How to set up an OpenWRT VM in Proxmox

openwrt-on-proxmox.md

1. Go to OpenWRT release page, select the latest release stable release, then targets -> x86 -> 64. Right-click generic-ext4-combined.img.gz (not the "efi"!) and copy the link.

2. On the Proxmox host, download the archive and unpack it:

wget *paste link here*
gunzip openwrt-*.img.gz

3. Resize the image to be the size you want your VM's disk to be (example with 8 GiB):

qemu-img resize -f raw openwrt-*.img 8G

4. Create a new VM in Proxmox. Make sure to use:

• No installation media
• SeaBIOS
• No drives

Do not start the VM yet.

5. Import the resized OpenWRT image into the new VM (replace VMID and STORAGEID with yours):

qm importdisk VMID openwrt-*.img STORAGEID

6. Go to the VM -> Hardware, select the newly imported disk named "Unused Disk 0", press "Edit", set it to VirtIO with "Discard" and "IO Thread" enabled, then press OK.

7. Go to the VM -> Options -> Boot Order, make sure that virtio0 is at the top and is the only one that is ticked.

8. Add whatever networking or other devices you need.

9. You're done! Start the VM and enjoy all the routing.

Let me explain like this: you have two interfaces, let's call them eth0 and eth1.

• Create a bridge interface, let's call it br0. Attach it to eth0 and assign the Proxmox static IP address to it.
• Create the OpenWrt VM, pass eth1 through to it fully, and create one virtual interface that is attached to br0.
• Configure OpenWrt so that the physical interface (eth1) is the WAN and the virtual interface (br0) is the LAN.

Now Proxmox, OpenWrt and the rest of your network that is connected to eth0 are all in the same network and can access each other.

Yes, that makes much more sense for me! Thank you very much @subrezon!