AC68U Web UI Crashes, then internet goes down shortly after

[John Wentworth]

I've had a problem for a few months over multiple versions on my ac68u
randomly I'll try to go to the webui and it either won't come up at all or I'll try to login and the UI will fail to come up. a few hours later the internet will go down, wired and wireless and I'll have to reboot the router.

My setup is not complex, I haven't fiddled around with packages via ssh
When this started a few months ago, all I had was 2 separate networks for 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz
Aiprotection enabled
using adaptive QoS
Traffic Analyser enabled
Samba enabled for USB 3 thumb drive
WPS off
Some port forwards and ddns enabled

Recently I also created a guest network with no access to the intranet
VPN to torguard, only 1 machine on the guest network uses it infrequently

The router used to be rock solid until this started now it crashes maybe once a week.
Any ideas?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Look in the router's syslog for the cause of the problem.

 

[martinr]

Welcome to the forum.

Which version of Merlin’s firmware are you running?

When did you install it?

Which firmware/version were you running beforehand?

When did you last carry out a reset to factory default settings and how did you do it?

It is a genuine RT-AC68U?

 

[John Wentworth]

Look in the router's syslog for the cause of the problem.

How do I do that when the router is crashed?

 

[John Wentworth]

Which version of Merlin’s firmware are you running? 384.16 is when it last crashed, just updated to 384.17 moments ago. I'm pretty sure they were al 384.xx

When did you install it? I've had Merlin installed since the day I bought the router, I bought this one about a year ago.

Which firmware/version were you running beforehand? Stock, but only for long enough to flash Merlin

When did you last carry out a reset to factory default settings and how did you do it? After I flashed Merlin, in the WebUI

It is a genuine RT-AC68U? Yes it's a genuine RT-68U

 

[martinr]

Which version of Merlin’s firmware are you running? 384.16 is when it last crashed, just updated to 384.17 moments ago. I'm pretty sure they were al 384.xx

When did you install it? I've had Merlin installed since the day I bought the router, I bought this one about a year ago.

Which firmware/version were you running beforehand? Stock, but only for long enough to flash Merlin

When did you last carry out a reset to factory default settings and how did you do it? After I flashed Merlin, in the WebUI

It is a genuine RT-AC68U? Yes it's a genuine RT-68U

If it were my router, I’d reset it again without wasting any more time; I always follow L&LD’s guide (printed off): https://www.snbforums.com/threads/n...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573

You would then be starting with a clean slate. Otherwise you might spend hours trying to troubleshoot it and, out of frustration, eventually have to factory reset it. As you say, this model is rock solid, so the quickest way to resolve it is probably to carry out a factory reset (with manual input of all your personal settings, of course).

Do you have anything plugged into either usb port?

 

[ColinTaylor]

How do I do that when the router is crashed?

The syslog is persistent so when you reboot the router you can log into it and examine the log at System Log - General Log. Go back in the log until you find the time period that the crash occurred. Don't be fazed by the fact that some of the log entries appear to jump back in time, that only happens whilst the router boots up. Just keep scrolling past those.

 

[John Wentworth]

If it were my router, I’d reset it again without wasting any more time; I always follow L&LD’s guide (printed off): https://www.snbforums.com/threads/n...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573
You would then be starting with a clean slate. Otherwise you might spend hours trying to troubleshoot it and, out of frustration, eventually have to factory reset it. As you say, this model is rock solid, so the quickest way to resolve it is probably to carry out a factory reset (with manual input of all your personal settings, of course).

Do you have anything plugged into either usb port?

Thank you so much for your suggestion. It took me awhile to get around to resetting and reconfiguring the router. But when I did it completely resolved the issue. It's now back to being rock solid, reliable running. The VPN server is actually providing slightly higher speeds.

There must have been a lot of garbage old configuration data or something

Cheers

 

[John Wentworth]

Thank you so much for your suggestion. It took me awhile to get around to resetting and reconfiguring the router. But when I did it completely resolved the issue. It's now back to being rock solid, reliable running. The VPN server is actually providing slightly higher speeds.

There must have been a lot of garbage old configuration data or something

Cheers

Unfortunately, it looks like I got excited that it was resolved too quickly. It's been up a little over a week and the webui just crashed again. The whole router hasn't crashed yet, waiting to see if that comes next.

 

[Martinski]

Unfortunately, it looks like I got excited that it was resolved too quickly. It's been up a little over a week and the webui just crashed again. The whole router hasn't crashed yet, waiting to see if that comes next.

One suggestion would be to check if your router's NVRAM & JFFS partition are not full or becoming nearly full over time because either of these conditions could make the router unstable. Also, try using a different browser for the WebGUI to check whether the issue is with a particular browser or not.

When the WebGUI has crashed, you could log in to the router via an SSH terminal to check the status of NVRAM and JFFS partition:

NVRAM:

nvram show | grep "size:"

JFFS:

df -h | grep jffs

The percentage number represents "Use%" and the number preceding it is "Available" amount.

When the WebGUI is running OK, you could check both NVRAM & JFFS status to see what they look like under "normal conditions" (i.e. NOT crashed).

Tools --> Sysinfo: "Internal Storage" section.

 

[John Wentworth]

One suggestion would be to check if your router's NVRAM & JFFS partition are not full or becoming nearly full over time because either of these conditions could make the router unstable. Also, try using a different browser for the WebGUI to check whether the issue is with a particular browser or not.

When the WebGUI has crashed, you could log in to the router via an SSH terminal to check the status of NVRAM and JFFS partition:

NVRAM:

nvram show | grep "size:"

JFFS:

df -h | grep jffs

The percentage number represents "Use%" and the number preceding it is "Available" amount.

When the WebGUI is running OK, you could check both NVRAM & JFFS status to see what they look like under "normal conditions" (i.e. NOT crashed).

Tools --> Sysinfo: "Internal Storage" section.

View attachment 25030

I had to reboot the router and login via the UI because ssh wasn't turned on. When I rebooted this was the size for those. My traffic logs are going to a USB thumb drive, so I shouldn't be filling up either space. I tried the router UI from various browsers and devices before determining it was down.

​

NVRam 53628 / 65536 bytes
JFFS	3.81 / 62.75 MB

 

[Kanji-San]

Unfortunately, this is a know problem. Look at this other thread.
I have experienced the unresponsive GUI myself in the past. It hasn't happened lately but once it happened after an uptime of 60 days.

 

[John Wentworth]

Thanks for the tip, I added my story to that thread as well.
I hope the developer can find and resolve the issue.