Release Asuswrt-Merlin 3004.388.7 is now available

[10yearsofwrt]

Hi everyone.

This is by no means a complaint, but this update seems to have otherwise soft-bricked my AX88U (non-Pro).

I've been using Merlin now for probably 10 years across my Asus devices. Never had a single problem updating the firmware. Usually always updated whenever I saw a new version too. No hassles and I've been eternally grateful for the decades of hard and quality work.

My AX88U is probably about 4-5 years old now. Obviously updates have slowed down a bit. So I left it on a version from back in December 2023 until today. I used to update a lot more frequently but haven't had many reasons to go into my router admin panel in the last 6 months.

When updating to the latest version. 3004.7 I had a world of problems. Mind you, I have never had these issues, so this was a first for me.

Firstly I was a bit confused by the need for manual restart. Normally it was automatic, but that was just a bit confusing. Secondly the router started taking forever to load the setup screen after the firmware upgrade. The QIS page kept redirecting to asusrouter.com which wasn't loading and I was just wishing it'd load to the stock IP address like the good old day. I couldn't get any connection via DHCP or Static IP via direct Ethernet at all. I could only connect via WiFi. The setup would stop responding. The browser would lag. I'd need to switch the device off and on. I couldn't even barely set a SSID password and router login. Nothing worked. The router was on but it basically wasn't responding and letting me login to it at all. It was acting as though it's totally borked.

Even after I finally managed to load the QIS setup and finish it. I started getting some ISP DHCP error on the front page. Another thing I've never seen before. I have a pretty liberal and chill ISP that has great documentation. No branded WiFi devices etc. no region lock or any stupid rules or weirdness. It's just a traditional fibre operator. So this was really confusing. I figured something had gone wrong with the firmware update.

So I downloaded and flashed it again. I got the exact same issue. After numerous reboots. An hour fighting with trying to even login and set passwords again. Consistently slow (like I am talking Dialup router) page loading and trying the second latest version instead with no changes. I still didn't have internet... Nothing. The router at times would give me solid white lights but still the settings page complained of DHCP issues. Ethernet said the network was unidentified and only WiFi was giving me the router page in the first place. My internet worked fine right before the firmware upgrade. Occasionally the connection light on the router would go red also. Nothing was consistent except the slowness and lack of internet.

Googling didn't help at all. Except to suggest there's been some long standing issues that doing a firmware upgrade on this device can get you temporarily banned from your ISP's DHCP server. Something about the "aggressive" DHCP setting on the router. I tried a MAC clone and changing all these too. No dice. Even left the router off for a while. Still no solution. Same DHCP ISP issue.


I got fed up with trying Merlin I went back to the stock firmware. Put the router in rescue mode. Used the Asus rescue tool and flashed their latest version. Well the slow loading page issues immediately vanished and the pages loaded reliably now. Yet Ethernet still wasn't working... I passed the QIS setup on the first try instead of getting dozens of (Tab not responding) errors. Still the ISP DHCP issue... Sure it was pretty late (2AM) and my ISP *could* I guess have 2 hours of outages (despite track record of 99.99% uptime) that started exactly when I did my firmware update. I guess that's what I deserve for letting my wife go to bed alone whilst I tried to fix this. Suppose all my 15-something devices and servers can survive one night without internet.

Left the router off and cables unplugged and if my ISP shadowbanned my device, it'll be fixed in the morning hopefully. At least I hope so...

If it isn't resolved when I wake up. I'll call them up and ask them to figure it out. That said, I also tried the second latest version as I said and also still has the extremely slow loading times for the router admin panel. So I couldn't get proper loading speeds or use out of either of the latest Merlin versions. Only the stock latest firmware was fast.

I'm not half surprised if my router is on the way out after all this time. However, here's hoping it'll last a few more months before I move overseas. I'll report back when I get it figured out.

 

[visortgw]

Unfortunately we went back to the stock Asus firmware and router is stuck on Merlin. 2 factory resets from GUI and reset button and still stuck on Merlin.

always says there is an update to 388_7, then stuck on that forever. router works.

What device?

 

[JGrana]

Hi everyone.

This is by no means a complaint, but this update seems to have otherwise bricked my AX88U (non-Pro).

I've been using Merlin now for probably 10 years across my Asus devices. Never had a single problem updating the firmware. Usually always updated whenever I saw a new version too.

My AX88U is probably about 4-5 years old now. Obviously updates have slowed down a bit. So I left it on a version from back in December 2023 until today.

