Release Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 is now available

[Matthew Patrick]

The issue I'm seeing doesn't go away till a reboot.

How do I check the bootloader?

On Tools tab.... You've tried using the commands sequentially when it's happening on yours?

 

[gattaca]

I powered off my RT-AC88U, removed the USB flash drive, powered the router back on and am still getting an error flashing. The error is that the firmware is not compatible.
The error appears after about 15 seconds of "Please wait, Applying Settings...".

I saw a bug report / readme somewhere that if the router has any "bad flash" blocks, this version is going to expose it and may not flash or may take multiple attempts. I recall seeing this mentioned / fixed somewhere in RMerlin's alpha (maybe) but I cannot locate the post right now. I am sorry.

To know, watch the router boot normally b/c that's when the bad blocks are flagged by the format. Maybe too many bad-blocks?

I know one of my units has bad flash blocks from my 384.19 upgrade nightmare. I have not attempted an upgrade to 386.***anything*** yet. A small number of "bad flash blocks" are OK as long as they can be mapped around and do not occur in the "wrong spots" which may need to be continuous. Again, IDK if that would cause your router not to flash. Just seems a possible candidate to consider. Stay safe, stay alive!

 

[Morac]

I know one of my units has bad flash blocks from my 384.19 upgrade nightmare. I have not attempted an upgrade to 386.***anything*** yet. A small number of "bad flash blocks" are OK as long as they can be mapped around and do not occur in the "wrong spots" which may need to be continuous. Again, IDK if that would cause your router not to flash. Just seems a possible candidate to consider. Stay safe, stay alive!

would “bad blocks” explain why flashing 386.1 to 386.1_2 doesn’t work, but 386.1 to 384.19 to 386.1_2 does?

 

[bh56]

noooo That will cost so much time to re-config Mesh nodes, LAN, VPN...
Oh well....

I'm having the exact same issue as tomasevicius; Have just upgraded from 386.1.0 to 386.1_2 on my AX58U and can no longer login!!!
Tried the admin/admin account. Router still works and can connect, but not able to login anymore.

Did you figure a way around this without having to do a factory reset? Appreciate any insight.

 

[SammyG]

On Tools tab.... You've tried using the commands sequentially when it's happening on yours?

My bootloader is 1.0.0.9

I haven't used the SSH commands. Ill give that a shot next time. usually just easier to open up the app and hit reboot from my phone.

 

[Matthew Patrick]

My bootloader is 1.0.0.9

I haven't used the SSH commands. Ill give that a shot next time. usually just easier to open up the app and hit reboot from my phone.

Oh so yours pretty new too.. just trying to figure out if it's something to do with hw differences etc haha.. thanks for the info!

Anyways yeah, rebooting causes everything to reboot. Everything gets disconnected. With those commands I gave you, it'll only turn off and turn on the 2.4ghz only. That way you'll still be able to use the internet on 5ghz and ethernet..

 

[SammyG]

Oh so yours pretty new too.. just trying to figure out if it's something to do with hw differences etc haha.. thanks for the info!

Anyways yeah, rebooting causes everything to reboot. Everything gets disconnected. With those commands I gave you, it'll only turn off and turn on the 2.4ghz only. That way you'll still be able to use the internet on 5ghz and ethernet..

Thanks

I configured an iOS shortcut with those commands. Makes it so much easier.

Still infuriating that I have to do this for a $200+ router. My ISP modem/router is more stable than this.

 

[Matthew Patrick]

Thanks

I configured an iOS shortcut with those commands. Makes it so much easier.

Still infuriating that I have to do this for a $200+ router. My ISP modem/router is more stable than this.

I think it's a bug or something. Since it's fine on 384.19 and older. For now I'm just staying on 384.19 since i kinda need the network to be stable without the 2.4ghz freaking out every few hours.. but ye. Atleast it works fine on 384.19 ..

 

[Wanabo]

Smooth upgrade from 386.1 to 386.1_2 on both routers.
From RT-AC88U web UI, I first upgraded the node (RT-AC86U_RT-AC2900) and than the RT-AC88U itself. Left both usb-drives plugged in.

