[Fork] Asuswrt-Merlin 374.43 LTS releases (Archive)

[john9527]

(PS - I consider it a good thing that this is the biggest topic of discussion right now )

My intent was to say it was a good thing that the biggest problem on the fork was the state of scroll bars, not some other functional problem. It means (with a couple of exceptions on my part) that I've managed to not break anything and things are pretty stable.

if you mean the the lenght of the fork thread i also consider it a bad thing.
it means there are a lot more people who apparently like the old firmware version but despite that fact Asus is still going the other way(more functionality but less performance/range)

This is a tough situation for Asus. A big part of the market differentiation in this segment is around features/function. But there is a part of the user base that views a router more as an appliance, with a goal of 'set it and forget it', that places less value on some of those new features and more on stability.

 

[XSXS]

Hi,

I know this may sound like a dumb question but what is the difference between this firmware rev (fork) and merlins?
Thanks!

 

[Gravityz]

i'll answer that.

Asus firmware:made by Asus
Asus made some improvements and new functionality along the way
They also restricted a couple of things because the FCC told them so.
one of them is limited range after firmware 374
so the higher the firmware version , the more functionality but after a certian version(374) range went down the drain.

Merlin Firmware:
bettter and improved version of the standard Asus firmware.
Merlin adds new features to the current Asus firmware but does not change standard functionality(so if asus range is bad, merlin range will be as bad)
However if Asus made a mistake in the firmware(a bug) you can be sure that Merlin fixes it(how is that for support)
lucky for us Asus knows they are not brilliant and uses those patches to fix their own firmware.
You might call it Asus proprietary firmware with a open source community which has more knowledge about this firmware then Asus does

John's fork firmware v374
John took the last populair firmware version from Asus which was not limited by range.
For a lot of people this firmware is the best regarding range and performance.
John does not alter this firmware a lot but he keeps on adding the latest security patches from the original Asus firmware.

in short:you get the firmware with the best range, compatibility AND with the latest securityholes still plugged and applied.

the total story might be a little different but this is it in a nutshell.

Hi,

I know this may sound like a dumb question but what is the difference between this firmware rev (fork) and merlins?
Thanks!

 

[bbunge]

Is there a chance that this "fork" does not suffer from NVRAM filling up when the router sees a good number of PC's in a days time? Am running two AC68U's at not-for-profits and have had to stand on my head to keep them running! Thanks! bb

 

[bodean]

If we are running Merlin 378.53
and want to come over to this fork, I assume a hard reset is in order?

 

[john9527]

Is there a chance that this "fork" does not suffer from NVRAM filling up when the router sees a good number of PC's in a days time? Am running two AC68U's at not-for-profits and have had to stand on my head to keep them running! Thanks! bb

I think there's a good chance it won't see the problem....I believe the NVRAM 'growth' was introduced with the enhanced networkmap code in the later levels that tracks things like custom icons, custom names, etc.

 

[john9527]

If we are running Merlin 378.53
and want to come over to this fork, I assume a hard reset is in order?

Yes, a factory reset is required. My User NVRAM utility can help ease the transition....
http://www.snbforums.com/threads/user-nvram-save-restore-utility.19521/

 

[bbunge]

Installed on my RT-N66R a couple of hours ago. So far so good! Was surprised that I can run scripts from JFFS and use the 20/40 Chanel Bandwidth setting in the 2.4 GHZ band and actually get a 300 meg connection! Will drive to my AC68U's on Monday and update to this "fork." Will post results...

 

[bodean]

i'll answer that.

Asus firmware:made by Asus
Asus made some improvements and new functionality along the way
They also restricted a couple of things because the FCC told them so.
one of them is limited range after firmware 374
so the higher the firmware version , the more functionality but after a certian version(374) range went down the drain.

Merlin Firmware:
bettter and improved version of the standard Asus firmware.
Merlin adds new features to the current Asus firmware but does not change standard functionality(so if asus range is bad, merlin range will be as bad)
However if Asus made a mistake in the firmware(a bug) you can be sure that Merlin fixes it(how is that for support)
lucky for us Asus knows they are not brilliant and uses those patches to fix their own firmware.
You might call it Asus proprietary firmware with a open source community which has more knowledge about this firmware then Asus does

John's fork firmware v374
John took the last populair firmware version from Asus which was not limited by range.
For a lot of people this firmware is the best regarding range and performance.
John does not alter this firmware a lot but he keeps on adding the latest security patches from the original Asus firmware.

in short:you get the firmware with the best range, compatibility AND with the latest securityholes still plugged and applied.

the total story might be a little different but this is it in a nutshell.

