Thanks to all for your replies. Here's a few LONG answers.
I've been watching the comments for 384.10_0. I think I'll wait for the next version next week. I've gotten burned on the .9 release and the 1st .10 alpha, so I did not want to jump into .10_0 too fast. 8_2 works great mostly, so that is OK for now. BTW, the version numbers in the footer of my previous message were wrong. I am on the latest for Skynet, amtm, Stubby, Entware, and ntpMerlin.
The weekly reboot is a belt and suspenders thing. We did daily reboots in my prior life on a Linux-based STB. It cleans up caches and potentially memory issues that might not get fixed any other way. I do not know if this device really needs it. But in some posts here, occasionally people will experience problems that a reboot solves. This also includes me. And this is after I've done a full reset as L&LD suggested and reload of all settings, which I would prefer not to do too often. So for me, once a week on this device seems like reasonable insurance as long as it works.
Update: as I was writing this, I went to the GUI to check on the logs, and it was locked up. It would not let me in. But my Putty session was still working and I was still streaming audio, so only GUI was dead. So I did a Reboot in Putty, then after it woke up, I went to the logs, and IBD, the logs were preserved through that reboot. Hmmm, why am I losing them during the amtm 3am reboot but not now?
I'm not running Diversion, so I would not benefit from any improvements that it provides. Maybe I should.
As for the swap file usage (yes file, not directory), it still shows 0.00 after it's been sitting for about 5 hrs after I did an update to Skynet and Stubby. I'll let it go another day and see what it does, especially after Skynet does its daily update. BTW, I previously found that if the swap file was not working, that the logs would be limited to a very short time, like 1 hr or less. Update: after my reboot, the swap file still shows 0.00.
As for my log file, why is it being reset where I lose all previous data after a reboot? How can I prevent that? It used to work where the logs were preserved thru a reboot. The only thing that changed in my config was the addition of ntpMerlin. Well, and updating all the other apps. I suppose I could uninstall all of them one-by-one to find the culprit starting with ntpMerlin but maybe someone has a suggestion that would not take up so much time.