My RT-AC88U doesn't seem to have the 160 MHz for wifi available.

Tried different servers, but the speed seems to be 15-20 % to low compared to a web speedtest. But it is a nice feature.

 

[marko]

Why?? I don't see why adding this "bloated" (pun intended) stuff to Merlin's firmware would be needed.

It would be definitely handy for some people. Equivalent is if you said that speedtest is not needed in the merlin firmware but it still is present there?

 

[HorseCalledHorse]

I'm having the exact same issue as tomasevicius; Have just upgraded from 386.1.0 to 386.1_2 on my AX58U and can no longer login!!!
Tried the admin/admin account. Router still works and can connect, but not able to login anymore.

Did you figure a way around this without having to do a factory reset? Appreciate any insight.

Sounds like the same "issue" people had when initially installing 386.1: there's database/maintenance stuff going on and you just have to wait and be patient. Some reports suggested it could take anything up to a couple of hours before you're able to access the web GUI. I know my RT-AC86U took over 90 minutes.

I haven't updated to 386.1_2 yet and didn't expect this would be an issue going from 386.1 but it sounds like it might be.

 

[bh56]

Sounds like the same "issue" people had when initially installing 386.1: there's database/maintenance stuff going on and you just have to wait and be patient. Some reports suggested it could take anything up to a couple of hours before you're able to access the web GUI. I know my RT-AC86U took over 90 minutes.

I haven't updated to 386.1_2 yet and didn't expect this would be an issue going from 386.1 but it sounds like it might be.

Thanks for the insight. I didn't have any issues going to 386.1 with this. It's been about 2 hours since I updated, so you would think it would be done now. Especially if I didn't have any issues prior.
Really don't want to do a factory reset and have to reconfigure things. Will reboot again and wait a bit longer and see if that maybe clears itself. After the FW upgrade it did say to reboot as well. Which I did.

 

[HorseCalledHorse]

Thanks for the insight. I didn't have any issues going to 386.1 with this. It's been about 2 hours since I updated, so you would think it would be done now. Especially if I didn't have any issues prior.
Really don't want to do a factory reset and have to reconfigure things. Will reboot again and wait a bit longer and see if that maybe clears itself. After the FW upgrade it did say to reboot as well. Which I did.

Was curious and had an opportunity (wife and kids stepped out, so nobody would howl about the network being down for three minutes) so I just updated my RT-AC86U to 386.1_2 (from 386.1) with no issue whatsoever - straight into the web GUI after the update. As I said, I had to wait for 90 minutes or so after the initial update to 386.1. Others had a longer wait, others shorter, some had no wait at all. Seemed like it depended on the router and its configuration. It might be the same thing going on here, in which case rebooting isn't going to help. If your network is up and running and the only issue is being unable to reach the web GUI, I'd wait some more.

 

[bh56]

Was curious and had an opportunity (wife and kids stepped out, so nobody would howl about the network being down for three minutes) so I just updated my RT-AC86U to 386.1_2 (from 386.1) with no issue whatsoever - straight into the web GUI after the update. As I said, I had to wait for 90 minutes or so after the initial update to 386.1. Others had a longer wait, others shorter, some had no wait at all. Seemed like it depended on the router and its configuration. It might be the same thing going on here, in which case rebooting isn't going to help. If your network is up and running and the only issue is being unable to reach the web GUI, I'd wait some more.

Ended up doing a reset. Not wanting to reconfigure, thought I would see if the backup/restore would work. Restored my backup, was able to login and appears I'm back in business again.

 

[AntonK]

Smooth upgrade from 386.1 to 386.1_2 on both routers.
From RT-AC88U web UI, I first upgraded the node (RT-AC86U_RT-AC2900) and than the RT-AC88U itself. Left both usb-drives plugged in.

My RT-AC88U doesn't seem to have the 160 MHz for wifi available.

View attachment 30717
Tried different servers, but the speed seems to be 15-20 % to low compared to a web speedtest. But it is a nice feature.

My RT-AC88U doesn't have 160 MHz available either. I assume it's a regional, or hardware revision thing.

