Beta Asuswrt-Merlin 386.5 Beta is now available

[jj351]

Verify it downloaded correctly using the md5 key. I installed it on mine without issues

It checks out. Thanks though.

 

[RMerlin]

It checks out. Thanks though.

Make sure you aren't confusing the GT-AX11000 with the GT-AXE11000.

 

[jj351]

Make sure you aren't confusing the GT-AX11000 with the GT-AXE11000.

Doh! TIL there's a GT-AXE11000 and it's supported by Merlin. Thanks for saving me a factory reset , and of course for all the hard work you do.

edit: Donated

 

[XIII]

Did you remember to set the Fiber modem in "Bridge Mode"?

I can’t (ISP specific firmware does not offer that option).

 

[miniterror]

Installed like 8 hours ago and noticing my log is filled with below messages, not sure what they mean.
Eth6 says something about 'channel 6' wich i dont use, i have 1 for the 2.4ghz set.
The mac that is shown on the eth7 messages is also something im unable to find in my house.

Feb 22 08:32:35 acsd: eth6: COEX: downgraded chanspec 0x1909 to 0x100b: channel 6 used by exiting BSSs 
Feb 22 08:33:45 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(505): eth7: Auth 88:D0:39:C0:60:A6, status: Successful (0)
Feb 22 08:33:45 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(534): eth7: Assoc 88:D0:39:C0:60:A6, status: Successful (0)
Feb 22 08:33:45 hostapd: eth7: STA 88:d0:39:c0:60:a6 IEEE 802.11: associated
Feb 22 08:33:50 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(469): eth7: Deauth_ind 88:D0:39:C0:60:A6, status: 0, reason: Deauthenticated because sending station is leaving (or has left) IBSS or ESS (3)
Feb 22 08:33:50 hostapd: eth7: STA 88:d0:39:c0:60:a6 IEEE 802.11: disassociated
Feb 22 08:33:50 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(469): eth7: Deauth_ind 88:D0:39:C0:60:A6, status: 0, reason: Previous authentication no longer valid (2)
Feb 22 08:33:50 hostapd: eth7: STA 88:d0:39:c0:60:a6 IEEE 802.11: disassociated

 

[Unisoft]

Dirty, filthy, stinking upgrade from previous alpha2 on 3 AX86U and looking good so far in terms of stability and connections.

QOS adaptive dials look wrong though. On a speed test, the UPLOAD part of it was registering movement on the DOWNLOAD dial and when downloading nothing was registered on either dial?
The traffic rate was also completely incorrect and a few KB. No change from alpha1?

 

[Morpheus2020]

Dirty, filthy, stinking upgrade from previous alpha2 on 3 AX86U and looking good so far in terms of stability and connections.

QOS adaptive dials look wrong though. On a speed test, the UPLOAD part of it was registering movement on the DOWNLOAD dial and when downloading nothing was registered on either dial?
The traffic rate was also completely incorrect and a few KB. No change from alpha1?

Adaptive QoS on AX86U running 386.5 alpha2 works improperly.

386.5 Alpha1?

I was gonna ask where’s the GT-AX11000 Would love to test it on my GT-AX11000 as well once it’s available.

www.snbforums.com

 

[BreakingDad]

Questions:

Can someone confirm if Flex is working correctly on this release?

Do I need to fully reset and enter all settings again manually or will settings from 386.3_2 load up ok ?

 

[AurelM]

I did dirty upgrades to my Asus RT-AC68U from AsusWRT-Merlin 386.4_0 to the two alphas and now to AsusWRT_Merlin 368.5_beta1. All appears to be working well, I didn't encounter any problem.
The Disable 11b option on the 2.4 GHz WiFi when Wireless Mode is set to Auto still makes the clients disconnect a few seconds after connecting, but, unlike 386.4_0, the option can be disabled by the WebUI, no need to use the terminal.
Thank you RMerlin!

