A Simple olsrd.conf

We are not going to provide a complete configuration file. Here are some essential settings that should be checked.

UseHysteresis        no
TcRedundancy         2
MprCoverage          3
LinkQualityLevel     2
LinkQualityWinSize   20

LoadPlugin "olsrd_dyn_gw.so.0.3"
{
    PlParam "Interval" "60"
    PlParam "Ping" "151.1.1.1"
    PlParam "Ping" "194.25.2.129"
}

Interface "ath0" "wlan0"
{
    Ip4Broadcast 255.255.255.255
}

There are many more options available in the olsrd.conf, but these basic options should get you started. After these steps have been done, olsrd can be started with a simple command in a terminal:

olsrd -d 2

I recommend to run it with the debugging option -d 2 when used on a workstation, especially for the first time. You can see what olsrd does and monitor how well the links to your neighbours are. On embedded devices the debug level should be 0 (off), because debugging creates a lot of CPU load.

The output should look something like this:

--- 19:27:45.51 --------------------------------------------- DIJKSTRA

192.168.120.1:1.00 (one-hop)
192.168.120.3:1.00 (one-hop)

--- 19:27:45.51 ------------------------------------------------ LINKS

IP address      hyst   LQ     lost  total  NLQ    ETX
192.168.120.1   0.000  1.000  0     20     1.000  1.00
192.168.120.3   0.000  1.000  0     20     1.000  1.00

--- 19:27:45.51 -------------------------------------------- NEIGHBORS

IP address     LQ     NLQ    SYM  MPR  MPRS  will
192.168.120.1  1.000  1.000  YES  NO   YES   3
192.168.120.3  1.000  1.000  YES  NO   YES   6

--- 19:27:45.51 --------------------------------------------- TOPOLOGY

Source IP addr  Dest IP addr    LQ     ILQ    ETX
192.168.120.1   192.168.120.17  1.000  1.000  1.00
192.168.120.3   192.168.120.17  1.000  1.000  1.00