Asuswrt-Merlin 378.56 is available

[rajav2]

Under AI Protection, DNS Filtering. All the client names is not following the changes made in the Network Map page. It is working fine in the LAN DHCP client reservation page though.

 

[JGrana]

It was mentioned in the 378.56beta2 thread - your router ram was full or did not had enough space for the upgrade, therefore the reboot helped by freeing the ram.

Folks having issues trying to update firmware with USB plugged in - back in 378.55 beta 1, Merlin mentioned that caches were not regularly flushed on ARM based routers. This is a good thing for disk and application performance.
But, it could require a reboot in order to free up the buffers in reserve.
Here is another method that seems to work fine for me. No need to unplug USB drives or reboot before Uploading the new firmware through the Web UI.
Clear the buffers yourself right before the Upload of the new firmware. It will free up considerable memory allowing the upload of the firmware file. Since the system reboot's after the update - no harm!

Here is the command, executed from ssh:

# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

This will free up the pagecaches (applications) and dentries/inode cache (disk stuff)

Here is an example of memory usage before and after:

admin@RT-AC87R-A970:/tmp/home/root# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 255720 226492 29228 0 2248
-/+ buffers: 224244 31476
Swap: 744444 0 744444
admin@RT-AC87R-A970:/tmp/home/root# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
admin@RT-AC87R-A970:/tmp/home/root# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 255720 92916 162804 0 420
-/+ buffers: 92496 163224
Swap: 744444 0 744444
admin@RT-AC87R-A970:/tmp/home/root#

Note how many buffers are freed up and now available (for a short time) for applications.

 

[RMerlin]

@RMerlin
I think it is an bug in the site survey on the AC87U. (378.56)
It stays at: "Searching for available networks, please wait... " been like this now for 5 min.
On my AC68U is working good.

Open your web browser console and see if there's any Javascript error. Repost the content of the line with the error (if any).

 

[RMerlin]

Hi there I'm using official fw 378.9135. I do have the problem with the router is waking my network printer hourly as also seen with Merlin fw 378.55 (http://www.snbforums.com/threads/37...lly-waking-up-network-attached-printer.26529/)
Before switching to the actual Merlin fw I would like to know if the bug is resolved meanwhile? I could not find anything on that in l the latest changelog…
If this is not fixed, is there an idea for a workaround?

Thanks

FlyByWire

The issue is still there. I did a few blind attempts at fixing it, without any luck. Since I don't have any network printer, I didn't want to spend too much time blindly trying things out. I have a feeling it's tied to the networkmap scans.

 

[roofy]

AC-68U...... Upgraded from 378.55 to .56. No changes is configuration between .55 and .56. Running a pretty vanilla setup. No MediaServer, no Ai*, no FTP, etc. No custom scripts other than storing traffic history to a USB drive. Have not had any issue with any previous firmware release. After 48 hours of uptime, the logs are flooded with: failed to write /var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases: No space left on device (retry in 60s). Any ideas or suggestions much appreciated.

RAM consumption is also much higher than on .55..... Currently @ 66% whereas on .55 would never go above 30%

 

[Trebuin]

Hello Merlin,
I have an RT-AC66R currently set up in repeater mode using the 40 MHz band on the 5G side. I would like to set it up in repeater mode using the 80 MHz band, tying the AC side of it to my primary router's AC side. I originally set the wifi up as 80 MHz prior to the repeater mode setup but it goes back down to 40 MHz with no option for 80 in the GUI. Is it possible to do what I'm asking?

 

[pege63]

80MHz goes on chanells 42, 58, 106, 122, 138, 155 on 5GHz band.
With 802.11ac it may be tempting to use 80 MHz channel widths for peak performance. However, in order to reduce co-channel interference it is recommended that you derive your channel plan using non-overlapping 20 MHz or 40 MHz channels instead, allowing 80 MHz channel width on a best-effort basis. This allows APs to back-down to smaller channel widths that are non-overlapping when 80 MHz CCI is present using per-frame channel width capabilities available with 802.11ac. This allows APs to use the higher peak performance when possible, while maintaining separate collision domains at smaller channel widths when 80 MHz transmissions are not possible.

