Asuswrt-Merlin 376.48 Beta 2 is out

[GaresTaylan]

Had to revert back to official firmware last night. Ive had dreadful luck with every merlin build for my RT-AC87U. Worked great on my AC66R.

The latest beta for example... Im up and running fine and I can launch something like Steam and tell it to start downloading some games. Ill check 30 minutes later and the network is down across the whole house. I lose all wifi and ethernet connectivity. Ive done a full wipe and reinstalled the firmware, no dice.

The last official build my wifi just kept dropping out on the 5GHz band. I would move 2 feet from the router and all my devices still couldn't reach the web. Didn't matter if it was an iPhone, android, windows, mac, etc... they all did it. I would switch to 2.4 and was fine. Reboot the router and 5GHz would work for a couple hours then stop again.

 

[RogueSpear]

I can concur on the 5Ghz issue. It just seems to be an issue for the time being with our still rather new AC87 units. I'm sure it will get worked out in due time. But your larger problem sounds as though it could be heat related. My AC87's CPU was reading something like 165F I bought a USB powered laptop cooler made for a 15" laptop, the AC87 sits perfectly on it, and now the CPU is reading a much more tolerable 134F. I can't say for sure this is the problem obviously, but I also have an AC66 and an AC68, both of which suffered from heat problems until I affirmatively did something to cool them down.

 

[octopus]

Testing new SAMBA

Hi all

I have tested new Samba with old and new samba server and I can't se any huge differences. Measure with NAS performance tester 1.5
RT-AC68U 800Mhz / 666Mhz Ram

USB Memory OLD SAMBA

Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on drive \\OCTOPUS\script/ 3 times...
Iteration 1: 20,86 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 18,32 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 20,53 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W): 19,90 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on drive \\OCTOPUS\script/ 3 times...
Iteration 1: 28,89 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 30,94 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 30,63 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R): 30,15 MB/sec
------------------------------

HDD OLD SAMBA

Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on drive \\OCTOPUS\3 - picture/ 3 times...
Iteration 1: 25,86 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 24,94 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 26,27 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W): 25,69 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on drive \\OCTOPUS\3 - picture/ 3 times...
Iteration 1: 27,71 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 29,57 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 26,74 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R): 28,01 MB/sec
------------------------------

USB Memory NEW SAMBA

Running a 400MB file write on drive \\OCTOPUS\script/ 3 times...
Iteration 1: 20,77 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 20,21 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 19,18 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W): 20,05 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on drive \\OCTOPUS\script/ 3 times...
Iteration 1: 31,47 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 30,74 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 30,36 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R): 30,86 MB/sec
------------------------------
HDD NEW SAMBA

Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on drive \\OCTOPUS\3 - picture/ 3 times...
Iteration 1: 25,76 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 24,60 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 27,13 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W): 25,83 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on drive \\OCTOPUS\3 - picture/ 3 times...
Iteration 1: 27,40 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 29,39 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 28,38 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R): 28,39 MB/sec
------------------------------

 

[RMerlin]

Hi all

I have tested new Samba with old and new samba server and I can't se any huge differences. Measure with NAS performance tester 1.5
RT-AC68U 800Mhz / 666Mhz Ram

The issue is more visible in scenarios where you are CPU bound. In your case, it seems to have been IO bound by your USB 2.0 disk. With my USB 3.0 disk, read performance drops from 69 MB/s to 65 MB/s.

 

[octopus]

The issue is more visible in scenarios where you are CPU bound. In your case, it seems to have been IO bound by your USB 2.0 disk. With my USB 3.0 disk, read performance drops from 69 MB/s to 65 MB/s.

Yes you are right, USB2 I don't have any USB3 memory/hdd.


octopus

 

[ydc]

Problem enabling SSH

I upgraded my NT66U (acting in access point mode) from 376.44_beta3 to 48_beta1 and my SSH service was disabled post-upgrade.

