Release ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388.21099 (2022/10/03 )

[Dodgydrains]

I don’t know how to roll back. Do you just download the file and upload it in the web UI?

Yes roll back manually via UI by downloading from the FW from ASUS website.

I usually factory reset each nodes after rolling back. May not be necessary though.

 

[gotojanoo]

Yes roll back manually via UI by downloading from the FW from ASUS website.

I uaually factory reset each nodes after rolling back. May not be necessary though.

There is no designated node assigned in this system right. You can use any unit as node?

 

[Dodgydrains]

There is no designated node assigned in this system right. You can use any unit as node?

Yes, all the XT8 units are the same.

I use this method to reset each XT8 after rolling back:

[Wireless Router] ASUS router Hard Factory Reset - Method 6 | Official Support | ASUS Global

But as I said, may not be necessary at all.

 

[alex92]

Yes roll back manually via UI by downloading from the FW from ASUS website.

I uaually factory reset each nodes after rolling back. May not be necessary though.

It’s fine to upload the firmware to the router via Wi-Fi? Or does it have to be via Ethernet?

 

[Dodgydrains]

It’s fine to upload the firmware to the router via Wi-Fi? Or does it have to be via Ethernet?

I have always uploaded manually via Wi-Fi without any issues

 

[toaruScar]

For the first time, my main xt8 router (in a total of 4 xt8s aimesh system) stuck!
No access to the interface, no internet... white led as usual, but only thing I had to do was a power-reboot...

In the log, this is the last event recorded before the freeze:
Oct 12 17:01:20 dnsmasq-dhcp[2712]: failed to write /var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases: No space left on device (retry in 60s)

Maybe not directly related to the new firmware, but I'll keep an eye on it... even on my second network (made of two XT8s)

Yeah I'm having this exact issue. Router crashes a lot more often since the update.
/var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases is in an tempfs. Maybe something keeps writing to it so it becomes full?

 

[kelmi2022]

I updated to 3.0.0.4.388_21099 a couple of days ago through hard factory reset. I have at the moment a simple setup with two AX8 in AP Mesh mode, with a separate FW router.

It seems to be so that with this config, there is a memory leak in 388- firmware. After a reboot, there is 209MB RAM available, after two days it was 179MB. The next day system got stuck and I needed to make a reboot. Now I can see memory is decreasing again.

Kelmi

 

[toaruScar]

I updated to 3.0.0.4.388_21099 a couple of days ago through hard factory reset. I have at the moment a simple setup with two AX8 in AP Mesh mode, with a separate FW router.

It seems to be so that with this config, there is a memory leak in 388- firmware. After a reboot, there is 209MB RAM available, after two days it was 179MB. The next day system got stuck and I needed to make a reboot. Now I can see memory is decreasing again.

Kelmi

I suspect that as well. I created a swap file on an external storage. Now I'm waiting to see if this helps the router run longer, and if that swap file gets used up too.

 

[Pmlonewolf68]

I updated to 3.0.0.4.388_21099 a couple of days ago through hard factory reset. I have at the moment a simple setup with two AX8 in AP Mesh mode, with a separate FW router.

It seems to be so that with this config, there is a memory leak in 388- firmware. After a reboot, there is 209MB RAM available, after two days it was 179MB. The next day system got stuck and I needed to make a reboot. Now I can see memory is decreasing again.

Kelmi

This should never have got passed in Quality Control.

 

[Raven76]

This should never have got passed in Quality Control.

I've sent a feedback report using the web interface... please do the same...

 

[Dodgydrains]

I've sent a feedback report using the web interface... please do the same...

I did the same and then few minutes later there was a full lock up and could the the following error appearing repeatedly:

Oct 14 20:12:23 out of memory [1560]

Reverted back to 386.49873 as something definitely wrong with 388.21099 for me.

 

[pyrocyborg]

Hi there! I just wanted to chime in and say that I had a hard freeze crash too after 3 to 4 days of usage, and I sent my feedback to Asus. I couldn't access anything and while I could see the network on some of my devices, I couldn't access it. Had to reboot the main router and every other node.

