Asus RT-AX86S spontaneously rebooting every 1-3 days

[calex]

Hello,
Proud Asus RT-AX86S owner here...
I've been noticing some spontaneous reboots lately - I've been on 386.7_2 firmware for ages, and this only started happening about 1-2 months ago.
Yesterday, I upgraded my firmware to the latest 388.1 hoping that it would be some firmware issue...but it just happened again today

Like I said, I only noticed this behaviour 1-2 months ago and it happens every 1-3 days, or sometimes once a week.
There is nothing suspicious on the logs, and I have the following amtm scripts installed and upgraded:

I also have a lot of wifi devices - around 35 devices - most of them are 2.4ghz.
I have 1 usb pen attached and 1 small 2.5HDD aswell.

Is there any particular information on the logs or elsewhere that can help me trace the reason of the reboot?
I don't know where to look for more clues...

I'm hoping that you can shed some light and find the culprit.

 

[L&LD]

How are you using those USB drives? Are they getting power separately? Have you checked to see if the power adapter is failing?

Considering the fact that this was happening on the older firmware, I am guessing you haven't factory reset the router in a very long time. That is what I would do to get things working asap. You may find though that the router's hardware is going south (hopefully not).

[Wireless Router] When Standard Reset Isn’t Working: Hard Factory Reset - Models list | Official Support | ASUS Global

After you do a full reset, be sure not to plug in the drives you have now (at least, not until you can test the network long enough for stability.

Do not use any saved backup config files. Do a minimal and manual configuration of the router to secure it and connect it to your ISP.

The drive you use as an amtm/swap file drive, do not plug it into the router unless you format it on a PC as NTFS (save any data you may want from it before you do so). I recommend doing a clean install of any scripts you feel you need afterward.

 

[calex]

How are you using those USB drives? Are they getting power separately? Have you checked to see if the power adapter is failing?

Considering the fact that this was happening on the older firmware, I am guessing you haven't factory reset the router in a very long time. That is what I would do to get things working asap. You may find though that the router's hardware is going south (hopefully not).

The 1st USB drive is a standard USB 2.0 pen formatted via amtm if I recall correctly - runs entware + swap
The 2nd USB drive is standard spinning HDD 2.5 - not externally powered.

How can I check for failures on the power adapter?

I bought & installed this router 6 months ago with 386.7_2 (upgraded from AC68U).
Do you think a factory reset with such little time span is necessary...? Only two firmwares have been flashed so far: 386 and 388.

Also, I want to debug if the problem is related to any scripts running the swap/entware drive. With this in mind, is it ok to unmount+remove the drive, reboot the router and run without it for a few days or the router will fail to work correctly without the drive? I wanted to attempt this before going with the factory reset route...

Thanks a lot for your support @L&LD

 

[L&LD]

From the Readme file of the firmware you downloaded.

NOTE: resetting to factory default after flashing is
strongly recommended for the following cases:

- Updating from a firmware version that is more than 3 releases older
- Switching from a Tomato/DD-WRT/OpenWRT firmware

If you run into any issue after an upgrade and you haven't done so,
try doing a factory default reset as well.

Always read the changelog, as mandatory resets will be mentionned
there when they are necessary.

In all of these cases, do NOT load a saved copy of your settings!
This would be the same thing as NOT resetting at all, as you will
simply re-enter any invalid setting you wanted to get rid of. Make
sure to create a new backup of your settings after reconfiguring.

 

[calex]

The drive you use as an amtm/swap file drive, do not plug it into the router unless you format it on a PC as NTFS (save any data you may want from it before you do so). I recommend doing a clean install of any scripts you feel you need afterward.

Could you explain why format on a PC as NTFS? I used the amtm format utility.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Also, I want to debug if the problem is related to any scripts running the swap/entware drive. With this in mind, is it ok to unmount+remove the drive, reboot the router and run without it for a few days or the router will fail to work correctly without the drive? I wanted to attempt this before going with the factory reset route...