When updating to the latest version. 3004.7 I had a world of problems. Mind you, I have never had these issues, so this was a first for me.

Quick question. Did you do a Factory Device Reset after loading 3004.388.7? You existing firmware was pretty old.

If not, you might want to try one more time. Load 3004.388.7. Do the Factory Reset then reconfigure the router.

​

 

[10yearsofwrt]

Yep I did a full factory hard reset. Not just your typical reset button press but a complete wipe of everything including entire use history. No dice.

Rescue tool should have also wiped it clean a second time.

One other thing I noticed. My AX88U Core 3 is always stuck on 100% usage after 3004.388.7. No idea why. As I said. Haven't changed any settings at all except to set a password as QIS forced me to.

 

[jetpack42]

Out of curiosity, has anyone encountered this log message before?

kernel: NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282

I am assuming it has something to do with my add-ons, however, it has only recently started to appear 4-5 consecutive times every few days and my searches haven't been successful. Can anyone educate me on what this message means (or what it relates to)?

 

[ExtremeFiretop]

Out of curiosity, has anyone encountered this log message before?

I am assuming it has something to do with my add-ons, however, it has only recently started to appear 4-5 consecutive times every few days and my searches haven't been successful. Can anyone educate me on what this message means (or what it relates to)?

I would ignore the message, it's seems like a non-fatal kernel message related to the tickless kernel feature.
(CONFIG_NO_HZ) enables 'on-demand' timer interrupts to my understanding (someone can correct me if I'm wrong)
If you run: zcat /proc/config.gz | grep NO_HZ

CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON=y
CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE=y

You would see the above output confirming NO_HZ is enabled
Edit: documentation on it here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/timers/NO_HZ.txt

 

[Treadler]

Yep I did a full factory hard reset. Not just your typical reset button press but a complete wipe of everything including entire use history. No dice.

Rescue tool should have also wiped it clean a second time.

One other thing I noticed. My AX88U Core 3 is always stuck on 100% usage after 3004.388.7. No idea why. As I said. Haven't changed any settings at all except to set a password as QIS forced me to.

No core 3 issue seen here with 388.7.

 

[jksmurf]

No core 3 issue seen here with 388.7.

One other thing I noticed. My AX88U Core 3 is always stuck on 100% usage after 3004.388.7. No idea why.

Seems like a few folks had high CPU with AX88U, some of them had issues with the UiDivStats Addon (which I understand you do not have). ColinTaylor suggested running top to check CPU utilisation?

Another comment was that the AX88U has a couple of revisions, one of which runs warmer (and if too hot shuts down a Core). See also here for similar issue outside these forums?

If you have access to a PSU with the same Voltage/Amps/Polarity it may be worth (long shot) just trying that too to rule it out (albeit the non-issue on stock FW doesn't point to that unless Merlin is stressing it out ).

Anyway, hopefully not too OT, just that you can rule out HW failure and definitely say it is the Merlin FW over stock. Let us know how you get on.

 

[Treadler]

Seems like a few folks had high CPU with AX88U, some of them had issues with the UiDivStats Addon (which I understand you do not have). ColinTaylor suggested running top to check CPU utilisation?

Another comment was that the AX88U has a couple of revisions, one of which runs warmer (and if too hot shuts down a Core). See also here for similar issue outside these forums?

If you have access to a PSU with the same Voltage/Amps/Polarity it may be worth (long shot) just trying that too to rule it out (albeit the non-issue on stock FW doesn't point to that unless MErlin is stressing it out ).

Anyway, hopefully not too OT, just that you can rule out HW failure and definitely say it is the Merlin FW over stock. Let us know how you get on.

Using UiDivstats here.
My router is one of the first AX88U’s.

 

[SNBForums User]

Hi everyone.

This is by no means a complaint, but this update seems to have otherwise soft-bricked my AX88U (non-Pro).

I've been using Merlin now for probably 10 years across my Asus devices. Never had a single problem updating the firmware. Usually always updated whenever I saw a new version too. No hassles and I've been eternally grateful for the decades of hard and quality work.

My AX88U is probably about 4-5 years old now. Obviously updates have slowed down a bit. So I left it on a version from back in December 2023 until today. I used to update a lot more frequently but haven't had many reasons to go into my router admin panel in the last 6 months.

When updating to the latest version. 3004.7 I had a world of problems. Mind you, I have never had these issues, so this was a first for me.

