Beta Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 Beta (stage 2) is now available

[Magnus33]

So word of warning but you can accidentally flash the AX86 firmware on the Ac86 routers. This doesn't completely brick the router but it does seriously mess it up.

Wireless shall no longer work obviously and the only light on the router is the port four light regardless of a cable being plugged in or now.

You can no longer get it into restore mode to use the restoration firmware.

You can log in and flash ax86 firmware but not ac86 firmware which means restoring it to the correct firmware now seems impossible.

Any ideas?

PS: don't let you kids distract you when flashing your router lol

 

[elorimer]

Our home IOT collection has pushed our current content to 48 DHCP clients.

If you go the entware route The Yaz's script works well to expand -- my limit looks to be 181 now.

But man, all dem IOT things are what, $750/year in electricity?

 

[L&LD]

@Magnus33 can you use the appropriate WPS method for your router to reset it and possibly use the Rescue Mode then?

[Wireless] ASUS router Hard Factory Reset | Official Support | ASUS Global

Asus Rescue Mode

 

[Slawek P]

Could be very much that those have just *not yet* appeared in my installation (only 40 hours running now) or that you are not waiting enough ? I menant that whenever I see a device that is not connected it usually disappears in less than 1 minute. In previous betas I used to see consistently some devices that had been disconnected for hours.

By the way, is your aimesh node also in beta5 ?

Yes both beta5 and switched off devices stay move from wifi to cable (which is not true) and stay there longer that 1 minute before eventually disappearing.
It does not bother me that much personally, but is there.

 

[Mutzli]

Just an observation.
I have not upgraded to B5 yet, but I notice that there are lots of strange issues that might be contributed to users that use VOIP boxes. For example, OOMA wants you to connect in series with router ,IF, you cannot connect to separate lan port on your providers box. So here is what I have found after a few years of using devices connected in series with ASUS wireless routers. DO NOT DO THAT. What I have done for myself and many others is connect the VOIP box to a lan port coming out of your service providers interface. If your device has only one lan port, go buy the best 4 port switch you can and connect it to single output port of your providers box and then your ASUS device to lan port 1 and your VOIP to lan port 2. You will not be able to see directly into your VOIP device through your router now. No big deal. Unplug what ever you have on router lan port and connect it to lan port on VOIP to configure it if needed. You can still go to your VOIP web page to do what ever you like when you are connected through ASUS router. Once I started doing this, my router stopped having strange issues like I see posted. ASUS and other wireless routers really like a clean dedicated connection to your providers device. If your providers box does have multiple lan ports, just do what we all do and turn wifi radio off in the providers box and connect your router.
I know for most this is obvious, but not for many out there suffering with issues.
I have been using Draytek Vigor 2762, 2862B, line connections devices and they are stable and work better than anything I have tried for DSL service. For single port fiber line connection boxes, I just get a high speed 4 port switch.
Hope this helps

I use an OOMA as well and noticed that it causes issues (mostly interference when making OOMA calls) a while ago. I bought a modem with two LAN ports (ARRIS CM8200A) and connected the router on port 1 and the OOMA phone system on port 2. Works like a charm.

 

[aex.perez]

I'll give a try later. Right now I've just did a dirty power off.
Anyway it's a beta, things like this are expected. This weekend I'll probably do a hard reset and reconfigure/reinstall everything back

Thanks

This started happening on mine as well. WiFi went nuts, dropped evrything on both 2.4Ghz/5Ghz. Flooded the log with 100's of "RT-AX88U kernel: CFG80211-ERROR) wl_cfg80211_change_station : WLC_SCB_AUTHORIZE sta_flags_mask not set" back to back to back. CPU got so busy as a result, that it impacted my spdMerlin results from 930D/650U to 350D/500U. Restarting Wifi via scMerlin didn't quiet it down.

After 30min (or 2 spdMerlin runs), I did the "Dirty power off, pull the barrel plug wait 1min, then plug back in." followed by a WiFi restart in scMerlin (overkill?) and it did the trick.
Still getting the kernel: CFG80211-ERROR every so often, but not the flood that brought the AX88U to its knees.

Will end up starting over with a reset on the Router and the AImesh nodes and reconfigure from scratch when it gets quiet on the weekend

 

[intr0]

I too have to state that for me, using ProtonVPN had never functioned before. Now it works flawlessly, though I do not recall if it began functioning beginning with β4 or β5. Either way, it now works as well as the included TOR network over WiFi, which is perfectly.

 

[Sky1111]

My AC86Us are sitting around 80-81C with 386.1b5, which is not bad, but I decided to order a fan. Applying fresh thermal compound between the CPU and the heat sink will also significantly reduce temperature.

I also noticed that right after I did clean upgrade with full reset, etc., the temperature on idle was showing 82C, and that's with the room temperature of ~22C. While many folks here feel that this well within the spec for specific silicon, will all my due respect, I have my own perception that this is way too high for idle.
I am not sure if anyone on this thread knows from the fact how accurate is this temperature read is. On x86 CPUs and GPUs (ok, I am comparing an elephant to a pony), there are different temperatures per core, and those do not reflect actual Tjunction temperatures. So here we get an average temperature - and we do not know where that diod on the silicon die is - for a quad-core CPU. You easily can have higher peaks on specific, more loaded cores and significantly higher Tjunction is a part of silicon that is relatively away from that temperature measuring diod. Is it a possibility? of course it is! So when you are running at 82C idle, you do not know how much safety margin you have from that threshold of 105C

Now with a noiseless fan:

- that is safe even for paranoidal types like myself

 

[clweb]

Beta 5 is causing CPU spikes or stays high on my AC88U, but not seeing anything on syslog.
CPU Temp 87c (22c ambient)

I had something similar and it was spdMerlin task eating up CPU even when not doing a speed test.
With ssh connect to the router and issue the top command. You will see at the top the task consuming CPU.
I killed the task and all went fine.

