Asuswrt-Merlin - custom build of the Asus RT-N66U firmware

[Gingernut]

Just noticed on the new beta that you've moved to the tools menu the hidden Main_AdmStatus_Content.asp page, that makes things easier, thank you.

Edit: On my European unit your latest betas re-limit the txpower to 101mW on both radios, I haven't tried an older build to test.

I know you've already been through all this with Richto but is it possible that this area has been changed in the latest releases?

Edit: Just tested out raising the txpower on the Advanced_PerformanceTuning_Content page and it lets me go over the 101mW limit thats on the Wireless Professional menu.

Edit 2: If both radios are set to max allowed 101mW in txpower ajust box on the Wireless Professional menu then output of command is:

wl -i eth1 txpwr1= 126mW
wl -i eth2 txpwr1= 79mW

but if set in gui to stock 80mW then the before mentioned command gives an output:

wl -i eth1 txpwr1= 1496 mW
wl -i eth2 txpwr1= 1496 mW

Strange stuff.

Thanks

 

[RMerlin]

@i1100: It's possible that Asus re-introduced the bug in another portion of the code. They did a lot of changes to the networkmap code since build 144, resolving many issues, but possibly creating new ones. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce that issue as easily as I could with the first case, so it will be hard for me to blindly fix it.

@Gingernut: any change related to power settings was done by Asus, so it's possible they fixed the bug that allowed you to bypass the regional limitations.

When you enter the default value of 80 mW, the firmware sets a special "default" value rather than specifically setting it to what 80 mW would be. So, it's possible that the driver won't properly report that value when queried.

There are quite a few oddities with Asuswrt related to output power. They are quite time-consuming to troubleshoot however, so it's not a priority for me at the moment, sorry.

 

[diyguy]

Merlin, how often to ddns updates happen? Is there a way to tweak it , make it more frequent ? I was able to set this on my old DDWRT router.

 

[RMerlin]

Merlin, how often to ddns updates happen? Is there a way to tweak it , make it more frequent ? I was able to set this on my old DDWRT router.

Dynamic DNS is tightly integrated into the firmware. It will restart the dynamic DNS service every time the WAN interface actually goes up, so there is no need for periodic checks.

 

[diyguy]

Dynamic DNS is tightly integrated into the firmware. It will restart the dynamic DNS service every time the WAN interface actually goes up, so there is no need for periodic checks.

Thanks,

The only concern I have is that dyndns.org expires after 30 days, so I was hopeing I could put in a cron job to make it run every 29 days or something. Is there an actual command I can run from an ssh session to force an update?

 

[GirlPower]

NAT Loopback

RMerlin,

I'm having trouble accessing my own mail/web server from my own lan with the latetst RM12 Beta 2. I think this is called NAT Loopback ?

I can access everything from the outside (WAN), so port-forwarding seems to be ok, just not from my LAN.

If i flash back to RM12 Beta 1 it starts working again.

Any idea ?

 

[RMerlin]

RMerlin,

I'm having trouble accessing my own mail/web server from my own lan with the latetst RM12 Beta 2. I think this is called NAT Loopback ?

I can access everything from the outside (WAN), so port-forwarding seems to be ok, just not from my LAN.

If i flash back to RM12 Beta 1 it starts working again.

Any idea ?

Do you have any USB disk plugged on the router? If so, could you try turning your router off, unplugging any USB disk from the router, then turning it back on without those disks, and try again? I have a strong suspicion as to the source of this issue.

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks,

The only concern I have is that dyndns.org expires after 30 days, so I was hopeing I could put in a cron job to make it run every 29 days or something. Is there an actual command I can run from an ssh session to force an update?

I suspect that the firmware doesn't take that 30 days expiration into account indeed.

Crond is enabled on this firmware, so you could create a cron job to manually run ez-ipupdate to force an update. The crontab must be saved as "/var/spool/cron/crontabs/admin" (this file won't survive reboots, so you should use an init-start script to copy it there at boot time). Have it re-run ez-ipupdate to force an update on the 15 and 30th of each month (for example). See ez-ipupdate's documentation for the exact syntax, I don't know what options are needed to force updates.

Note that the "cru" command is included in the firmware, however it's broken as it creates the crontab for "root" (which does not exist) instead of "admin". That's on the ToDO list.

 

[GirlPower]

Do you have any USB disk plugged on the router? If so, could you try turning your router off, unplugging any USB disk from the router, then turning it back on without those disks, and try again? I have a strong suspicion as to the source of this issue.

No, all USB ports are unused.

 

[RMerlin]

No, all USB ports are unused.