 

[ray]

Hi all. The earliest ones I've seen are 384.19 > 386.1 at the beginning of this thread, and subsequently 386.1 >> 386.1_2 or 384.19 > 386.1_2.

I'm on 384.17. Do I need to flash every version? Should I do a factory reset before dirty flashing? I used to be much more trigger happy flashing the latest and greatest but have become very very risk averse!

 

[Kees17760]

Discovered a minor thing on my RT-AC2900 running 386.1_2 (started from scratch)

- After performing a health check on an 8 GB USB 3.0 stick (which takes minutes to complete), my VPN connection through PPTP is lost and does not recover. I have to manually recycle it (deactivate-activate) to gain access to the internet again. The stick holds a 2 GB swap file.

Tried another USB stick to the same result.

 

[JIPG]

I have updated to FW 386.1_2 from 386.1, and although I have not reseted everything, I have done a "format jffs after reboot". After several reboots, the information on the jffs is still there, nothing has been erased. Am I missing something or this option can be only used when you do a full "reset"?.

In any case, everything is working fine. I did the format jffs just to see if I can recover the warning pages from Ai Protection (now, they are empty, without a description of the threat).

 

[cristobal07]

my apologies, Merlin.

just realized that my DDNS update issue was possibly caused by isp.

tried several times and method to troubleshoot yesterday, no luck.
suddenly the issue is gone today, DDNS updated without problem.

thank you.

thanks for fixing the ipv6 address bug as well.

p/s: confirmed, problems from my isp.
routing issue, site inaccessible, high ping/latency, slows down etc.
ongoing and happened intermittently.

Spoiler

upgraded from 386.2 alpha to 386.1_2 > factory reset,
having DDNS update issue with tunnelbroker.net - Request error! Please try again.
log showing 500 internal server error.

start_ddns: update WWW.TUNNELBROKER.NET default@tunnelbroker.net, wan_unit 0
inadyn[1630]: In-a-dyn version 2.8.1 -- Dynamic DNS update client.
inadyn[1630]: Update forced for alias xxxxxx, new IP# xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
inadyn[1630]: Temporary error in DDNS server response:
inadyn[1630]: [500 Internal Server Error]
inadyn[1630]: Will retry again in 600 sec ...

tried to manual update the endpoint ip in tunnelbroker.net website, successful updated and ipv6 is working.
but under router DDNS tab still showing "Request error! Please try again.",
internet status also showing exclamation mark with "registration is successful" message.

another issue, always stuck at "Applying Settings..." in DDNS tab
(after insert info and click on apply button, no problem.
click apply button again, got stuck).


thanks RMerlin.

Spoiler

upgraded RT-AC88U to beta 4 - factory reset.

found out that IPv6 - tunnel 6in4 no longer accept
LAN IPv6 Prefix address from tunnel broker that ends with ::
randomly added one digit after ::, from xxx:xxx:xxxx:: to xxx:xxx:xxxx::0 did the trick.

Thanks Merlin.

 

[gattaca]

would “bad blocks” explain why flashing 386.1 to 386.1_2 doesn’t work, but 386.1 to 384.19 to 386.1_2 does?

Hi! Unknown. I finally found the post. It is in fixes posted for 386.1_2. -> http://www.snbforums.com/threads/asuswrt-merlin-386-1-is-now-available.69783/

- FIXED: Erasing the JFFS partition would often require a second reboot since the operation failed when encountering a bad block. These are now properly skipped.

In general, most (but not all) flash upgrades perform validations to prevent the firmware flash from bricking target - router, motherboards, etc... As a software engineer, I'd say anything is possible with code checks and verifications. This was just a theory based on above and what I saw with bad-blocks happening on my AC86 units in 384.19. Crazy, I know. Your path is certainly an outlier too. Now that you are 386.1_2, it will be interesting to know how the next step/version flash upgraded goes. FWIW, I've not tried to step AC86 from 384.19 to 386.***. I'm considering upgrading the main router to the AX86U and then waterfalling my AC86 to WAPs. Stay safe, stay alive. Peace.