 

[shabbs]

My AC86Us are sitting around 80-81C with 386.1b5, which is not bad, but I decided to order a fan. Applying fresh thermal compound between the CPU and the heat sink will also significantly reduce temperature.

My RT-AC86U on 5b has been fine... ambient room temp for this one is 22 degC.

Confirming CPU Wait is ENABLED:

 

[XIII]

Beta 5 on my AC86U:

2.4 GHz: 54°C - 5 GHz: 59°C - CPU: 77°C

(room temperature 21°C; uptime 2 days 13 hours)

 

[RMerlin]

Beta 5 is causing CPU spikes or stays high on my AC88U, but not seeing anything on syslog.
CPU Temp 87c (22c ambient)

Run "top" to determine what is using the CPU.

Our home IOT collection has pushed our current content to 48 DHCP clients. Looks Like it'll hit 64 before too long at the rate we are adding lightbulbs, mains switches and other gadgets. Can you run a second DHCP server on AIMESH nodes to increase the overall capacity?

Why are you setting static leases for all of your clients? Just let them be dynamic. The server can handle up to 253 leases without any issue, it's only static leases that are limited. And if for some weird reason you do want to use that many static leases, add them through a dnsmasq.conf.add config file.

 

[Magnus33]

@Magnus33 can you use the appropriate WPS method for your router to reset it and possibly use the Rescue Mode then?

[Wireless] ASUS router Hard Factory Reset | Official Support | ASUS Global

Asus Rescue Mode

Sadly no. No power light no rescue mode.

 

[GHammer]

Our home IOT collection has pushed our current content to 48 DHCP clients. Looks Like it'll hit 64 before too long at the rate we are adding lightbulbs, mains switches and other gadgets. Can you run a second DHCP server on AIMESH nodes to increase the overall capacity?

How large is the table in Asus FW for the AX88U?

Just use this.

GitHub - jackyaz/YazDHCP: Feature expansion of DHCP assignments using AsusWRT-Merlin's Addons API to read and write DHCP assignments, increasing the limit on the number of reservations.

Feature expansion of DHCP assignments using AsusWRT-Merlin's Addons API to read and write DHCP assignments, increasing the limit on the number of reservations. - jackyaz/YazDHCP

github.com

 

[L&LD]

@Magnus33 I wouldn't worry about the LED's working as you expect.

See if you can get it into Rescue Mode.

Unplug all USB devices, all Ethernet cables, and the power plug from the router too. Leave the Power Button in the 'On' position.

After waiting a minute or two, holding down the Reset Button, plug in the power adaptor. Keep holding the Reset button for varying lengths of time (10 seconds is what usually works) and let go.

Plug in an Ethernet cable to any LAN port (and test each one, methodically) and see if you can use the utility linked above with the firmware you want to flash. This can be ready and waiting on the computer 'ready to go'.

Don't forget to use a manual IP address that is not the router's IP (default should be 192.168.50.1 for the router).

Hope others can chime in here to give their help too.

@RMerlin, @dave14305, @Jack Yaz, @Adamm, @sfx2000, @thelonelycoder, @Martineau, and all others I can't remember right now, is there any hope for this RT-AC86U flashed with RT-AX86U firmware?

 

[scarzy]

Interesting - I still see phantom devices on mine. If something was conntected via WiFi to AiMesh node then I often see it ghosting as an ethernet device when it is disabled.

I also see the phantom devices that were originally connected as wifi ghosting as ethernet devices when disabled on my AC86u.

 

[sbsnb]

Just use this.

GitHub - jackyaz/YazDHCP: Feature expansion of DHCP assignments using AsusWRT-Merlin's Addons API to read and write DHCP assignments, increasing the limit on the number of reservations.

Feature expansion of DHCP assignments using AsusWRT-Merlin's Addons API to read and write DHCP assignments, increasing the limit on the number of reservations. - jackyaz/YazDHCP

github.com

Does that allow you to limit reservations to a specific interface, or are you forcing that client to be assigned that IP no matter what interface they're connected to?

 

[Magnus33]

@Magnus33 I wouldn't worry about the LED's working as you expect.

See if you can get it into Rescue Mode.

Unplug all USB devices, all Ethernet cables, and the power plug from the router too. Leave the Power Button in the 'On' position.

After waiting a minute or two, holding down the Reset Button, plug in the power adaptor. Keep holding the Reset button for varying lengths of time (10 seconds is what usually works) and let go.

Plug in an Ethernet cable to any LAN port (and test each one, methodically) and see if you can use the utility linked above with the firmware you want to flash. This can be ready and waiting on the computer 'ready to go'.

Don't forget to use a manual IP address that is not the router's IP (default should be 192.168.50.1 for the router).

Hope others can chime in here to give their help too.

@RMerlin, @dave14305, @Jack Yaz, @Adamm, @sfx2000, @thelonelycoder, @Martineau, and all others I can't remember right now, is there any hope for this RT-AC86U flashed with RT-AX86U firmware?

Tried all the above.

Although given the abuse it had it likely was wearing out anyway. For a year it was running a restaurant and took far more abuse they it was meant to so it was likely time for a upgrade and all mess with it given time and who knows maybe it can be brought back to life.

 

[L&LD]

With all the relatively 'quick' things not working, you may want to leave it turned 'On' and unplugged for an extended period of time (a week or more). It has worked for a few people here in different situations.

 

[Magnus33]

With all the relatively 'quick' things not working, you may want to leave it turned 'On' and unplugged for an extended period of time (a week or more). It has worked for a few people here in different situations.

Shall do thanks for helping