while since I last edited the mesh guide and as you pointed out, I might have to do it now.

[seemebreakthis]

Openwrt version is 23.05.0-rc2

Here is my gateway router 'network':

config interface 'loopback'
        option device 'lo'
        option proto 'static'
        option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
        option netmask '255.0.0.0'

config globals 'globals'

config device
        option name 'br-lan'
        option type 'bridge'
        list ports 'bat0'
        list ports 'lan1'
        list ports 'lan2'
        list ports 'lan3'
        list ports 'lan4'
        option ipv6 '0'

config interface 'lan'
        option device 'br-lan.1'
        option proto 'static'
        option ipaddr '192.168.1.254'
        option netmask '255.255.255.0'

config interface 'wan'
        option device 'wan'
        option proto 'dhcp'
        option peerdns '0'
        list dns '127.0.0.1'

config bridge-vlan
        option device 'br-lan'
        option vlan '1'
        list ports 'bat0:t'
        list ports 'lan1:u*'
        list ports 'lan2:u*'
        list ports 'lan3:u*'
        list ports 'lan4:u*'

config bridge-vlan
        option device 'br-lan'
        option vlan '2'
        list ports 'bat0:t'

config interface 'lan_IoT'
        option proto 'static'
        option device 'br-lan.2'
        option ipaddr '192.168.2.1'
        option netmask '255.255.255.0'

config interface 'bat0'
        option proto 'batadv'
        option routing_algo 'BATMAN_IV'
        option aggregated_ogms '1'
        option ap_isolation '0'
        option bonding '0'
        option bridge_loop_avoidance '1'
        option distributed_arp_table '1'
        option fragmentation '1'
        option gw_mode 'off'
        option hop_penalty '30'
        option isolation_mark '0x00000000/0x00000000'
        option log_level '0'
        option multicast_mode '1'
        option multicast_fanout '16'
        option network_coding '0'
        option orig_interval '1000'

config interface 'mesh'
        option proto 'batadv_hardif'
        option master 'bat0'
        option mtu '1536'

And here is my bridge router 'network':

config interface 'loopback'
        option device 'lo'
        option proto 'static'
        option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
        option netmask '255.0.0.0'

config globals 'globals'

config device
        option name 'br-lan'
        option type 'bridge'
        list ports 'bat0'
        list ports 'lan1'
        list ports 'lan2'
        list ports 'lan3'
        list ports 'lan4'
        list ports 'wan'
        option ipv6 '0'

config interface 'lan'
        option device 'br-lan.1'
        option proto 'static'
        option ipaddr '192.168.1.248'
        option netmask '255.255.255.0'
        option ip6assign '60'
        option gateway '192.168.1.254'
        list dns '192.168.1.254'

config bridge-vlan
        option device 'br-lan'
        option vlan '1'
        list ports 'bat0:t'
        list ports 'lan1:u*'
        list ports 'lan3:u*'
        list ports 'lan4:u*'
        list ports 'wan:u*'

config bridge-vlan
        option device 'br-lan'
        option vlan '2'
        list ports 'bat0:t'
        list ports 'lan2:u*'

config interface 'lan_IoT'
        option proto 'static'
        option device 'br-lan.2'
        option ipaddr '192.168.2.2'
        option gateway '192.168.2.1'
        list dns '192.168.2.1'

config interface 'bat0'
        option proto 'batadv'
        option routing_algo 'BATMAN_IV'
        option aggregated_ogms '1'
        option ap_isolation '0'
        option bonding '0'
        option bridge_loop_avoidance '1'
        option distributed_arp_table '1'
        option fragmentation '1'
        option gw_mode 'off'
        option hop_penalty '30'
        option isolation_mark '0x00000000/0x00000000'
        option log_level '0'
        option multicast_mode '1'
        option multicast_fanout '16'
        option network_coding '0'
        option orig_interval '1000'

config interface 'mesh'
        option proto 'batadv_hardif'
        option master 'bat0'
        option mtu '1536'

Last but not least, I admire your effort to do good service to the Openwrt community with this article ! Much appreciated !

[cgomesu]

thanks. I'm going to upgrade one of my routers to the latest version and then test the settings you mention.

[cgomesu]

Openwrt version is 23.05.0-rc2

just to follow up on this: it looks like 23 is still marked is next stable release. the current stable release is 22.03 and the instructions on the website should apply to (non-dsa) devices running that version of the openwrt firmware. however, I'll add a note about the vlan configuration in the changelog and update the guide once 23.05 becoes the current stable.

[cgomesu]

also, in the future, you can send me an email instead (see my contacts). it's all good though.