Firstly I was a bit confused by the need for manual restart. Normally it was automatic, but that was just a bit confusing. Secondly the router started taking forever to load the setup screen after the firmware upgrade. The QIS page kept redirecting to asusrouter.com which wasn't loading and I was just wishing it'd load to the stock IP address like the good old day. I couldn't get any connection via DHCP or Static IP via direct Ethernet at all. I could only connect via WiFi. The setup would stop responding. The browser would lag. I'd need to switch the device off and on. I couldn't even barely set a SSID password and router login. Nothing worked. The router was on but it basically wasn't responding and letting me login to it at all. It was acting as though it's totally borked.

Even after I finally managed to load the QIS setup and finish it. I started getting some ISP DHCP error on the front page. Another thing I've never seen before. I have a pretty liberal and chill ISP that has great documentation. No branded WiFi devices etc. no region lock or any stupid rules or weirdness. It's just a traditional fibre operator. So this was really confusing. I figured something had gone wrong with the firmware update.

So I downloaded and flashed it again. I got the exact same issue. After numerous reboots. An hour fighting with trying to even login and set passwords again. Consistently slow (like I am talking Dialup router) page loading and trying the second latest version instead with no changes. I still didn't have internet... Nothing. The router at times would give me solid white lights but still the settings page complained of DHCP issues. Ethernet said the network was unidentified and only WiFi was giving me the router page in the first place. My internet worked fine right before the firmware upgrade. Occasionally the connection light on the router would go red also. Nothing was consistent except the slowness and lack of internet.

Googling didn't help at all. Except to suggest there's been some long standing issues that doing a firmware upgrade on this device can get you temporarily banned from your ISP's DHCP server. Something about the "aggressive" DHCP setting on the router. I tried a MAC clone and changing all these too. No dice. Even left the router off for a while. Still no solution. Same DHCP ISP issue.


I got fed up with trying Merlin I went back to the stock firmware. Put the router in rescue mode. Used the Asus rescue tool and flashed their latest version. Well the slow loading page issues immediately vanished and the pages loaded reliably now. Yet Ethernet still wasn't working... I passed the QIS setup on the first try instead of getting dozens of (Tab not responding) errors. Still the ISP DHCP issue... Sure it was pretty late (2AM) and my ISP *could* I guess have 2 hours of outages (despite track record of 99.99% uptime) that started exactly when I did my firmware update. I guess that's what I deserve for letting my wife go to bed alone whilst I tried to fix this. Suppose all my 15-something devices and servers can survive one night without internet.

Left the router off and cables unplugged and if my ISP shadowbanned my device, it'll be fixed in the morning hopefully. At least I hope so...

If it isn't resolved when I wake up. I'll call them up and ask them to figure it out. That said, I also tried the second latest version as I said and also still has the extremely slow loading times for the router admin panel. So I couldn't get proper loading speeds or use out of either of the latest Merlin versions. Only the stock latest firmware was fast.

I'm not half surprised if my router is on the way out after all this time. However, here's hoping it'll last a few more months before I move overseas. I'll report back when I get it figured out.

Sorry for your difficulties, but this has the quintessential "TLDR:" written all over it...

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Hi everyone.

This is by no means a complaint, but this update seems to have otherwise soft-bricked my AX88U (non-Pro)

People usually subtly mean what they say... That being said, no problems with my AX88U on a dirty upgrade to .7... Sometimes you just have to buy the bullet and start all over. Nothing is fool proof for over 10 years.

 

[Ripshod]

tl;dr but I did search the thread.
When I manually change the 5GHz channel it does change, as confirmed by wavemon. However, should I reboot the router it changes back to "Auto". Tried factory reset and minimal setup to face the same problem. Flashed 388.6_2 and the channel change sticks for a reboot. Back to 388.7 with m&m install and the same channel reset to auto. Cleared cache, tried other browsers, devices and incognito - no change. Any way I can help debug let me know.
I'll be afk for the morning so I'll catch up later.

 

[10yearsofwrt]

Sorry for your difficulties, but this has the quintessential "TLDR:" written all over it...

How I do a tl;dr when there's 500 steps I gotta do before I even bother registering here and there's so many different issues I am having? I did my best to explain the problem and I never would have come here if I had no other idea. I'll try and do a tl;dr this time at the bottom, but I'd hope that people trying to help in this thread have the patience to read each other's posts in full.

Anyway. Thanks to those who are replying. This is starting to get really frustrating.

I called my ISP this morning to talk about this "ISP DHCP" issue. I am a corporate customer and my connection is on my company. The ISP has no way to apparently reset or revoke the device IDs they have for me with this kind of connection. Something to do with the tools they use. They said it's possible to reset everything on their end if I was a private customer but not corporate. My employer pays for my gigabit connection so there's no way around that.