Installed like 8 hours ago and noticing my log is filled with below messages, not sure what they mean.
Eth6 says something about 'channel 6' wich i dont use, i have 1 for the 2.4ghz set.
The mac that is shown on the eth7 messages is also something im unable to find in my house.

Feb 22 08:32:35 acsd: eth6: COEX: downgraded chanspec 0x1909 to 0x100b: channel 6 used by exiting BSSs
Feb 22 08:33:45 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(505): eth7: Auth 88:D0:39:C0:60:A6, status: Successful (0)
Feb 22 08:33:45 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(534): eth7: Assoc 88:D0:39:C0:60:A6, status: Successful (0)
Feb 22 08:33:45 hostapd: eth7: STA 88:d0:39:c0:60:a6 IEEE 802.11: associated
Feb 22 08:33:50 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(469): eth7: Deauth_ind 88:D0:39:C0:60:A6, status: 0, reason: Deauthenticated because sending station is leaving (or has left) IBSS or ESS (3)
Feb 22 08:33:50 hostapd: eth7: STA 88:d0:39:c0:60:a6 IEEE 802.11: disassociated
Feb 22 08:33:50 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(469): eth7: Deauth_ind 88:D0:39:C0:60:A6, status: 0, reason: Previous authentication no longer valid (2)
Feb 22 08:33:50 hostapd: eth7: STA 88:d0:39:c0:60:a6 IEEE 802.11: disassociated

I think that this line, Feb 22 08:32:35 acsd: eth6: COEX: downgraded chanspec 0x1909 to 0x100b: channel 6 used by exiting BSSs, refers to the fact that your 2.4 GHz Channel bandwidth is not set to 20 MHz and when the router detects another wireless network using a channel overlapping with its own, it correctly falls back the bandwidth to 20 MHz and informs you by that line. Check this soon to be 10 years old article from this very website for more information.
You should manually set the Channel bandwidth to 20 MHz, also set the Control channel to 1, 6 or 11, depending on which is the most unused.

For the other lines, searching for 88:d0:39 OUI reveals the owner to be Tonly Technology Co. Ltd, formerly TCL Technoly Electronics(Huizhou).,Ltd, which unfortunatelly means nothing to me.

 

[heywire]

I know the AC86U and AX68U doesn't throttle LAN transfers with Cake, I wonder if the AX88U does, maybe its the CPU architecture.

Where did you find this stated? Would be nice to know. Personally, my AX88U (location 1) seem to handle LAN clients with CakeQos fine. Very disappointing if the my AC86U doesn't, as CakeQos was a key reason for me to upgrade to AC86U at a different location (2), and I've seen no announcement about this.

Thanks for the links and for setting me straight. So while other router models have received updated wi-fi drivers from ASUS/Broadcom, the AC86U has not?

The other models received an updated official firmware based on the 386.46** branch back in January '22, but AC86U still hasn't received it yet (as you can see from the post I linked above, it usually receives its update only a few days after AC68U).

Still, Merlin has received a for 386_46 GPL version for AC86U which is included in this 386.5 Merlin-BETAversion. Which is a bit odd.

There were a fair number that reported problems in the 386.4 release forum as well as on TPLINK site. Not sure if its AX only but could be.

If you look at the post I linked above, these problems go way back, far past the 386.4 release, including both official Asus firmware as well as Merlin.

Personally, I bought a few AC86U used a few months ago, and it has been a complete nightmare, especially until the latest official firmware which has been somewhat more stable, although I have had to restart the router regularly because after running fine for a few days, it drops all 2.4ghz units permanently until I restart the router,. The improvement here is that it doesn't kick clients off left and right with WCLEVENT instances in the log, and lots of other issues like I experienced with the previous versions (I tried several versions back of both official and Merlin).

