AFP out of memory errors

[owiecc]

I have a 87U. When I use Time Machine for backups on my Mac and, at the same time, I have QOS enabled on the router I get a lot of Time Machine errors. I narrowed it down to AFP running out of memory when Time Machine connects to the router to start the backup.

May 12 13:25:53 afpd[28039]: dsi_init_buffer: OOM

If I disable QOS I don't have problems with Time Machine backing up.

I can see this problem is not new. There are similar threads, but all of them quite old: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/intermittent-time-machine-problem-merlin-378-56_2.29240/

 

[Jack Yaz]

Might be worth adding a USB stick and assigning it as swap?

 

[Bart Stam]

Time machine was a feature that was introduced by ASUS and the programming code was never touched by RMerlin (except for a few lines to initialize a MAC-address). RMerlin normally doesn't support original firmware features that are nice to have, but aren't much related to what a router should do (taking care of network traffic).

You already found that time machine will run when you disable QOS. To keep a networking router affordable it has has limited CPU-power and RAM. Apparently the Time Machine code uses in your situation so much memory, that your router's 256Mb apparently isn't enough. Probably it isn't a software bug but a limitation of your hardware. Your router isn't a NAS!

If you really want to run time machine over a network I advise you to get an Apple time capsule or a NAS that supports time machine (QNAP and Synology do support it).

 

[owiecc]

I never even thought that there is no swap. It makes sense though. The flash memory will probably quickly die in this application. I have some spare USB sticks. I'll try one. Thanks for the tip!

It would be nice to have a SODIMM slot in a router. I have is so many old laptop memory cards laying around. Probably in 1-2GB range.