[strobes]

Hi, yes startup was configured per your advise and full path was used to run these commands.
And because of little experience I did something to the router, it's unstable now - occasional reboots. So I restored it from back up. And will try to find a different one for testing.
Will be back with more questions for sure.
Thank you.

[strobes]

@lexridge, thank you for help, mosquitto.conf and startup commands!
Hope this summary will help others: Note: it is still work in progress. And May be I don't have broker running yet as I had to use "test.mosquitto.org". Please correct and add missing info.

Install Entware: directions on web. Install Mosquitto: 1.opkg update 2. opkg install mosquitto mosquitto-client libmosquitto

You can start mosquitto manually, observe messages: /opt/sbin/mosquitto -c /opt/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf

The config file:
_______________________
#pid_file /opt/var/run/mosquitto.pid

persistence true
persistence_location /opt/var/lib/mosquitto/

#log_dest file /opt/var/log/mosquitto.log

#include_dir /opt/etc/mosquitto/conf.d

allow_anonymous true
#password_file /etc/mosquitto/pwfile
listener 1883
# user xxxx
_____________________________
Mosquitto will use nobody.

you can use ps | grep mosquitto to verify that the process is running.

and test:
first console : mosquitto_sub -h test.mosquitto.org -t /ddwrt/system
second: mosquitto_pub -h test.mosquitto.org -t /ddwrt/system -m 'welcome!'


Startup: (note that I used test.mosquitto.org for testing

#For Entware
sleep 10
/opt/etc/init.d/rc.unslung start
sleep 5
/opt/sbin/mosquitto -c /opt/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf&
sleep 2
#Announce the router has been rebooted. This prob. depends on local broker.
/opt/bin/mosquitto_pub -h 192.168.xxx.xxx -t ddwrt/system -m "`date` DD-WRT Rebooted"
~