Asuswrt-Merlin 378.55 is now available

[kvic]

As a long time asuswrt-merlin user I fully support RMerlins position. I have some thoughts from first hand experience to recommend/share.

Some brief background. A few years back, I had an AC66U running asuswrt-merlin. I liked the router and really wanted minidlna - I could stream photos, videos and music to phones, Smart TV's etc. all from my router.
Over time, it would work and not work. As I added more photos (in my case over 9 years of digitial photos), minidlna would crash. Memory issues, file issues etc. Much what many of you are experiencing - and this was over 2 years ago!!

Along came the AC68U. What the heck - give my son the AC66 and use the more powerful AC68U. Again, great router.
But, same old minidlna. Don't get me wrong, minidlna is actually a pretty impressive piece of work. But asking it to manage the amount of media I was throwing at it is a bit our of bounds. Thats why its called "mini"dlna. ;-)

RMerlin, being very helpful and in many cases working with the dev's on fixes, one day told me - "You have a lot of photos. You really should consider a NAS box".

I finally decided he was right! I purchased a QNAP TS-212 for ~$140. Added a couple 2TB drives, plugged it's ethernet right into the AC68U and, the most important, found the Twonky Media Server.

Believe me, Twonky is a much more professional and polished media server. It runs serving up 10's of thousands of photos, hundreds of videos - without a burp. It will transcode, generate thumbnails and has a polished web based intercface. And, it works with all my client devices. Also, plugging storage devices into the USB ports is much more stable then the Asus devices (I suspect the more modern kernel in the NAS to be a prime reason)

So, my 2 suggestions - pick 1:

1) Buy a low cost NAS box. Both Qnap and Synology make great sub-$200 boxes. Both come with the Twonky Media Server. You just need to add storage.
Pros - Raid class storage to keep videos/photos safe.
Twonky - a more polished and functional media server
USB ports work well
Fairly easy to configure
Cons - will run around $300 by the time you are done with adding disk drives

2) This is actually my new preferred method - by a $35 Raspberry PI 2.

The Pi 2 has a quad core ARM processor running at 900MHz (easily clocked to 1GHz) and 1GB of on-board ram.
It also has 4 USB ports and a 10/100 Ethernet.

I now own an AC87U and have the Raspberry Pi plugged directly into as my application server. The AC87U routes and does the wireless side and the Pi does Twonky, rsync back ups to some USB based external disks (which all seem to work fine).
It runs Debian based Linux (much more modern then Asus/Broadcom 2.4 vintage stuff) and you will find the world of apt-get as a much more expanded way to add applications and services.

Twonky is available for the Raspbian Linux on the Pi. It costs $20 - lifetime license. Believe me it was the best $20 I have spent in a while.

Total cost - $35 for the Pi 2, $10 for a microSD, $20 for a USB charger to power it all, ~$90 for an external 1TB USB drive and ~$15 for a case = $170.

Pros - Great app co-processor for Asus routers.
Runs much newer Linux kernels - Debian with aptitude for adding applications etc.
Runs Twonky Media Server
All for ~$170 including paying for a 1TB USB
Cons - Will require some learning curve to set things up.
Twonky costs $20

Anyway, either works great. But lets face it, it's time to put minidlna in the rear view mirror...

Your Twonky is an interesting story.

Today's home routers are equipped with powerful processors. Not much inferior to NAS nor Raspberry. But people shall realise that manufacturers decide not to ship with more capable media server software e.g in a home router for commercial reasons. That's where the community such as here could add values to our purchase.

Pi 2 has a GPU which handles some 3D and HDMI output. Twonky may use the GPU for on-the-fly video transcode (which in most cases not used if you only stream media to PC or TV). Little details available from Twonky on linux requirement. Have you tried running your copy on AC87U? Maybe disable video transcode.

This probably worth a separate thread with your adventure.

 

[RMerlin]

Warning! Newb question! What does this mean?

This build merges with Asus's GPL 378_6117

It means it uses the source code released by Asus from their 3.0.0.4.378_6117 firmwares.

 

[RussellInCincinnati]

"Simply put, smartsync to ftp to LAN does not work, says it does, but nothing is in the local FTP folder on the LAN machine..."

114 posts later, still no help/answer. Guess this is not the place to get help for Merlin firmware issue's.

Flattery will get you everywhere.

Your original post on this matter (in a different thread) is so vague and non-universal it is not surprising that there has been little response to your observation. It is far more likely that (a) nobody else is doing exactly what you are doing, or (b) perhaps they are and not having the trouble you are.