ISP Support said they'd send me a basic router which won't at all cover the needs I have at home but she said I could try that.

We also confirmed that plugging my PC straight into the wall instantly works fine. I get 940/500mbps and 1ms latency on Speedtest.

When I tried to talk about my router's aggressive DHCP policy and MAC Cloning and that I had read somewhere that maybe I got blacklisted whilst my router was negotiating with DHCP after doing the firmware update. She was pretty adamant that my router was just totally bricked. Though it seemed like she didn't really have much experience in issues like this.

-------------------------------------------------

tl;dr -

1. Woke up this morning and turned on router, it just alternated between power light and network light flashing like Power .>. Network .>. Power .>. Network etc.
2. Holding in WPS and turning it on for hard reset now just seems to keep it off... it won't turn back on again like the manual says it should.
3. Reset it with the button and it finally woke up but to a "Red" connection light.
4. Talked with ISP support this morning about ISP DHCP issue my AX88U is giving me
5. ISP was adamant that the router is bricked
6. Plugging straight into the ethernet at the wall instantly works at full speed
7. I have no other device to test on
8. ISP is sending me a basic ZyXEL model which won't fit my needs at all as it's all they can do
9. ISP suggested I could still buy another router
10. Router was working perfectly until I installed 3004.388.7 and has never worked since, even after rescue mode back to stock firmware.

In the meantime I'll try maybe MAC Clone and changing the DHCP policy and see if I get lucky. Otherwise I'll need to buy a new router...

 

[10yearsofwrt]

Ok I am so confused...

Tried changing the MAC Clone a few times. Between the MAC of my PC's Ethernet which I know works. To the MAC of the device (switch) the router is connected to. Which I guess is the building's switch because it just goes straight into the wall. Continuous with the TTL Spoof seemed to finally give me a WAN IP for the first time. At the same time I also enabled Native IPv6 which my ISP supports. Just left everything that else blank. Not sure which one did it.

But it's slow. Oh my goodness it's slow. Everything and I mean everything is so slow now. It's like dialup speed.

Again the router admin page loads extremely slowly. Sometimes taking about 3-5 minutes...

Now it shows TWO of my 4 cores at 100% at all times. Which explains the slowness of the control panel and everything else. I have no idea what is eating these cores at all. The system status block that shows the CPU bars seems to just freeze half the time and the tab stops responding and asks me to kill it.

It's also kicking me off the WiFi every few minutes. My PC and phone will just disconnect stating that there's no internet connection on this network.

Here's a copy of the logs I was able to pull after waiting forever for the page to load. I'm not sure if this device is seriously somehow on the way out. However, it was working fine before attempting this firmware upgrade.

 

[mrboonmee]

What device?

AX58U

 

[mrboonmee]

Hard to tell what the issue is without logs. As others have said above you can try the Asus rescue tool and see how that works, if your still stuck on Merlin as you suggest and can't flash any firmware, you likely have an issue whether your notice it or not, but if you don't notice it then live on another day I suppose!

If it works well for the next week, I may leave it alone, otherwise I can always grab a new one locally. i may try the rescue tool, haven't decided, I'll be here a few more days. I didn't know about the rescue tool until latest Merlin was working well

 

[ExtremeFiretop]

If it works well for the next week, I may leave it alone, otherwise I can always grab a new one locally.

Best of luck, I recommend you try and fix the issue with the rescue tool, ignoring an issue like this could work but for how much longer?
If this were me, I'd want to know if this is hardware or software before heading out and getting a replacement myself.

i may try the rescue tool, haven't decided, I'll be here a few more days. I didn't know about the rescue tool until latest Merlin was working well

I'm surprised you haven't tried already! Let us know the results. I'm just speaking from experience when I mentioned the assumption that it could potentially be hardware...
But only way to rule that out/in is to try the rescue tool.

A note on the rescue tool, my previous (old) AiMesh node was once in an endless boot-loop after I played with the UBIFS partitions with some commands (IIRC it was some ubiformat or flash_erase commands that broke my node.)
Once my node was in a boot-loop, Asus rescue mode would upload the firmware, and it would just go back into a boot-loop once the progress bar on the ASUS rescue tool was done.

I tried more times than I remember with the official rescue tool, tried the factory reset button (since it wouldn't stay on long enough to get to the WebUI before boot-looping.)
Finally in the end, from personal experience, tftpd was more powerful than the official rescue tool: https://pjo2.github.io/tftpd64/

Where the official ASUS rescue tool did nothing for my boot-loops and failed multiple times, tftpd was able to successfully upload the firmware, and I was able to get the router to actually turn on and stay on.

