AX88U bad block in boot log.

[Decado]

Hi Guys

This might be better placed in another basic Asus router forum, I don't know but as I am running Merlin and add ons I thought I'd ask here.

Brand new RT-AX88U, just completed my first week up time with no obvious issues running 384.18, Diversion, Entware, Uidivstats and Skynet. I started with 384.19 but rolled back after two days due to some odd behaviour. When I checked the status this morning I noticed RAM usage had dropped from high 80% range which it had slowly climbed to over the week of running (which I am aware is normal) down to high 60% range. I've seen lots of reports of high RAM usage but none of it going down from what I have read so far. I couldn't find anything obviously wrong but as my experience is next to nothing at this point I wasn't sure if this was indicative of a problem so I decided to reboot the router in case a module had crashed or something similar.

After reboot I perused the router log and noticed nothing too concerning other than the following:-

May 5 15:05:05 kernel: nand: device found, Manufacturer ID: 0xc2, Chip ID: 0xda
May 5 15:05:05 kernel: nand: Macronix MX30LF2G189C
May 5 15:05:05 kernel: nand: 256 MiB, SLC, erase size: 128 KiB, page size: 2048, OOB size: 64
May 5 15:05:05 kernel: bcm63xx_nand ff801800.nand: Adjust timing_1 to 0x65324458 timing_2 to 0x80040e54
May 5 15:05:05 kernel: bcm63xx_nand ff801800.nand: detected 256MiB total, 128KiB blocks, 2KiB pages, 16B OOB, 8-bit, BCH-4
May 5 15:05:05 kernel: Bad block table found at page 131008, version 0x01
May 5 15:05:05 kernel: Bad block table found at page 130944, version 0x01
May 5 15:05:05 kernel: nand_read_bbt: bad block at 0x00000eb40000

I know most solid state memory has some bad blocks which are usually mapped out in the table but thought I would ask some opinions as to whether that is what in fact is happening here and if this is normal with a new AX88U? Also, does anyone else get RAM usage dropping in normal operations?

Many Thanks in advance
Ari

 

[ColinTaylor]

Use the search box for nand_read_bbt and you will find plenty of mentions for this message, for example here. Looks to be pretty normal.

 

[Decado]

Use the search box for nand_read_bbt and you will find plenty of mentions for this message, for example here. Looks to be pretty normal.

Thanks Colin, tried searching but obviously used the wrong parameters. I'd still be interested in people's experiences of memory usage suddenly reducing.

Regards
Ari

 

[RMerlin]

Large portion of RAM can temporarily be used for buffering USB disk content. Those buffer can be flushed out later on.

 

[Decado]

Large portion of RAM can temporarily be used for buffering USB disk content. Those buffer can be flushed out later on.

Thanks for that, I thought that might be the case but it’s a relief to hear it.

I’m really enjoying the functionality of the AX88u with your firmware and the community add ons. Thanks so much for all your work.