NO.1

Image File

qcow2 image file

openwrt-armvirt-64.qcow2

NO.2

Upload File

qcow2 files cannot be uploaded to pve through webui

You need to upload it to the server using FileZilla

Remember, the path for the pve iso image folder is

/var/lib/vz/template/iso

The backup image data for pve is

Usually used to store the recoverable xxx.vma.zst files

/var/lib/vz/dump

The openwrt.qcow2 used in this article can be placed anywhere

To maintain some consistency, it is placed in the iso image directory

NO.3

Create Virtual Machine

Create a virtual machine

Give it a random name like openwrtDemo (also remember the current VM ID, like 105, it will be used later)

Click on Advanced, check the option to start automatically

Do not use any media

Other defaults Linux 5.x-2.6 Kernel

Select UEFI BIOS

Select QEMU image format

Disk is default, will be deleted later

Category host core allocation based on configuration needs, this article allocates 1 core 4 CPUs

Memory allocated 2GB in this article

Network card select VirtIO para-virtualization

Note

Uncheck the option to start after creation (which means do not allow starting after creation)

Click finish

NO.4

Set Virtual Machine

Delete everything in the red area

Delete the animated demonstration

Click to delete the CD directly

First click to detach the disk, then click on the unallocated disk, and click delete

NO.5

Create Disk via Command Line

Enter the pve shell

Enter the folder where you previously uploaded files via FTP

cd /var/lib/vz/template/iso

You can see the uploaded openwrt source file

openwrt-21.02.3-armvirt-64-zh-argon.qcow2

Use the command to place the openwrt qcow2 file into the newly created disk

qm importdisk 105 ./openwrt-21.02.3-armvirt-64-zh-argon.qcow2 local --format=qcow2

qm importdisk is the virtual machine disk command, 105 is the virtual machine number corresponding to the disk you want to create, which is the previous VM ID

./openwrt-21.02.3-armvirt-64-zh-argon.qcow2 is the relative directory, which is the openwrt qcow2 file in the current directory

local is the pve disk (this system pve only has local, no local-lvm, if there is local-lvm, you can change to local-lvm)

–format=qcow2 is to format the disk to the corresponding type, such as qcow2

Actual process

NO.6

Hardware Settings

Go back to 105 hardware view

You can see an unused hard drive

Click edit, then click add

You can see the disk has an additional scsi0, with a size of 1GB

Select the hardware, click disk action, and choose resize

Modify the disk size

The size is incremental, this article adds 4GB, which means adding 4GB of space to the original size

Click adjust

Final disk size is 5GB

Click options

Click boot order

Check scsi0, then drag scsi0 to the first row, click ok

Boot order looks correct

Switch back to hardware

Add display output

Because openwrt does not specify serial port display output, the command line interface cannot be seen

Create a serial device 0, then specify the display output as this serial device 0

NO.7

Start OpenWrt

Startup process

Click on console, click start

If it gets stuck in the middle, you can try pressing enter

NO.8

Set OpenWrt

After successful startup, you can check the newly assigned dynamic IP in your router

For example, this 192.168.100.220 is the newly assigned IP, assigned to this virtual machine

Check the default IP of OpenWrt

Enter the command ip addr

You can see the default management IP address of OpenWrt is 192.168.1.1

We need to change it to an address in our same subnet to see the management interface

Edit the /etc/config/network file

vi /etc/config/network

Change it to 192.168.100.220 (which is the address just assigned by the router)

Click stop and then start again

This way the IP will take effect

After startup, enter the command line again to check ip addr

You can see it has changed to 192.168.100.220

NO.9

Using OpenWrt

Access 192.168.100.220

You can see the prompt

Click Advanced

Click Continue to Proceed

By default, there is no password

Click login

Specific usage

Take your time to explore

For example, changing the password, setting WLAN and LAN, configuring plugins, etc.

NO.10

Tips

At this point, OpenWrt has been successfully set up on ARM64’s PVE

You can later add physical network ports and configure plugins to solve network issues

Once installed successfully, you can back it up in time, so that you can restore it with one click on another PVE (without the hassle of installation as described above)

END.

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