Problems displaying some WebUI settings pages

[martinr]

I noticed problems displaying some settings pages eg:

Using different browsers on devices with various operating systems proved the snag lay with the router. I tried re-flashing .53, then tried reverting back to .51 without success.

Knowing my NVRAM was approaching the limit (59.5/65.5MB), I tried clearing the NVRAM using the method in the forum: press WPS whilst powering on. (Is the correct term a "factory reset" or "restore to factory default"?) I then uploaded the settings file from .51, problem sorted: the web settings pages now load properly.

So I'm surmising that the problem is due to my running close to the NVRAM limits.

I noticed that after the factory reset, NVRAM was already 40.5/65.5 MB ie 62% full.

I have ssh enabled using a public-private key pair, and I have both OpenVPN servers running using passwords rather than key pairs. I admit I only need to have one running. I remember reading that such things tend to max out NVRAM.

My NVRAM is back to 92% full and I suspect if I don't do something soon, I'll run into problems again.

1. Is a 92% full NVRAM likely to have caused web pages not to display properly?

2. I may well shut down one of the 2 OpenVPN servers and see if that makes much difference to NVRAM usage, but any other advice/observations would be most welcomed and appreciated.

 

[RMerlin]

1. Is a 92% full NVRAM likely to have caused web pages not to display properly?

2. I may well shut down one of the 2 OpenVPN servers and see if that makes much difference to NVRAM usage, but any other advice/observations would be most welcomed and appreciated.

Hard to tell what kind of impact having a nearly filled nvram partition can have on the router's behaviour. It could potentially have actually filled at one point, storing a few incomplete or corrupted settings, then went back down.

Check on the Wiki, someone posted a guide on how to move the OpenVPN certificates into files stored on the jffs2 partition.

 

[martinr]

Hard to tell what kind of impact having a nearly filled nvram partition can have on the router's behaviour. It could potentially have actually filled at one point, storing a few incomplete or corrupted settings, then went back down.

Check on the Wiki, someone posted a guide on how to move the OpenVPN certificates into files stored on the jffs2 partition.

Thanks, Merlin. For anyone coming along afterwards, the details are at:

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/reducing-nvram-for-openvpn-certs

I remember coming across this when reading http://www.snbforums.com/threads/nvram-size.23434/
and being frightened off by it all. Looks like I'll have to get my head round it after all.

Many thanks, yet again, and thanks for all your generosity: you don't have to make any of this public or spend your free time answering forum. postings.

 

[criminala]

Also using .53 here .
The router was working perfectly , even with the beta functions like adblocking etc. (the blocking workq fantasticly well btw!) .
However , the last few days the wifi of the router started working slow . Webpage unavailable even after a restart , very slow logging in (even trough SSH) .

Cpu usage is normal , however same thing like the OP : NVRAM usage nearly 100% .
Internal Storage
NVRAM usage 61361 / 65536 bytes
JFFS 8.31 / 62.75 MB

This stays even after reboot , and even after disabling adblocking and traffic monitoring (I'm not using any other functionality like Tor or VPN on the router) .

I did configure a few VPN client/server in the past (which I'm not using anymore) , so I will be looking at martinr's links first to find a solution .

Edit 1 : As far as I can see I have deleted all of the openVPN servers and clients certificates . However , my NVRAM usage is still pretty high I think .

Internal Storage
NVRAM usage 52925 / 65536 bytes
JFFS 8.29 / 62.75 MB

Edit 2 : when I browse trough the NVRAM configuration , i see that it still has a certificate stored for "serverv1" . But when I look in my web configuration , there is nothing configured for server1 , nor server2 . So How can I delete that certificate out of my NVRAM ?

Edit 3 : I have deleted the entries by doing
nvram unset vpn_crt_server1_crt
nvram unset vpn_crt_server1_key
nvram unset vpn_crt_server1_ca
nvram unset vpn_crt_server1_dh
Then did a commit and reboot
I have no idea if it's allowed to do it that way .
Anyway , got a bit less usage again
NVRAM usage 49186 / 65536 bytes

 

[martinr]

Now that you got down to 49k NVRAM, are those pages now displaying properly? And which pages in particular?

Thanks for including details of the unset command.

I moved my 4 vpn files from NVRAM to jffs with kind help from bbunge, and I haven't had page display problems other than the results of the scan in AiAprotection, and I think that must be something other than to do with NVRAM size, because, like you, my MVRAM is 49.5k ie only 75% full.

 

[criminala]

Well , I have not tried every page . All I can say is that my webpage often was unresponsive or did not load at all (webpage can not be displayed) , that my SSH access was very slow and that my Traffic analyzer pages did not display correctly .
My clients also said Wifi access was unstable and speeds of webbrowsing often were pretty bad .

Let's monitor and see if something has improved in the next few days .