Linux package management systems for embedded systems.

The utilities:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ipkg – the history
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/opkg – ipkg fork, the currently popular one

The repositories: Optware, Optware-ng, Entware, Entware-ng:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optware – how it all started
• https://github.com/Optware/Optware – outdated
• https://github.com/Optware/Optware-ng – an Optware fork using opkg – supports PPC, i686, …; does not support x86-64 – this page has the installation instructions – they do use opkg, but they call it ipkg (that’s strange)
• https://github.com/Optware/Optware-ng/wiki/IPKG-OPKG-Open-Package-Manager
• https://github.com/Entware
• https://github.com/Entware/Entware – the repository as of 2018-03-01 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• https://github.com/Entware/Entware/wiki !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• https://github.com/Entware/Entware/wiki/Install-on-Synology-NAS
• !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• https://github.com/Entware-ng/Entware-ng – yet another Optware fork – supports x86-64, armv5, armv7; does not support PPC – outdated as of 2018-03-01
• https://entware.net/2018/03/01/Changelog.html – Entware-ng/Entware-ng is outdated as of now
• https://github.com/Entware-ng/Entware-ng/wiki
• https://github.com/Entware-ng/Entware-ng/wiki/Install-on-Synology-NAS – this page has the installation instructions

I am not following their advice regarding /opt/etc/init.d.

CAVEAT: (On the Synology NASes) the command line utilities outside /opt experience trouble getting loaded libraries from /opt/lib through LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so I remove /opt/lib from there in my startup script.

Synology model	CPU	/proc/cpuinfo	uname –machine	Entware	Entware-ng	Optware-ng
synology_apollolake_218+			x86_64	./.	x86-64
synology_cedarview_713+			x86_64	./.	x86-64
synology_armada370_ds115j			armv7l	./.	armv7
synology_88f6282_112+			armv5tel	–	armv5
synology_qoriq_213+	Freescale QorlQ P1022	e500v2	ppc		–	PowerPC e500v2

• https://pkg.entware.net/binaries
• https://pkg.entware.net/binaries/x86-64/Packages.html
• …

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppler_(software)
•  – very nice description of the poppler-utils
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xpdf
• https://github.com/Entware-ng/Entware-ng
• https://github.com/Entware-ng/Entware-ng/wiki
• https://github.com/Entware-ng/Entware-ng/wiki/Install-on-Synology-NAS

I actually mean “pdftohtml -xml” – which creates XML from PDF, and this is my command line:

$ pdftohtml -xml -i -nomerge -hidden FILE.pdf

resp.:

$ pdftohtml -xml -i -nomerge -hidden FILE.pdf FILE.pdftohtml.xml

Sometimes I need to run “pdftohtml -xml” (on the command line) on a file living on my NAS – it is really an essential utility for me.

CAVEAT: Be sure you have poppler-utils installed, not xpdf – xpdf’s pdftohtml is far outdated (their numbering schemes are different):

root@DiskStation:~# /opt/bin/opkg install xpdf
Installing xpdf (4.00-1) to root...
Downloading http://pkg.entware.net/binaries/x86-64/xpdf_4.00-1_x86-64.ipk
Configuring xpdf.
root@DiskStation:~# /opt/bin/opkg search /opt/bin/pdftohtml
xpdf - 4.00-1
root@DiskStation:~# /opt/bin/pdftohtml --help
pdftohtml version 4.00
root@DiskStation:~# /opt/bin/opkg remove xpdf
Removing package xpdf from root...
root@DiskStation:~# /opt/bin/opkg install poppler-utils
Installing poppler-utils (0.53.0-1) to root...
Downloading http://pkg.entware.net/binaries/x86-64/poppler-utils_0.53.0-1_x86-64.ipk
Configuring poppler-utils.
root@DiskStation:~# /opt/bin/opkg search /opt/bin/pdftohtml
poppler-utils - 0.53.0-1
root@DiskStation:~# /opt/bin/pdftohtml --help
pdftohtml version 0.53.0

• https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS713+
• https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS715+ – not yet out
• https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS215j
• of course I would have preferred a DS715+ or DS714+, but they are not available, the DS713+ isn’t really as low power as the DS215j
• it’s fun to see my bash and Perl scripts to run just the same on an openSUSE machine and on a Synology DiskStation – with the help of ipkg (and a few tweaks)
• notification: running sendxmpp with literate “IM” (= instant messaging) is just amazing!!!
• how to explain, that running this software on such a capable “tiny box” looks so much better than on general purpose server hardware?
• if I only had a serious idea of how to create a business (that feeds me a little) from this!!!

