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:

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. Add whatever networking or other devices you need.

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

Thanks for this gist and I made a similar guide for UEFI case.

Thanks for this gist and I made a similar guide for UEFI case.

Cool, glad I was of help. You mention needing Q35 + OVMF to pass through hardware. Just FYI - it works on i440fx + SeaBIOS as well, my OpenWrt has NICs passed through to it and they work just fine.

The major difference between them is that Q35 + OVMF virtualizes an actual PCIe stack, i440fx + SeaBIOS does PCI "overclocked" to PCIe speed. The only situation in which this matters that I know of is when passing through GPUs. Never seen it matter for network interfaces.

@subrezon that is good to know, thanks!