Software Support
In the realm of software support, RV2 holds great promise. The Banana Pi team has confirmed that there will be an official mainline support available on the OpenWrt website. At this moment, there are only snapshots available instead of a stable release, but one is expected to come soon. The RV2 we received came bundled with an outdated snapshot and lacked essential packages. Once again, a final release is still pending. Therefore, upgrading to the most recent snapshot using the LuCI web interface is a great temporary solution until a stable firmware will be officially released.
Here’s a straightforward way to install a new snapshot without unnecessary complications.
- Access the LuCI web interface by entering “http://192.168.1.1” into your web browser.
- Go to OpenWrt Firmware Selector page and search for “Bananapi BPi-RV2 (Booting from NAND)“
- Download and save the Sysupgrade image to your local PC.
- In LuCI navigate to “System” -> “Backup / Flash Firmware”
- Select “Flash new firmware image” and select the file downloaded on section No. 3
- Download and install PuTTY or another SSH application, then establish a connection to 192.168.1.1.
- To install all required LuCI packages, execute the command: apk add luci.
The default package manager used in OpenWrt snapshots.
Even though Opkg is still hanging around in older stable versions, OpenWrt is changing the way that packages are managed. Whether you go with apk or opkg mostly depends on what version or branch you’ve got. APK, which stands for Alpine Package Keeper, is usually found in the newer snapshot builds, including the one we grabbed from the official site.