Those are more likely than your implied possibility (c) that there are plenty of folks here that could easily help you if they were just more helpful people.

Did this operation you are describing work with some earlier Merlin versions? If so, which versions worked ok? If none, what other routers or firmware have done a fine job of working with your smartsync setup? Have you tried doing this operation to some other "LAN machine," to eliminate that target machine as problematic?

You give no detail of hardware or software or OS's or file sizes for either your origin or your destination machines that you are using, nor do we know if you have any experience with what you are doing in other environments. Did you try this operation with stock Asus firmware as one of many example details you are not providing?

 

[Satbeginner]

I have been using Merlin firmware for a few months now, and never had any problems on my RT-87U. But after this update the 2.4 GHz signal is disconnecting every few minutes. There is no problem on the 5 GHz network. It is not disconnecting because of the distance because my pc has been here for ever and it's happening on all devices on the 2.4 GHz network. I have tried rebooting and resetting the router serveral times. Is there any way you could help me with that? And is downgrading an option since i didn't have any problems with the previous version?

Thanks for the help and your hard work.

Hi,

here we have the exact same thing with my RT-AC66U:
Not all devices, just one tablet (Pipo M6Pro) is having this randomly disconnecting from the 2.4 GHz.
The Pipo is using an AMPAK WLAN 802.11 b/g/n chipset for the WiFi, 00:22:F4:xx:xx:xx.
When I reverted back to the .54_2 version it was OK again.

To test further, I do use the .55 version now, and for the Pipo tablet I temporarily added my old Linksys WRT54GS as 54Mpbs WiFi access point.
But so far, all our other devices are working OK with the new .55 version.

Un saludo,

Satbeginnner

 

[TurboFreak68]

When will mu mimo be enabled on the rt-ac87u? I don't have any compatible clients or anything, just curious.

Maybe you have to check that with Asus since RMerlin optimize their firmware (usually) and that have nothing to do with RMerlins FW version 378.55.

 

[Wagnard]

Hello,
My name is Wagnard.
Some may know me as DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) developer.

I wanted to show my gratitude for this firmware. It is running extremely well and have all (and more) features than I even need.

I also took the time to report a bug that was introduced recently.

The bug is related to UPNP.
I cannot view / edit the ports from the windows network window as it was possible before.
some upnp test tool report : No IGD UPnP Device found on the network !

Note: Most applications work for forwarding port via UPNP.
My report is more an anomaly that wasn't present before when using IGD

Thanks and keep the great work!

 

[Theliel]

Hello,
My name is Wagnard.
Some may know me as DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) developer.

I wanted to show my gratitude for this firmware. It is running extremely well and have all (and more) features than I even need.

I also took the time to report a bug that was introduced recently.

The bug is related to UPNP.
I cannot view / edit the ports from the windows network window as it was possible before.
some upnp test tool report : No IGD UPnP Device found on the network !

Thanks and keep the great work!

Umm, tested on W10 in this moment and work fine. I had similar issues some days ago, the problem was related due some Windows 8.1 update. After some reboots and some checks, upnp was working again.

 

[Wagnard]

Umm, tested on W10 in this moment and work fine. I had similar issues some days ago, the problem was related due some Windows 8.1 update. After some reboots and some checks, upnp was working again.

UPNP is also working for me, it's just an anomaly with the IGD.
I tested under windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

You can try to repro by adding a port yourself from Network window and then right clicking on your router device, settings. When you add or delete something, it wont apply. Normally it should. And it was applied before the latest update.

Application like uTorrrent, Skype , are forwarding as expected.

 

[Theliel]

UPNP is also working for me, it's just an anomaly with the IGD.
I tested under windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

You can try to repro by adding a port yourself from Network window and then right clicking on your router device, settings. When you add or delete something, it wont apply. Normally it should. And it was applied before the latest update.

Application like uTorrrent, Skype , are forwarding as expected.

On my RT-AC56U work fine, I can't repro. I can add/delete and apply perfectly, checked on the router too (at least on w10). Maybe a model specific issue or...