Might be an incompatibility between different models with different firmware or something.

 

[kelmi2022]

I was making a report to ASUS as well for 3.0.0.4.388_21099.

In my config it seems to be so that about 10MB of memory is leaking in 24h. Finally a system gets stuck in less than a week

My config is
- Two AX8 in AP mode
- Mesh network with dedicated 5GHz-2 backhaul
- Connected to separate Firewall router to Internet
- At the moment all wireless settings are having default settings
- Total 30 WiFi clients connected to 2,4MHz and in 5MHz-1 bands
- Overall processor load is nothing, peaks getting to 50% level in all the cores for a second or two. Otherwise close to 0%.

Regards
Kelmi

 

[karma]

hmmm I guess I never see memory leak issues or other instabilities due to long uptimes because I have a reboot scheduled once a week.. have had one since years and years on various asus routers. Very good to know though, I reverted to 386.49873.

 

[RogerSC]

Okay, reflashed this firmware, did full factory reset on both nodes, and now everything's copesthetic *smile*. Speed is fine, everything's running well.

Personally, I don't worry about the amount of free storage that a Linux-based system shows, as long as it's performing well. It's been characteristic of Linux to allocate as much memory to program images and buffers as possible, often showing 100% memory usage, and reclaims what it needs from currently unused space when something comes along that pushes it over the edge. That helps in not having to reload code modules when re-invoked, or re-fill buffers that are already ready, kind of "lazy" memory management that makes things run faster in the big picture. Not like your classic UNIX, but works really well.

 

[Raven76]

new freeze with the same message log, after 4 days:

Oct 16 17:31:48 dnsmasq-dhcp[27814]: failed to write /var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases: No space left on device (retry in 60s)

I'll revert to previous firmware...

(on my second xt8s installation with 1 router + 1 node, and very less wifi clients, I haven't had any problems yet... the free ram is slightly more than the 4 xt8s installation)

 

[Dodgydrains]

new freeze with the same message log, after 4 days:

Oct 16 17:31:48 dnsmasq-dhcp[27814]: failed to write /var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases: No space left on device (retry in 60s)

I'll revert to previous firmware...

(on my second xt8s installation with 1 router + 1 node, and very less wifi clients, I haven't had any problems yet... the free ram is slightly more than the 4 xt8s installation)

Were all your freezes on the 4 xt8s installation? I also have 4 xt8s and had the system completely freeze. I have reverted back to 49873.

 

[Raven76]

Were all your freezes on the 4 xt8s installation? I also have 4 xt8s and had the system completely freeze. I have reverted back to 49873.

yes!... until now, two freezes on my 4 xt8s aimesh installation (after 4/5 days of runtime)... none on my second 2 xt8s network.

 

[karma]

Okay, reflashed this firmware, did full factory reset on both nodes, and now everything's copesthetic *smile*. Speed is fine, everything's running well.

Personally, I don't worry about the amount of free storage that a Linux-based system shows, as long as it's performing well. It's been characteristic of Linux to allocate as much memory to program images and buffers as possible, often showing 100% memory usage, and reclaims what it needs from currently unused space when something comes along that pushes it over the edge. That helps in not having to reload code modules when re-invoked, or re-fill buffers that are already ready, kind of "lazy" memory management that makes things run faster in the big picture. Not like your classic UNIX, but works really well.

i have to say, in more or less 30 years of using linux I've never seen the RAM behaviour you're describing out of the box. then again I've never had reason to think about how linux allocates memory other than tuning a bit to use RAM more and less swap.. I would worry a bit more about free 'storage' especially disk storage if I were you . aaaanyways YMMV

 

[macoloco]

After reading all posts...
today 12 days running since last reboot....only 80 mb free ram...no freezes, but reading log in detail, router is getting an error sending dchp packet to 0.180.0.0 (unkown ip in my lan for me)

manually reset today....192mb free ram