what packages are required for the management interface to work?

[hecatae]

So on https://demo.openwisp.io my Meraki MR12 registers and is monitored without issue using OWF 22.03 firmware.
I've read the manifest available at https://downloads.openwisp.io/?prefix=firmware/22.03/ath79/ for the Meraki, but I'm doubting most of those packages are required, for example, Luci is not needed if the agent is working, the ath10k package seems to be a mistake as this is an ath9k device,
I'm trying to simplify this, so I have openvpn-mbedtls installed, I've recreated the Management Interface template from demo.openwisp.io
I've built 24.10.2 but I end up with problem in the status, looking at the failures, the docker installation is trying to ping something, but it's not clear how it's trying to reach the MR12, is it over the Management Interface or by the last known Public IP address?

[nemesifier]

@hecatae the system pings on the management address unless it's configured to use last IP. It should be all explained here:

• Setting up the management network
• Passive vs active metric collection

[hecatae]

@nemesifier yes I have the management interface configured, so thank you for confirming.
off to recompile further stripping further unnecessary packages as I only have 8MB to work with.

[hecatae]

recompiled with 22.03.7 and everything works, so now to find out what's changed in 23.05.6 and 24.10.2 that does not play nice with docker openwisp 24.11

[nemesifier]

Are you connecting the device through the WAN port? If that's the case, the firewall may block the ping, a possible easy solution is to list the management interface in the LAN zone of the firewall.

[hecatae]

I'm connecting the device behind another Openwrt device.
The MR12 does not have a WAN port, it's a DHCP client behind a 24.10.2 router.
Just replicated with an Openwrt One being used as a dumb AP.

both devices are set to use OpenVPN as management interface.

[hecatae]

Ok,

I have one device working out of 10.
Belkin RT1800 as router, correctly pings to Openwisp
Linksys SPNMX55 as router does not ping to Openwisp
Cisco Meraki MX65 as router does not ping to Openwisp
Zyxel WSM20 x 3 as access points, do not ping to Openwisp
Meraki MR12 as access point does not ping to Openwisp
Openwrt One as access point does not ping to Openwisp

I can modify all devices, so this is just basic networking failing.

[nemesifier]

Can you share the contents of /etc/config/openwisp of one of the devices which can ping (after redacting sensitive info) please?

On one of the devices which can't ping, can you try disabling the firewall with /etc/init.d/firewall stop for some time to see if the ping works with the firewall disabled?

[hecatae]

Can you share the contents of /etc/config/openwisp of one of the devices which can ping (after redacting sensitive info) please?

On one of the devices which can't ping, can you try disabling the firewall with /etc/init.d/firewall stop for some time to see if the ping works with the firewall disabled?

it's not the Openwrt end, it's definitely at the Linux Server end.
Going to migrate to Ansible install and see if it resolves itself.

[hecatae]

Ansible refuses to install:

TASK [Update APT package cache] ************************************************************************************************************************************************************* fatal: [dashboard.meritez.fyi]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Unsupported parameters for (apt) module: changed_when, delay, register, retries, until. Supported parameters include: allow_change_held_packages, allow_downgrade, allow_unauthenticated, autoclean, autoremove, cache_valid_time, clean, deb, default_release, dpkg_options, fail_on_autoremove, force, force_apt_get, install_recommends, lock_timeout, only_upgrade, package, policy_rc_d, purge, state, update_cache, update_cache_retries, update_cache_retry_max_delay, upgrade (allow-downgrade, allow-downgrades, allow-unauthenticated, allow_downgrades, default-release, install-recommends, name, pkg, update-cache)."}

Happens on both ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 12

[nemesifier]

@hecatae what ansible --version do you have?

[hecatae]

ansible --version
ansible [core 2.18.8]

[nemesifier]

It may be a problem with newer versions of ansible.
I tried to restart this CI build to see if it shows up:
https://github.com/openwisp/ansible-openwisp2/actions/runs/18169442825
I can't replicate it yet, but the error is pointing out to this task: https://github.com/openwisp/ansible-openwisp2/blob/7b19c42eef2ed21fd5480f4650d3e34b49687761/tasks/apt.yml#L3-L12, you should have a local copy of this file on your filesystem, likely in /home/<user>/.ansible/roles/openwisp.openwisp2, if you look for this file and remove changed_when, delay, register, retries, until it may work, but the error may pop up in other tasks. We'll need to find out why they decided to make this change and update the role to play nice with it, in the meantime a better solution could be to look for a way to downgrade your ansible version.

[hecatae]

so my ansible on is Debian 13 Trixie.
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=ansible-core

Do you want me to downgrade to Debian 12 Bookworm?

[nemesifier]

You could uninstall the apt package and install via pip, via pip you can pass the ansible version, eg:

pip install "ansible<12.0.0"