So I'm giving Asus a last chance to fix the issues with this version, or I'll throw back the AC86U's for good, as they still are covered by the general sales-warranty in my country)

 

[Mister2088]

Via a Dirty Upgrade, I installed 386.5_beta1 from 386.5_alpha2 without issue. It has been up around 4 hours and is running well per my setup (see signature).
I'll update tomorrow if I see anything odd.
Thanks/Merci @RMerlin

 

[CaptnDanLKW]

Upgraded from 386.4 to 386.5_b1. Have an issue with a task I've not done in over a year, so it spans multiple Merlin versions - a large media sync to my backup drive on my RTAC86U.

When doing a robocopy (or large files) from a local drive to a network share on the RTAC86U, the copy will pause, then fail/timeout. This coincides with a NAND error in syslog.

Isn't it odd that, even if I have some bad blocks in flash, that a constant high CPU load (smbd) would have flash usage, and then hang? I know smbd uses RAM as cache, but I think the architecture has the flash and the RAM chips separate so it doesn't make sense, but its frequent and repeatable.

Edit: There are 0x4 and also 0x1 errors listed. FWIW, I looked in brcmnand.c and see:

#define DRV_NAME            "brcmnand"

#define CMD_PAGE_READ            0x01
#define CMD_PROGRAM_PAGE        0x04

Thoughts? Any changes to Samba in 386.5_b1?

 

[heysoundude]

Saw something pop up on GitHub a day or 3 ago, so I've been expecting this.

I have AT&T Fiber modem in front of my Router and put the AT&T modem/router into passthrough mode and now get the external IP address on my Asus. You might check if you have similar option.

Did you have to clone the modem's MAC to your router?

 

[heysoundude]

I can’t (ISP specific firmware does not offer that option).

I think that's how they lock you to their QoS so you can't test the limits of your link

 

[RMerlin]

When doing a robocopy (or large files) from a local drive to a network share on the RTAC86U, the copy will pause, then fail/timeout. This coincides with a NAND error in syslog.

Sound like a hardware issue to me.

Keep in mind that in addition to the firmware files, the NAND also contains the jffs partition, with all of its content (syslog copy, various settings, etc...).

 

[vit5421]

I have 39 IoT devices and have never had an issue with my two AC86U or my 1900P I used to use.

Its working fine until i turn on DNS over TLS and many IoT devices switching off-line including Arlo doorbell, Bryant thermostats and so on and this issue force me to turn on DNS filters.

 

[PR3MIUM]

Dirty as always and running fine on my RT-AX88U, THX

 

[SheikhSheikha]

With Alpha2 and Beta1 I consider it a rock solid foundation.

The thing is that the signal strength of my radios has dropped with around 10%. (this happened in the past too once in a while but in the end always panned out ok. This time I notice it not improving and I think Asus has to take another look at their signal modules (knowing that Merlin does not touch this).

Another thing is that I get the impression that the NAT passthrough does not function properly.

 

[prp2]

First "invalid firmware" on my AX11000. Out of curiosity, I successfully installed the lastest stock firmware, then successfully went back and re-installed 386.4, but still no on 386.5 from there... Guess I'll factory reset tomorrow. Feck

Getting the same error when attempting to upgrade two of my RT-AC5300 routers to 386.5 beta1 from 386.4 which they've been running solid on for 48+ days.

Downloaded the beta twice just in case something happened with the first file, but same error. Also rebooted both and tried again with no luck

 

[CaptnDanLKW]

Sound like a hardware issue to me.

Keep in mind that in addition to the firmware files, the NAND also contains the jffs partition, with all of its content (syslog copy, various settings, etc...).

Thanks, that was my thought as well. Understood about the /jffs partition. I have entware and scribe installed, so a lot of the normal /jffs IO (syslog-ng) is going to a separate USB drive.

I'm still trying to imagine what smbd is doing, in volume, that is causing any non 'RAM' (i.e. nand/flash) usage. Stability has been legendary, with not even a reboot post initial updates for the past couple releases - multi-month uptimes.

Does the option to initialize JFFS partition do a format & bad block detection in the traditional sense? (detect and map around it) like a 'real' file system and storage controller does? Would doing this help (avoid them), if there are actual issues?