3004.388.7: Addons tab missing after restart?

[LaMpiR]

Hi good people.

I habe a AX88U with Firmware 3004.388.7. I have installed skynet, spdmerlin and another for measuring pings but forgot the name.

I did few days ago update of amtm and skynet and the tab Addons was here. Today I moved the router and in the process restarted it. Went to check my spdmerlin and it's not there. I can see the usb.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[DJones]

1.Try clearing your browser cache & cookies.
2.Follow up questions: Do you have the disk check script installed in amtm? Yes/No; If yes use 'dcl' in amtm to see the disk check log and post below if necessary. Did you perform a upgrade to your router recently? Yes/No. Did you unmount the drive before upgrading your firmware. Yes/No. Did you have any recent power failures that may have suddenly turned off your router. Yes/No/Unknown. Are you using a USB Stick or external SSD?. Does the dcl log show corruption to the drive that might have been corrected; if yes post log below.
4.Have you experienced any similar issues with addon's not showing or asking to be reinstalled in ssh?
5.Does this still happen when you remount your drive and reboot.
6.Did you at any point use the built in Asus health scanner. (potentially not compatible with entware as it may use optware which is depreceated and optware isn't compatible with entware.)

-Leave a bug report here. (Merlin doesn't have open issue reports on git)

Template:
**Router Model Affected**
Models: (eg: DSL-AX82U/RT-AX82U/...)

**Firmware Version Affected**
384.xx

**Describe the bug**
A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

**To Reproduce**
Steps to reproduce the behaviour:
1. Go to '...'
2. Click on '....'
3. Scroll down to '....'
4. See error

**Expected behaviour**
A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

**Screenshots**
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem or remove this section

===

optional:
-Attempt to install a fresh install of 388.7 Merlin.
-Disable or uninstall problematic addon's or entware temporarily to narrow down the issue, format drive / remove swap and recreate, reinstall entware or addons.
-Check snbforums for past issue's which may pertain to your issue.

 

[LaMpiR]

1.Try clearing your browser cache & cookies.
2.Follow up questions: Do you have the disk check script installed in amtm? Yes/No; If yes use 'dcl' in amtm to see the disk check log and post below if necessary. Did you perform a upgrade to your router recently? Yes/No. Did you unmount the drive before upgrading your firmware. Yes/No. Did you have any recent power failures that may have suddenly turned off your router. Yes/No/Unknown. Are you using a USB Stick or external SSD?. Does the dcl log show corruption to the drive that might have been corrected; if yes post log below.
4.Have you experienced any similar issues with addon's not showing or asking to be reinstalled in ssh?
5.Does this still happen when you remount your drive and reboot.
6.Did you at any point use the built in Asus health scanner. (potentially not compatible with entware as it may use optware which is depreceated and optware isn't compatible with entware.)

-Leave a bug report here. (Merlin doesn't have open issue reports on git)

Template:
**Router Model Affected**
Models: (eg: DSL-AX82U/RT-AX82U/...)

**Firmware Version Affected**
384.xx

**Describe the bug**
A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

**To Reproduce**
Steps to reproduce the behaviour:
1. Go to '...'
2. Click on '....'
3. Scroll down to '....'
4. See error

**Expected behaviour**
A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

**Screenshots**
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem or remove this section

===

optional:
-Attempt to install a fresh install of 388.7 Merlin.
-Disable or uninstall problematic addon's or entware temporarily to narrow down the issue, format drive / remove swap and recreate, reinstall entware or addons.
-Check snbforums for past issue's which may pertain to your issue.

1. Done, no change.
2. Follow up questions: Do you have the disk check script installed in amtm? No
Did you perform a upgrade to your router recently? No.
Did you unmount the drive before upgrading your firmware. No.
Did you have any recent power failures that may have suddenly turned off your router. No, but my wife plugged the power cable out.
Are you using a USB Stick or external SSD? usb
Does the dcl log show corruption to the drive that might have been corrected; if yes post log below. Dont know how to do that? Please advise.

4.Have you experienced any similar issues with addon's not showing or asking to be reinstalled in ssh? No.
5.Does this still happen when you remount your drive and reboot. Yes.
6.Did you at any point use the built in Asus health scanner. (potentially not compatible with entware as it may use optware which is depreceated and optware isn't compatible with entware.) No.


But, tried to run spdmerling from amtm and got error that entware was not installed. Installed it, it prompted that it can use the old installation and it did, restarted and everything is now here. Thank you for the quick support guys! It seems that entware files got somehow corrupted and not I have addons tab back.

