Asus DNSMasq surrogate

About

Purpose of this tool is to provide a bit more functionality for Asus routers that either don't have Merlin support (hello, GT-AC5300), or are not supported by Merlin any more.

This tool does not require root-jailing, installation of any other third-party software etc. As long as your Asus can install its own utilities (eg. time machine or download master), you're good to go.

Building

Requirements

• arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc (8 or 9)
• cmake and ccmake

Simply invoke cmake . followed by ccmake .. BUILD_DIST controls whether the target version (for device) will be built; when OFF, build defaults to (host-side) unit testing.

Compiling

• use make all install dist to build target package (assumes BUILD_DIST=on).
• use make all test to build and run tests (assumes BUILD_DIST=off).

Usage

Before installing

Before the tool can be deployed to your router, pen drive must be configured. It is easiest done the router itself:

• plug in pen drive to your router's USB port,
• navigate to USB Applications,
• install Download Master.

The last step will initialize SD card for you.

Basic installation

• Open Releases tab here on Github and download archive for your router,

• copy archive to your router (eg. using pendrive or scp)

• extract contents of this archive on your router to /opt folder:

  cd /opt
  tar -zxf /path/to/dnsmasq-surrogate-*.tgz .
  

• restart your router.

Expert installation / building from sources

• install armbian, debian or package manager on your router. Your package manager must provide decently modern gcc or clang and basic build tools.

• execute make dist in the source folder. This will produce all artifacts and package them to a tgz file.

• decompress the package to an /opt folder:

  cd /opt
  tar -zxf /path/to/dnsmasq-surrogate-*.tgz .
  

• activate surrogate and restart dnsmasq:

  dnsmasq-surrogate install
  service restart_dnsmasq
  

By decompressing archive, you effectively:

• copy dnsmasq-surrogate to /opt/bin,
• copy dnsmasq-surrogate.control to /opt/lib/ipkg/info/,
• copy dnsmasq-surrogate.rc to /opt/etc/init.d/S50dnsmasq-surrogate.
• give execute permissions to the rc file (chmod a+x /opt/etc/init.d/S50dnsmasq-surrogate)

Giving hosts names

Proceed to your Asus' control panel and use static dhcp assignment to configure IP addresses and host names.

This tool does not automaticaly assign names to dynamically configured hosts yet. There is nothing else you'd need to do.

Using additional hosts / ad-block functionality

Surrogate can feed dnsmasq with any additional hosts files, thus providing a functionality similar to adblock.

To enable this functionality, once surrogate is installed, copy any additional hosts files to /jffs/dnsmasq-surrogate/hosts/ folder. These files can be acquired from multiple sites, eg. StevenBlack's github repo.

Once files are copied to /jffs/dnsmasq-surrogate/hosts/ folder, you will need to manually restart dnsmasq service - or reboot your router.

# service restart_dnsmasq

Disabling and re-enabling utility

To disable utility, log in to your router as admin and execute:

app_set_enabled.sh dnsmasq-surrogate no

To re-enable utility, execute:

app_set_enabled.sh dnsmasq-surrogate yes

To query utility state:

app_get_field.sh dnsmasq-surrogate Enabled

After each enable/disable cycle, application will re-start dns service on your router. This does not mean, however, that all the hosts will automatically start working at instant: you may need to re-connect to your network or flush dns cache using other methods.