Diversion Help: I locked myself out while playing with Diversion

[smallnet]

I had a perfectly working setup, and everyone in my household was happy with Diversion!

But I had to tinker. It's all on me.... anyways:

RT-AC68U running Merlin latest and to it via a short USB3.0 cable connected to the USB3.0 port is a Samsung USB flash drive.
I installed amtm and a bunch of packages. Skynet, Diversion, several others. All worked great. No reason for me to tinker....

But I did.

I went into the Diversion menu, selected option b for Blocking list, then I did something else which I can't quite remember, but I think I went into an option for either a "whitelist" or a "blacklist" or some kind of server and it asked me for a URL. The prompt was (without spaces between the letters U R L.

U R L :

I had no idea what I'm doing and there was no option to cancel, so I hit enter. And then my internet was down, the SSH session disconnected and I could not get back into the router. I plugged out the USB and then the router is now working, but I would like to repair what I did, if I can. I can always reinstall everything, but wanted to know if this is something I can do manually by editing whatever I broke on the USB drive?

 

[thelonelycoder]

Try plugging the device back in while the router still runs, things will start up automatically.
See if Diversion comes up without the router self-rebooting.

 

[smallnet]

Thank you for responding so promptly!

I plugged the USB back in and the router did not restart (good) and I was able to ssh into it. There is no internet still, meaning, when I try for example to go into Diversion and check for an update, or to set a different filter, it does not see the internet and hangs.

I must have put some kind of an entry somewhere which essentially makes everything blocked.

It's not a big deal to start from scratch. Just want to say the script was rock solid and I had no issues at all, just my tinkering caused the havoc at home.

 

[thelonelycoder]

It's not a big deal to start from scratch. Just want to say the script was rock solid and I had no issues at all, just my tinkering caused the havoc at home.

Looks like Dnsmasq does not start for an unknown reason. I'll try to recreate this with your description above.

 

[smallnet]

Great, thank you. In the evening when the internet is not needed, I can try to go in via SSH and see what screen I was at. I only remember that I was at some kind of a secondary screen with about 4-7 options and essentially trying to poke around the various lists, whitelists, blacklists, ad removal lists, etc. I think I selected an option 3 or 4 in that menu, and expected to get some kind of a choice where I could choose to edit a whitelist, or select from a set number of predetermined lists, but instead the option asked me for a URL to input, and I think I effectively set that to a Null, no URL, because I just hit enter at the prompt asking me to input a URL.

Sometimes when I am poking around in the menus, I misunderstand what will follow if I select a choice. I wish there was some kind of an escape key, a "back" key, that would just reverse the last menu selection choice I have made. For example, if I didn't understand what a menu does, and I hit the key to enter into that menu, sometimes the choice is then not another menu, but is asking me for an entry. At that point, I'm trapped to enter something, I cannot enter an "e" for exit. And since I don't know what to enter, I am not sure what I should do to "escape" and to leave the setting unchanged.

 

[martinr]

......Sometimes when I am poking around in the menus, I misunderstand what will follow if I select a choice. I wish there was some kind of an escape key, a "back" key, that would just reverse the last menu selection choice I have made. For example, if I didn't understand what a menu does, and I hit the key to enter into that menu, sometimes the choice is then not another menu, but is asking me for an entry. At that point, I'm trapped to enter something, I cannot enter an "e" for exit. And since I don't know what to enter, I am not sure what I should do to "escape" and to leave the setting unchanged.

i know that feeling, which is why, when in a setting-up dialogue, I really appreciate the guidance, sometimes provided, as to which is the recommended setting. But when I’m in the situation you describe, I simply close the SSH session and then re-open it and start afresh.

i haven’t needed to do that for a long time now because the developers have provided the e, escape, option just about everywhere - except perhaps where you ended up.