 

[DJones]

If you install the disk check script package in amtm all you have to do to check the log is type dcl in amtm.

Corruption can occur on any drive, but usb sticks as others have mentioned are less stable and are slower than an externally mounted usb ssd enclosure. Power failures, and not properly (ejecting) unmounting the the usb drive before doing a firmware update can cause this issue.

You might be fine just to reinstall any scripts that are corrupted or later down the road if it keeps happening format the drive and reinstall your addons. As others here recommend upgrading your drive to a cheap ssd might be a better solution as not all usb sticks are made to the same quality.

 

[LaMpiR]

I will definatelly do that. Does the external usb or ssd speed have anything to do with maximum level of bandwidth measured by spdmerlin? It wouldnt make sense if it that would be a limiting factor. Since I got an fiber upgrade to 1000/1000 there seems to be a maximum of 400 Mbps and I can achieve a much higher speed from my laptop.

 

[DJones]

I will definatelly do that. Does the external usb or ssd speed have anything to do with maximum level of bandwidth measured by spdmerlin? It wouldnt make sense if it that would be a limiting factor. Since I got a fiber upgrade to 1000/1000 there seems to be a maximum of 400 Mbps and I can achieve a much higher speed from my laptop.

Yes/no to it bottlenecking your internet speed, but it might your cpu. Depending on if you use QoS on your router any QoS except adaptive disables hardware acceleration. With QoS disabled you might have better speeds. The router having to handle the packets on cpu without “HW A” might cause the cpus to become saturated on higher connections above 300mbps. Where the slower usb sticks come into play is it might cause your cpu to hang well the data is buffered.

In these cases I don’t recommend consumer routers unless they are rated to handle the specs. There are ways around this to keep using your current router, but usually it involves letting another business class router handle QoS if it’s needed. Or buy a mini pc and install pfsense or opnsense if your savvy enough to build yourself a router.

Do a forum search this is a very common issue.

 

[visortgw]

There are several factors that can limit your WAN bandwidth based upon my experience:

1. The WAN port on your RT-AX88U is only 1 Gbps. To effectively achieve the 1000/1000 that you subscribe to, both your router WAN port and your modem port should support 2.5 Gbps or higher. I have 1 Gpbs/35 Mbps cable, and I routinely see 1.1 Gbps/40 Mbps.
2. Turn off QoS if it is enabled.
3. Enable hardware acceleration if it is not.
4. Do not test while connected to a VPN.
5. Test while your network is generally idle.

 

[LaMpiR]

So, an upgrade to AX88U Pro would seem reasonable with these speeds and 2,5Gbps wan port. I get over WiFi around 800Mbps on my Samsung S24, but have activated 160Mhz channel.

I have turned off QoS, but how do I turn on the HW? Sorry for so many questions suddenly

I hope it's ok me asking here, will search later when on my laptop of course. When I add the Guest network since I wanted one for IoT devices and wanted to Limit them all to 50Mbps, it activated QoS with Limiter option and around 300 for all other devices. Any way to bypass that? So yes to a limiter in a Guest network, No to a limiter for the main network.

 

[visortgw]

To enable hardware acceleration:

runner enable
fc enable

 

[LaMpiR]

To enable hardware acceleration:

runner enable
fc enable

Thank you for the quick reply.

Unfortunately, my download was maxed at 370 and my upload went to 565. My ping got slightly improved to 1,4ms. So, AX88U Pro

 

[DJones]

So, an upgrade to AX88U Pro would seem reasonable with these speeds and 2,5Gbps wan port. I get over WiFi around 800Mbps on my Samsung S24, but have activated 160Mhz channel.

I have turned off QoS, but how do I turn on the HW? Sorry for so many questions suddenly

I hope it's ok me asking here, will search later when on my laptop of course. When I add the Guest network since I wanted one for IoT devices and wanted to Limit them all to 50Mbps, it activated QoS with Limiter option and around 300 for all other devices. Any way to bypass that? So yes to a limiter in a Guest network, No to a limiter for the main network.

When qos is turned off it should automatically enable hardware acceleration. Tools->sysinfo will show you if it’s enabled.

Asus routers in general are the problem since it has parts of the firmware that are proprietary there are sacrifices to be made by rmerlin. The pro versions in the latest codebase might handle networking better but I can’t guarantee that as I don’t own one.

 

[LaMpiR]

It is now on for sure

I had 300/50 and it was handled very well by spdmerlin and I find it also good to see the average over time. I will look into in the next weeks and since it's prime day in 20 days for Germany, maybe go for Pro version. Will see. Thank you