 

[EdoAsus]

RAM consumption is also much higher than on .55..... Currently @ 66% whereas on .55 would never go above 30%

Are you sure?? I get almost 90% busy RAM with .55, I asked in a previous post if .56 is better in RAM consumption, with no answer yet. I don't understand why the RAM is managed in this bad way and nobody complains about.

 

[soleillune]

AC-68U...... Upgraded from 378.55 to .56. No changes is configuration between .55 and .56. Running a pretty vanilla setup. No MediaServer, no Ai*, no FTP, etc. No custom scripts other than storing traffic history to a USB drive. Have not had any issue with any previous firmware release. After 48 hours of uptime, the logs are flooded with: failed to write /var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases: No space left on device (retry in 60s). Any ideas or suggestions much appreciated.

RAM consumption is also much higher than on .55..... Currently @ 66% whereas on .55 would never go above 30%

I have the same problem (9135 firmware), and I lost access to the UI but router still working. (RT-AC68U). I had to reboot the router to get access to the UI again.

 

[RMerlin]

Are you sure?? I get almost 90% busy RAM with .55, I asked in a previous post if .56 is better in RAM consumption, with no answer yet. I don't understand why the RAM is managed in this bad way and nobody complains about.

Because as was previously answered in multiple posts, the RAM gets used by buffers, which are dynamically freed by the kernel when they become required by other processes. There was no change to memory management in 378.56.

 

[RMerlin]

For me that was the last straw. Getting tired of constantly answering the same question, so I'm removing the memory buffer fix for the next release.

 

[charlie2alpha]

For me that was the last straw. Getting tired of constantly answering the same question, so I'm removing the memory buffer fix for the next release.

Ouch, that will hurt performance. The actual fix would be to fix the memory gauge to report the usage minus the buffer/caches. Also, some users seem to have actual memory issues with RAM getting full, hence those errors from dnsmasq. But that is another problem, since at least one user reported getting this with the official firmware. Seems something is leaking.

 

[L&LD]

For me that was the last straw. Getting tired of constantly answering the same question, so I'm removing the memory buffer fix for the next release.

Please consider leaving it in and just ignoring people who can't use search properly.

 

[charlie2alpha]

Please consider leaving it in and just ignoring people who can't use search properly.

Too late, it's already committed in his git. What troubles me is, in my RT-AC56U /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches is already set at "1". Weird.

 

[john9527]

Too late, it's already committed in his git. What troubles me is, in my RT-AC56U /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches is already set at "1". Weird.

It retains the last value that was set. Caches are cleared after the boot cycle, so it gets set there.

 

[EdoAsus]

Because as was previously answered in multiple posts, the RAM gets used by buffers, which are dynamically freed by the kernel when they become required by other processes. There was no change to memory management in 378.56.

Well I just asked if there was some changes regarding memory management in .56, I have most of the time 90% busy RAM on .55 and sometimes I have web-streaming media getting stuttering so I thought if the issue can be related to the memory of the router.

 

[roofy]

For me that was the last straw. Getting tired of constantly answering the same question, so I'm removing the memory buffer fix for the next release.

Merlin,

Don't get me wrong..... I was simply trying to provide as much info as possible with regard to the "...no space left one device" log entries. I was in no way implying anything with regard to the RAM consumption. I have read previous change logs and did see the RAM changes that had been made.

 

[john9527]

Don't get me wrong..... I was simply trying to provide as much info as possible with regard to the "...no space left one device" log entries

Let's check and see if it's something obvious like the syslog not getting rotated....telnet/ssh and enter

ls -l /tmp | sort -k 5

what's the size of the last entry?

 

[Blinkyz]

For me that was the last straw. Getting tired of constantly answering the same question, so I'm removing the memory buffer fix for the next release.

OMG!!!!! no

 

[FlyByWire]

The issue is still there. I did a few blind attempts at fixing it, without any luck. Since I don't have any network printer, I didn't want to spend too much time blindly trying things out. I have a feeling it's tied to the networkmap scans.

Thanks Merlin, I could provide a wireshark log of what's happening when the issue appears if you are interested?!