Thanks for this write up. Thinking of trying the fork, coming from merlin. Does the fork keep with updated 2.4 and 5.0 drivers or use old drivers?

 

[john9527]

Thanks for this write up. Thinking of trying the fork, coming from merlin. Does the fork keep with updated 2.4 and 5.0 drivers or use old drivers?

First thing to maybe save you some time. I see your signature indicates you have an AC87R. The fork is based on code from before the 87R was released, so it's not supported. Sorry I missed seeing it in your first post.

But to answer your question, the wireless drivers aren't changed from what was used in the original code release. Some people have better performance on the older drivers, especially for the MIPS based routers.

 

[bodean]

First thing to maybe save you some time. I see your signature indicates you have an AC87R. The fork is based on code from before the 87R was released, so it's not supported.
.

Thanks. Guess that answers my question [emoji1]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Just wanted to update been using v-11 since before it was even released and i am happy to say no problems at all working fantastic. Thanks John !!!

 

[bbunge]

I think there's a good chance it won't see the problem....I believe the NVRAM 'growth' was introduced with the enhanced networkmap code in the later levels that tracks things like custom icons, custom names, etc.

After a day of operation the AC68U has seen over 50 devices on the network. The NVRAM did grow slightly as the router recorded the MAC and IP of the PC's in "webdav_smb_pc". Am not sure if these "old" devices will go away in time (as I would like them to go away!). I was able to clear this setting by doing a Rescan Network Devices from the web GUI of Asus AiCloud. I can also clear this value with a CRON job running a script to set webdav_smb_pc= (blank value).

Does anyone know if there is a way to automate the Rescan Network Devices? I know this part of the code is closed source (I've asked Asus for the info to do this and was politely told it was closed source).

Thanks,

bb

 

[john9527]

After a day of operation the AC68U has seen over 50 devices on the network. The NVRAM did grow slightly as the router recorded the MAC and IP of the PC's in "webdav_smb_pc". Am not sure if these "old" devices will go away in time (as I would like them to go away!). I was able to clear this setting by doing a Rescan Network Devices from the web GUI of Asus AiCloud. I can also clear this value with a CRON job running a script to set webdav_smb_pc= (blank value).

Does anyone know if there is a way to automate the Rescan Network Devices? I know this part of the code is closed source (I've asked Asus for the info to do this and was politely told it was closed source).

Thanks,

bb

I took a quick look at the code, and it seems 'webdav_smb_pc' is unique to running to AiCloud....maybe why not many people have seen it. It looks like it's contents are validated against the arp table, so it's possible that old devices will be cleared when the arp table reaches it's limit (tough to follow all the code there). I think it's IPv4 only, so that would mean close to 128 devices (or 2 1/2 times the size of webdav_smb_pc with 50 devices). Don't know how much free NVRAM space you have left.

You could try reducing the size of the arp table, but that may be risky. I also looked to see if there was a way to call 'Rescan Network Devices' and it doesn't look like there is any external interface for that. But it looks like what that may be doing (at least in part) is re-initializing samba. So, you could try

service restart_nasapps

if that doesn't work, you could also try

service restart_cloudsync

But in the end, it may just be easier to keep using your cron job (and maybe add a check for the size of the variable before clearing it).

 

[conquer22]

great firmware. Many thanks for all your work.

 

[junkun13]

what file should I download for RT87u?

 

[john9527]

what file should I download for RT87u?

The fork is based on code from before the 87U was released, so it's not supported. Sorry.

 

[Swingtop]

Finally moved from v7 to 11E1 (after 53 days of ultra-stable uptime), and the 5g connection status now consistently displays 1.0 Gbps (used to be 0.875), great. I remember all the problems I had with my Linksys, and now: nothing to be done. Just enjoying the stability . Thanks for the effort Merlin/John.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Hey John, Just seen this in the sys log any thing of concern dont remember ever seeing this before google turned up nothing on it. It looks harmless enough just thought i would check.

May 20 16:43:11 kernel: nvram: consolidating space!

 

[john9527]

May 20 16:43:11 kernel: nvram: consolidating space!

Nothing to worry about...part of normal operation (Merlin helped explain it for the last person who saw it).
http://www.snbforums.com/threads/fork-update-for-374-43-available.18914/page-74#post-175602