 

[nadieaqui]

asuswrt merlin 378.55 on rt-ac68u [samba, ftp, daap, dlna running]

Kernel/Mount is inconsistent with fdisk for external device:

I have a 4TB(USB3,Label=4TBExt4,format=ext4) on USB3 port and 16GB(USB3,Label=Main,format=ext4) on USB2 port, with
"Reducing USB 3.0 interference"=Enabled
UUID in fstab
e2fsck using pre-mount

from syslog.log during boot process:
Dec 31 18:00:28, Main mounted on sda1 ==> kernel: EXT4-fs (sda1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: barrier=1,data=ordered
Dec 31 18:00:36, Main mounted on sdc1 ==> kernel: EXT4-fs (sdc1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: barrier=1,data=ordered
Jul 30 03:47:10, hotplug triggers unmount ==> hotplug[1120]: USB partition unmounted from /tmp/mnt/Main
Jul 30 03:47:10, kernel thinks Main on sda1 ==> kernal kernel: EXT4-fs (sda1): previous I/O error to superblock detected

After boot process finishes, /proc/mounts, /etc/mtab, and mount shows Main mounted to sda1
"fdisk -l" shows Main on sdc1
ls on /tmp/mnt/Main is empty

When I "umount /tmp/mnt/Main" and "mount -a", Main is mounted on sdc1 and ls shows everything, but samba does not show Main

Additional files:
mount: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9F6MI7Ch4qhXzFZT0JuV1RQWEE/view?usp=sharing
fstab: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9F6MI7Ch4qhRG56cGFXcW10QU0/view?usp=sharing
/proc/mounts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9F6MI7Ch4qhcTBOT1h1ZkZjRVU/view?usp=sharing

 

[RMerlin]

asuswrt merlin 378.55 on rt-ac68u [samba, ftp, daap, dlna running]

Kernel/Mount is inconsistent with fdisk for external device:

I have a 4TB(USB3,Label=4TBExt4,format=ext4) on USB3 port and 16GB(USB3,Label=Main,format=ext4) on USB2 port, with
"Reducing USB 3.0 interference"=Enabled

Disable that option. A lot of USB disks are incompatible with it.

 

[nadieaqui]

Disable that option. A lot of USB disks are incompatible with it.

Many thanks! I disable USB 3.0 interference and rebooted; seems to work.

 

[R1-Limited]

ever since I upgraded then downgraded everything is fine. well accept that there is a blue moon friday and people are batshit crazy right now. Merlin can you fix that

 

[JGrana]

Is there any particular feature that Twonky has over OPENELEC / KODI on Rasp Pi?

They are 2 different functions. Kodi is more a media player and Townky a media server. Kodi likes to be plugged into a TV via HDMI and does a great job playing movies, showing photos, playing music etc.
Twonky being a DLNA server responds to players like Kodi, smart TV's, etc. and serves up the digital content.

In fact, I have both running on my Pi. I use OSMC (a Kodi distribution) and have added Twonky to serve other DLNA players in my house. Best of both worlds ;-)

 

[XIII]

2 issues with 378.55:

1) Reboot button in web GUI seems to do nothing (even if I reload the page)
2) Belkin WeMo switches loose connection to WiFi guest network, almost immediately after setup (though the network map still shows them)

 

[stuffedtiger]

2 issues with 378.55:

1) Reboot button in web GUI seems to do nothing (even if I reload the page)
2) Belkin WeMo switches loose connection to WiFi guest network, almost immediately after setup (though the network map still shows them)

My reboot button works fine. RT-AC68U.

 

[Wagnard]

Hello,
My name is Wagnard.
Some may know me as DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) developer.

I wanted to show my gratitude for this firmware. It is running extremely well and have all (and more) features than I even need.

I also took the time to report a bug that was introduced recently.

The bug is related to UPNP.
I cannot view / edit the ports from the windows network window as it was possible before.
some upnp test tool report : No IGD UPnP Device found on the network !

Note: Most applications work for forwarding port via UPNP.
My report is more an anomaly that wasn't present before when using IGD

Thanks and keep the great work!

Look like it may be a Windows 10 issue. It work correctly on my VM.

 

[XIII]

My reboot button works fine. RT-AC68U.

I have a RT-AC66U, but I suppose that should not matter for this functionality?

 

[TheGrave]

Anybody experiencing high CPU for no apparent reason on this release? I jumped from 378.54_2 to this one but I used to have it on the old firmware as well. Traffic is less than 100Kbps on both wireless and wired, top shows nothing but the GUI shows 70-80%. I'm experiencing delays in terms of SECONDS when it comes to echo-replies from the unit (varying between 3 and 5).

 

[Marc66]

I have a RT-AC66U, but I suppose that should not matter for this functionality?

I have an AC-66U and it's also working fine