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Q: Does FreshTomato support only old devices or also more recent ones?
A: FreshTomato supports both old devices and modern ones. See the page for more details. Keep a close eye on CPU speed, Ethernet port speed and Wi-Fi speed (with 802.11ac currently supporting the fastest Wi-Fi speed).
Q: What is FreshTomato's default IP(v4) address?
Q: What are FreshTomato's default login credentials?
Q: What do those cryptic filenames mean? How do I choose the right build for my router?
A: The naming scheme for ARM-based models (with some exceptions) is roughly as follows:
For example, we can tell that the ARM build with filename:
freshtomato-RT-AC3200-ARM-2021.3-AIO-128K.zip_no_media_server
has the following features:
Mod (fork) name: FreshTomato.
Hardware Model: built for the Asus RT-AC3200 router.
ARM: (for models with an ARM CPU architecture).
Release name: 2021.3 (The third release of 2021.) This ISN'T necessarily from the third month.
Edition: AIO (All-in-one). This edition includes most all features
NVRAM size: 128K (for routers with 128K of NVRAM space)
no_media_server: This build doesn't include the Media Server
MD5SUM files are available in each website folder containing firmware builds. It is strongly recommended that you run a hash program against the .zip file of the build you downloaded. Then, you should compare the value reported in that program with the hash value listed for that build in the MD5SUM file. If the two don't match, your firmware download may be corrupt, and you should avoid flashing your router with that file, or you could brick your router.
Q: How can I make temporary changes to FreshTomato's settings that aren't saved unless I want them to be?
A: In the Administration/Debugging menu, enable the “Avoid commiting to NVRAM” setting. If you don't want to keep the settings changes, just reboot FreshTomato and settings will return to what they were before you made them. If you later decide you want to save the changes, uncheck the Avoid performing an NVRAM commit button. This make experimentation fun and safe.
Another option while debugging is to make a backup configuration. Make your changes, if you decide you messed things up more than fixed them you can restore the backed-up configuration.
Q: What are the common device names used to represent router interfaces/components?
Q: Where is FreshTomato System log file located? How are logs stored?
A: * The logfile is located in /var/log/messages.
The only exception occurs if you configure external or remote storage (via USB or CIFS share).
Logs are erased between boots, unless permanent storage is configured.1)
Q: What is BusyBox?
BusyBox provides the Linux commands used in FreshTomato. (see https://busybox.net/)
BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX/Linux utilities into a single small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU coreutils, util-linux, etc. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins. However, the options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts.
Read more at: https://www.commandlinux.com/man-page/man1/busybox.1.html