 

[bennor]

@10yearsofwrt, as was suggested in another post yesterday, access the router using SSH and issue the top command to see and list what is occupying the processor/memory (if you haven't done so already). That will at least give you a starting point to figure out what is causing the high processor usage.

If you haven't done so already, you may also want to list any other changes you've made to the router settings or if you have a USB storage device attached to the router. Be as specific as possible listing what you are changing from default values. Are you enabling QoS or any other features beyond just the basic name/password change and WiFi SSID and password setup in the QIS setup screens?

Another troubleshooting step (if you haven't done so already) since it appears you mentioned enabling Native IPv6; don't enable IPv6 when setting up the router after a hard factory reset to see if maybe IPv6 is the cause.

 

[mrboonmee]

Best of luck, I recommend you try and fix the issue with the rescue tool, ignoring an issue like this could work but for how much longer?
If this were me, I'd want to know if this is hardware or software before heading out and getting a replacement myself.



I'm surprised you haven't tried already! Let us know the results. I'm just speaking from experience when I mentioned the assumption that it could potentially be hardware...
But only way to rule that out/in is to try the rescue tool.

A note on the rescue tool, my previous (old) AiMesh node was once in an endless boot-loop after I played with the UBIFS partitions with some commands (IIRC it was some ubiformat or flash_erase commands that broke my node.)
Once my node was in a boot-loop, Asus rescue mode would upload the firmware, and it would just go back into a boot-loop once the progress bar on the ASUS rescue tool was done.

I tried more times than I remember with the official rescue tool, tried the factory reset button (since it wouldn't stay on long enough to get to the WebUI before boot-looping.)
Finally in the end, from personal experience, tftpd was more powerful than the official rescue tool: https://pjo2.github.io/tftpd64/

Where the official ASUS rescue tool did nothing for my boot-loops and failed multiple times, tftpd was able to successfully upload the firmware, and I was able to get the router to actually turn on and stay on.

Since it is running this version of Merlin, could the system log tell if it it working correct? the router is very inexpensive, but I would try the tool first probably, House is being tented for termites today, so nothing for a couple days.

 

[10yearsofwrt]

Ok well I think I managed to get it fixed... It was a whole host of issues it seems.

1. 10+ different ways of resetting the router both with the paperclip button and the WPS button etc.
2. Leaving it off overnight
3. Cloning a working MAC from my PC's 2.5GbE adapter
4. Changing DHCP from Aggressive to Continuous
5. Flashing back the 3004.388.7 Merlinwrt again.

Conclusion:
- CPU problems gone somehow out of nowhere.
- I finally got a stable router and stable connection again.
- Except this time I was somehow getting limited to only 150mbps/50mbps. Even though my company provides 1Gig...

Skipping a PC reboot and 2 router reboots... >>>

1. Called the ISP again to confirm whatever they did, didn't downgrade my plan. Nope. They could see me on solid 1Gig.
2. Connected DIRECTLY from the wall into the PC and immediately got 920/500mbps.
3. Started to test all my cables and changed the wall WAN socket from 02 to 01 (been on 02 for 5 years now)
4. Tried through the router again, still 150mbps/50mbps...
5. Tested directly from the Router Admin Panel >Adaptive QoS > Internet Speed > Saw again 920/500mbps confirming wall socket + cable are OK.

Remembered I also did a BIOS update of my PC yesterday and I had a hunch that something had maybe re-enabled the <expletive> "Killer UNintelligence Center" and sure enough it was enabled. Disabled it and immediately got 920/500mbps on my 2.5GbE adapter...

New Conclusion:

1. Router is fine but the firmware update did absolutely bork the configuration and it required numerous rescues and resets to get it up again.
2. During this process my router was likely banned by my ISP for aggressive DHCP requests as the new cloned MAC works fine (did take about 30 mins to propagate with the device off though). I did still have to call my ISP to get them to try and reset some things on their end.
3. Potential??? Issue with socket 02 on my wall. At least that's what the ISP lady thought.
4. AX88U still going strong after 5.4 years.
5. 3004.388.7 Merlinwrt seems to be working fine.

BONUS: Killer UNintelligent Center still horrible horrible horrible as usual. Wish I could remove it somehow without removing my 2.5GbE drivers...

I hope I can bury the hatchet with this... Thanks for the support and replies so far.