• http://willuhn.de/products/hibiscus-server/
• https://www.synology.com/en-global/releaseNote/JavaManager
• Synology’s JavaManager assists in installing Oracle’s JVM successfully
• I succeeded running the hibiscus server shell script to start the hibiscus server
• I have operated the hibiscus server successfully for months now on openSUSE VMs
• just as I operated the openSUSE based hibiscus servers, the Synology BusyBox+IPKG based hibiscus server seems to run stably and successfully for now
• i.e. “all” my bank accounts, that I can communicate with through HBCI/FinTS, are now getting synchronised to databases on my local NAS twice an hour (or as often as I want); this synchronisation happens independently of any desktop or notebook PC being online
• another piece of software (developed by myself) dumps these databases to CSV-like bank statement text files, and informs me of changes to them through XMPP AKA Jabber communication
• corruption of the hibiscus-server databases does not hurt me at all – it is only a means to communicate with the banks – it’s just that the bank-enforced HBCI/FinTS communication isn’t stateless and stores records on databases   – everything I need in the end are the CSV-like text files – setting up the bank account details on hibiscus-server is a piece of cake
• after the success with Synology’s JavaManager I tried my earlier self-installed Oracle JVM again, and running hibiscus-server with that one was just as successful

• http://linux.die.net/man/1/nail
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/nail/ : Heirloom mailx (formerly known as “nail”) is intended provide the functionality of the POSIX mailx command with additional support for MIME messages, IMAP (including caching), POP3, SMTP, S/MIME, message threading/sorting, scoring, and filtering.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mailx
• on my Synology NAS it is available as an IPKG package
• using this utility I can send out files from my NAS as e-mail attachments

Within .profile I try to find out, where exactly (in which environment) “I” am operating. Once I know this, I can set up PATH depending on the environment. Of course on a Synology NAS based on a BusyBox with IPKG (GNU) extensions things look different to my Mac or to my OpenSUSE installations, but still: having .profile / .bash_profile and .bashrc in common is rather intriguing.

There are two different strategies to access /volume1/@optware through /opt:

• a symlink (the approach I prefer)
• “mount -o bind” (usually run through /etc/rc.optware)

Once in a while (usually after a DSM update)

• the symlink “/opt” got removed
• and/or /etc/rc.optware already executed the “mount -o bind”.

I am checking on my /opt symlink in my ~/.profile, so I notice the misery rather soon.

I am going to describe,

• why I do not like /etc/rc.optware and the “mount -o bind“
• and how to get rid of the “mount -o bind” (I hope my approach works!!!)

After you got rid of the “mount -o bind“, the symlink needs getting re-established:

On synology_apollolake_218+ with x86_64-synology-DSM6.2.4_25556_0 I am doing this:

On … I am doing one of these:

$ ln -s /volume1/@optware /opt
…

Why do I not like the “mount -o bind”?

Once it is running, you can not identify, where the mountpoint really points to. The symlink is much clearer.

Why do I not like /etc/rc.optware?

Quite possibly /etc/rc.optware gets run and it already executed these lines:

$ mount -o bind /volume1/@optware /opt # some equivalent to the symlink
$ /opt/etc/rc.optware # which in turn runs a couple of init-scripts

I don’t really like the init-scripts runs through /opt/etc/rc.optware :

• /opt/etc/init.d/S??*

So maybe you (like me) want to prevent /etc/rc.optware from getting run (and thus also the “mount -o bind“) by renaming it a little …

How to make /opt/bin available on your PATH

For properly accessing the executables provided at /opt/bin, you need to extend your PATH like this in your ~/.profile:

PATH=/opt/bin:$PATH

For further reading

There is a separate and essential article on “IPKG for Synology”:

• http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/Overview_on_modifying_the_Synology_Server,_bootstrap,_ipkg_etc

Maybe you want to read this file:

• /opt/etc/ipkg.conf