When I attempted to enable it, I got a message "This port is for Cloud Disk" with the cursor in the HTTPS Lan port. Took me a few tries to realize it was telling me there was a conflicting port, though I WAS accessing the router on port 443 at the time. I had to switch it to a new port in order to re-enable SSH.

I even went so far as to disable the SAMBA sharing and UPNP media server (as this particular router has no disk attached to it anyway) but still couldn't change my port back to 443.

I realize that SSH and HTTPS aren't the same service, but since they're on the same page I'm guessing it is trying to re-save the HTTPS info and thus producing the error.

 

[ydc]

For the short term, can I just "nvram" to set webdav_https_port to something other than 443 and then set my HTTPS web port back to 443?

I would use the UI to change that port but in access-port mode, the setting page for this isn't even there.

 

[keenism]

The issue is more visible in scenarios where you are CPU bound. In your case, it seems to have been IO bound by your USB 2.0 disk. With my USB 3.0 disk, read performance drops from 69 MB/s to 65 MB/s.

Hmmm, what model drive are you using? I'm using a 4TB WD MyBook that hovers around 40MB/s(RT-AC87, usb3 port, 1Gb\s FD link, reducing interference off, fresh NTFS format, stock and merlin FW) the CPU's don't max and the same drive gives over 100MB/s attached to a pc... Im perfectly fine with 40MB/s, in fact its far more than I need for streaming to several devices even...but more speed cant hurt Any idea what could be holding it back?

 

[RMerlin]

Hmmm, what model drive are you using? I'm using a 4TB WD MyBook that hovers around 40MB/s(RT-AC87, usb3 port, 1Gb\s FD link, reducing interference off, fresh NTFS format, stock and merlin FW) the CPU's don't max and the same drive gives over 100MB/s attached to a pc... Im perfectly fine with 40MB/s, in fact its far more than I need for streaming to several devices even...but more speed cant hurt Any idea what could be holding it back?

I use a WD Caviar Green 3 TB inside a Nextar 3.5 CX enclosure. Disk is formatted as NTFS.

 

[RMerlin]

I upgraded my NT66U (acting in access point mode) from 376.44_beta3 to 48_beta1 and my SSH service was disabled post-upgrade.

When I attempted to enable it, I got a message "This port is for Cloud Disk" with the cursor in the HTTPS Lan port. Took me a few tries to realize it was telling me there was a conflicting port, though I WAS accessing the router on port 443 at the time. I had to switch it to a new port in order to re-enable SSH.

I even went so far as to disable the SAMBA sharing and UPNP media server (as this particular router has no disk attached to it anyway) but still couldn't change my port back to 443.

I realize that SSH and HTTPS aren't the same service, but since they're on the same page I'm guessing it is trying to re-save the HTTPS info and thus producing the error.

When you save the settings on a page, all settings on that page must be validated, as they all need to be applied to the router.

You can change the AiCloud port on the AiCloud settings page. It defaults to 443, while the HTTPS management interface usually defaults to 8443.

 

[RMerlin]

My unit: RT-AC68u operating in ap mode with cleared NVRAM settings on cfe 1.0.1.8 (EU) on .48b1

Noticed a bug with NVRAM defaults: if I enable IGMP snooping on 5G my 5G auto settings will switch immediately to 20MHz ch. width. Undo will revert back to 80MHz ch. width. Noticed this behaviour also on 376.47 on my 68u. (On 2Ghz I manually switched to 20Mhz cause of interference with other APs around.)

I can't reproduce the issue here.

Anyone else? Otherwise, seems like either a browser issue, or something else in your configuration.

 

[RMerlin]

I tried beta1 only for few minutes: on my RT-AC68U it seems the nat-loopback was broken. The router was accessible only by its IP. Furthermore, I don't know why, but also the WAN traffic seems blocked.

I checked the log, but I'm not an expert and I can enclose it here for further analisys

Your router got stuck for an abnormally long period of time during boot, which caused it to skip starting various services such as the firewall. My guess would be this is caused by your Optware packages taking far too long to start, and blocking the rest of the router. Try disabling your Optware services.