Go to Administration - System and set Enable JFFS custom scripts and configs = No. Apply that change and reboot the router. You can then unmount and physically remove the drives if you wish.

 

[L&LD]

Could you explain why format on a PC as NTFS? I used the amtm format utility.

Because if you simply plug it in, it will be used as configured now (as amtm is already installed), and you'll therefore negate your clean install.

Once you format it as NTFS, yes, do format it again when you plug it into the router as Ext4 with journaling.

 

[Tech9]

I have the following amtm scripts installed

Don't use nsrum. If you used it - factory reset and start over.

 

[calex]

Don't use nsrum. If you used it - factory reset and start over.

Any reason why? That is what I use to ensure a backup of my settings...

 

[Tech9]

Any reason why?

amtm - the Asuswrt-Merlin Terminal Menu - Diversion

diversion.ch

I don't know how did you manage to install it in AMTM and 388.1 firmware.

NVRAM - [Release] NVRAM Save/Restore Utility

Great info, thanks! In that case, what would be the best course of action to migrate from one router to another? (Moving from an RT-AC68U fw 386.9 to RT-AX86S fw 388.1) Personally, when moving to a new router, I just take screenshots of all major Merlin UI screens that might need some special...

www.snbforums.com

 

[jata]

I too have a AX86S and it is working really well with merlin 388.2 beta.

I used to have a USB stick, swap, entware, scripts etc but I decided less is more on a router and went back to as close as possible to default setup on merlin.

I run a separate device on my network (raspberry pi) that has adguard home on it. This works well and very stable. Also keeps the router clean and easy to troubleshoot if anything goes wrong.

I had an issue on 388.1 with occasional reboot but this is gone now with 388.2. I would strongly recommend flashing 388.2. then do a full reset and manually configure everything including DHCP static reservations.

YazDHCP is great but not really needed as NVRAM on these routers has plenty of headroom compared to AC68U.

After doing a minimum clean install, wait a week or so (and be happy that everything is working well) and ask yourself if you really need all those scripts.

Hope this helps.

 

[djbrad]

On my side, running 386.7_2 and had to uninstall YazDHCP because of random reboots. It's ok now for more than 2 weeks.

 

[Donga120]

On my side, running 386.7_2 and had to uninstall YazDHCP because of random reboots. It's ok now for more than 2 weeks.

I'm getting random crashes now and also have YazDHCP installed, wonder if thats whats causing mine...

 

[calex]

I uninstalled YazDHCP for now - will monitor and report back results.

 

[Kingp1n]

I uninstalled YazDHCP for now - will monitor and report back results.

Are you still having random reboots after uninstalling YazDHCP? I wonder why this is causing the reboots

 

[calex]

Are you still having random reboots after uninstalling YazDHCP? I wonder why this is causing the reboots

Unfortunately no.
I'm still trying to debug the issue...

 

[Makaveli]

Unfortunately no.
I'm still trying to debug the issue...

Did you try updating to the 388.2 firmware and is it the same on that?

 

[calex]

Not yet, but I will do it this weekend. Fingers crossed

 

[Tech9]

I would flash 388.2, reset to factory defaults, configure manually and run it with no scripts for some time. This router runs low on RAM and the more scripts you add the more issues you ask for. Your method of transferring settings is perhaps causing the instability. There other safer ways to do it.

 

[calex]

I would flash 388.2, reset to factory defaults, configure manually and run it with no scripts for some time. This router runs low on RAM and the more scripts you add the more issues you ask for. Your method of transferring settings is perhaps causing the instability. There other safer ways to do it.

I'm running the exact same scripts that I ran on my previous AC68U, which has even lower RAM.
Everything was configured by hand when I moved to this router.

What do you mean by "method of transferring settings"?
If its related NSRU, I've uninstalled the NVRAM Save/Restore Utility and I'm monitoring its stability now