AC87 crashing

[MarioCaires]

Hi guys, I bought this router 2 weeks ago and upgraded straight to the latest Merlin build (378.53).
It has been running for more than 10 days straight with no reboots, but yesterday I got 2 crashes within 30mins! No access to the network/internet and to the web gui, only solution was power cycling. I was running VPN client at both times when it crashed, so I presumed it was VPN related, maybe some misconfiguration, although I did use it before with no issues at all.
Today I got another crash, but this time the VPN wasn't even running, so the issue may be somewhere else.
Any suggestions? Is there a way to get a log at the time of the crash having in consideration that I have to power cycle first in order to access the log?

Thanks in advance.

 

[mattiL]

Start by checking the routers log at System Log > General Log, paste relevant parts of it to this thread for the experts to comment on it.

 

[john9527]

Is there a way to get a log at the time of the crash having in consideration that I have to power cycle first in order to access the log?

There will be two syslogs in the /jffs directory....one of them will contain information prior to the crash (its not perfect, but may give some clues).

 

[MarioCaires]

There will be two syslogs in the /jffs directory....one of them will contain information prior to the crash (its not perfect, but may give some clues).

Can only see one syslog in my /jffs directory, and oddly last time it was changed was on the 13/05, doesn't make sense...

 

[john9527]

The /jffs syslog is a copy of main syslog in /tmp (and gets rotated to keep two versions)
And yes, it's very strange that it hasn't updated in a while. It may be worth a try to disable then reenable/reformat jffs to see if it starts working correctly. (Of course, copy off any scripts/configs you have first to restore afterwards)

 

[MarioCaires]

The /jffs syslog is a copy of main syslog in /tmp (and gets rotated to keep two versions)
And yes, it's very strange that it hasn't updated in a while. It may be worth a try to disable then reenable/reformat jffs to see if it starts working correctly. (Of course, copy off any scripts/configs you have first to restore afterwards)

Thanks john9527, since I only did a factory reset from the GUI when I upgraded to Merlin's latest, with some time available today, I decided to do the proper 30/30/30 with WPS button reset.
I just checked the syslog at /jffs and it is being logged with today's date, will check for the next days if it keeps logging too.

 

[mstombs]

The /jffs syslog is a copy of main syslog in /tmp (and gets rotated to keep two versions)
And yes, it's very strange that it hasn't updated in a while. It may be worth a try to disable then reenable/reformat jffs to see if it starts working correctly. (Of course, copy off any scripts/configs you have first to restore afterwards)

Have you seen Asus's code for this? Not sure if this is the latest and/or used for all models...

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/blob/master/release/src/router/rc/watchdog.c#L1947

It only copies both when the ram disk version is bigger than jffs, so generally on the first 'fill' before rotation.

But fixing this will greatly increase the number of flash writes.

 

[TonyH]

Have you seen Asus's code for this? Not sure if this is the latest and/or used for all models...

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/blob/master/release/src/router/rc/watchdog.c#L1947

It only copies both when the ram disk version is bigger than jffs, so generally on the first 'fill' before rotation.

But fixing this will greatly increase the number of flash writes.

Mean time, OP better keep in mind router running too hot, moving router power source to different AC outlet, trying different AC adapter.