 

[matthew_eli]

Your router got stuck for an abnormally long period of time during boot, which caused it to skip starting various services such as the firewall. My guess would be this is caused by your Optware packages taking far too long to start, and blocking the rest of the router. Try disabling your Optware services.

But I start all the optware packages manually, via SSH...I mean Pyload, and under Debian Transmission, amule and minidlna

 

[RMerlin]

Mine has the wan port connected as 192.168.0.254 to a DSL3700 router that has no problem updating its system date, connected to pool.ntp.org. The AC68U ntp client points to europe.pool.ntp.org, but, even addressing directly the ntp servers or changing them the system date does not update. This could be expected because I use 192.168.0.1 as the primary dns server and 8.8.8.8 as the secondary server. My dyndns client runs on the netgear modem/router.

What happens if you set the primary DNS to 8.8.8.8 instead? One change in 374.48 is that the router now uses itself (127.0.0.1) for local DNS queries. If you also have it set to use itself as a DNS, then you will be chasing after your own tail.

 

[RMerlin]

But I start all the optware packages manually, via SSH...I mean Pyload, and under Debian Transmission, amule and minidlna

The only way to know for sure would be through a serial output log. Based on what I can understand in syslog, it seems to get stuck around the time it tries to start the various NAS apps. What happens if you boot without any HDD plugged?

 

[RMerlin]

Beta 2 was uploaded:

   - NEW: Added logo to the webui header
   - CHANGED: Samba 3.6 will now use libiconv to handle
              charset conversion (will resolve CP850
              warnings amongst other things)
  - CHANGED: Updated miniupnpd to 20141023 code from Github.
  - CHANGED: Updated dropbear to 2014.66.
  - CHANGED: Reverted NTP update code to GPL 2678 in hopes of
             resolving the few cases where it didn't work anymore.
  - FIXED: minidlna is once again able to use inotify for updates.
           A temporary workaround has been implemented where
           minidlna will be staticly linked with a threadsafe
           build of sqlite3, while BWDPI will continue to use
           the shared non-threadsafe library. (Asus bug)

Things to test:

• If the NTP issues are gone (I gave up figuring it out, so I reverted the code to Asus's 2678 code)
• Minidlna was staticly linked with a threadsave version of sqlite, see if it works properly now
• miniupnpd and dropbear were updated to their respective latest versions, see if anything broke with the update
• Any other Samba issue still pending

 

[AndreaS]

Hi Merlin,
I just installed Beta 2. Now the NTP works fine, but in samba it is still not possible to add new shares or modify the access rights of the existing ones.

Router AC68U

 

[RMerlin]

Hi Merlin,
I just installed Beta 2. Now the NTP works fine, but in samba it is still not possible to add new shares or modify the access rights of the existing ones.

Router AC68U

Hm, someone had told me the issue was gone for him with this release, so I didn't really look into it. I'll have to see if I can find a way to reproduce it, because so far with my AC87U and a USB flash drive, it's working fine for me.

 

[matthew_eli]

Hi Merlin,

I tried beta2, but still I've problem with this version. I left the HD plugged in the first start and still I had both the WAN/Firewall problem (no access to internet, even if the icon on the computer showed I had) and no nat-loopback. When I unplugged the HD, the WAN access was ok. When I tried to re-attached the HD, the nat-loopback still didn't work and the HD failed to be mounted. See the log

I reverted back to .47 and both problems disappear

 

[matthew_eli]

Just for clearing my last post: the HDD problem is not related to the new firmware (I attached it to USB3.0 port, and I know there were problems with that port and my HDD). BTW, I really don't know what changed from .47 to .48 beta 1 and 2, since my USB generates such problem in firewall service (as Merlin told, since I'm not able to find the right rows on the log: could you help me in sorting the rights rows on the log Merlin?). With .47 version I've no problem at all. With .48 beta 1 & 2, if I have the HDD attached then the firewall does not start normally. If it's disconnected ,the firewall start normally.

For adding further details, I've some conf files for dnsmasq, fstab and firewall start / init start. Could be helpful if I report my settings for this files?