Sigh. I hate NAT loopback. It's a kludge on top of another kludge (NAT), and it's broken one way or another on half of the routers out there.

Can you PM me with the output of these three commands (run them over telnet, or from http://192.168.1.1/Main_AdmStatus_Content.asp, replacing the IP with your router's ) please?

iptables -L -v -t nat
iptables -L -v -t mangle
iptables -L -v

Also specify which type of Internet connection you are using (DHCP, PPPoE, etc...)

Thanks!

 

[GirlPower]

Can you PM me with .....

I've send you 4 pm's

 

[RMerlin]

Issue fixed. There was a computability issue between the new NAT loopback and HW acceleration (CTF). I modified the rules Asus creates when CTF is being used to fix the problem.

Temporary workaround until the next beta is to disable HW acceleration on the LAN -> Switch Control tab. Only do this if you are having issues with the NAT loopback.

 

[diyguy]

I suspect that the firmware doesn't take that 30 days expiration into account indeed.

Crond is enabled on this firmware, so you could create a cron job to manually run ez-ipupdate to force an update. The crontab must be saved as "/var/spool/cron/crontabs/admin" (this file won't survive reboots, so you should use an init-start script to copy it there at boot time). Have it re-run ez-ipupdate to force an update on the 15 and 30th of each month (for example). See ez-ipupdate's documentation for the exact syntax, I don't know what options are needed to force updates.

Note that the "cru" command is included in the firmware, however it's broken as it creates the crontab for "root" (which does not exist) instead of "admin". That's on the ToDO list.

thanks, I'll probably use the jffs script directory to hold a conf file for ez-ipupdate.

If anyone else is interested the way it works is you need to run the command ez-ipupdate -c <path to configfile>

the config file should look something like this:

service-type=dyndns
user=usernameasswrd
host=domain
interface=eth0


So in Cron all you need is
/usr/sbin/ez-ipupdate -c <path to file>


Question about the init-start script is there a sample of it somewhere, I saw the readme in your firmware make reference to it, but I could not find one.

thanks

 

[RMerlin]

Question about the init-start script is there a sample of it somewhere, I saw the readme in your firmware make reference to it, but I could not find one.

None of those scripts exist, you have to create them in /jffs/scripts/ . They are Linux scripts, so they must start with a shebang on their first line:

#!/bin/sh

init-script gets run quite early in the boot process (before any service gets started).

 

[diyguy]

None of those scripts exist, you have to create them in /jffs/scripts/ . They are Linux scripts, so they must start with a shebang on their first line:



init-script gets run quite early in the boot process (before any service gets started).

thanks, ok i think i get it. so by putting a copy command in init-script will ensure the cron file gets placed into the nvram allowing ot to execute as per cron schedule

 

[Gingernut]

Thanks for the reply.

Asus only has an add/remove rule button on the port-forwarding/user defined QOS pages, would it not also be logical to have at least a modify button aswell?.

Another observation is if the QOS code is ported from Tomato on the user defined rule page, the order of the rules is also crucial, not just the priority, at least in Tomato it's this way.

Cheers
Maybe Asus could add a move up/down function to this page

 

[diyguy]

Issue fixed. There was a computability issue between the new NAT loopback and HW acceleration (CTF). I modified the rules Asus creates when CTF is being used to fix the problem.

Temporary workaround until the next beta is to disable HW acceleration on the LAN -> Switch Control tab. Only do this if you are having issues with the NAT loopback.

Thanks for the heads up on this, I just ran into this issue as well. What does hardware acceleration do anyway? does it help with the performance?

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks for the heads up on this, I just ran into this issue as well. What does hardware acceleration do anyway? does it help with the performance?

Hardware acceleration, also known as CTF - Cut Through Forwardind - essentially helps speeding up packet processing. That option had some fairly strict limitations however, and will be disabled automatically whenever you use QoS, or before build 151, whenever you used port forwarding.

 

[RMerlin]

Updated OP with 3.0.0.3.157.12 Beta 3. This will hopefully be the last beta before the final release.

This update mostly consists of fixes related to the new NAT loopback code.

 

[kau]

None of those scripts exist, you have to create them in /jffs/scripts/ . They are Linux scripts, so they must start with a shebang on their first line:



init-script gets run quite early in the boot process (before any service gets started).

Hi,

I have created a small script as /jffs/scripts/init-start.startup

#!/bin/sh
echo server=/bbc.co.uk/149.154.158.186 >> /etc/dnsmasq.conf

then I, chmod +x /jffs/scripts/init-start.startup.
Unfortunately it does not seem to work. After reboot I can not see any changes in the dnsmasq.conf.
Could you help me, please?