How often do you guys reboot?

[JaimeZX]

Ideally, a full reset to factory defaults should have been done when you originally flashed 384.6 (too).

That didn't seem necessary since I had literally just unboxed it.

That raises a related question, though. If you guys are doing a factory reset with every version upgrade, is there a faster way to reestablish all of your settings than just going through every tab and trying to remember how you had them set?

 

[consorts]

my 3100 that annoyingly, died after only a year

sorry for the tangent, but - just curious, what ac3100 symptoms qualified it as "dead" to you and do you think any factors like bad electricity or ambient heat may have contributed to it's death

 

[martinr]

Aah - indeed you are correct! Merlin 384.9. The 3200 is a replacement for my 3100 that annoyingly, died after only a year. 384.9 was an upgrade (last month?) from (384.6? The last version available.) I installed [384.6] directly after receiving the router and all configuration was done in 384.6. 384.9 was a "dirty flash" over 384.6. Now that you mention it, I suppose that could be part of the issue?

If, like me, you view the forum on a mobile device, you won’t see L&LD’s signature, so here’s the link to his world famous, tried snd tested, guide
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/n...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573
Follow it religiously and you won’t go wrong.

As it seems you need to do a factory reset, you’ll find you will do it in a fraction of the time you would have spent troubleshooting, posting in the forum, and, in the end, you’d still have to do a reset.

Follow the guide, no short cuts, and let us know how you go on. And do pay attention to L&LD’s advice about taking one step at a time: if you reinstall all the “extras” at once (Diversion, Skynet, pixelserv-tls, DNSCrypt) and you hit a glitch, you’ll end up resetting again. And I’d be tempted to install DNSCrypt only when you’re totally confident your router is stable, even if that takes a few weeks.

 

[JaimeZX]

sorry for the tangent, but - just curious, what ac3100 symptoms qualified it as "dead" to you and do you think any factors like bad electricity or ambient heat may have contributed to it's death

Thread: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/ac3100-seems-hard-bricked.50072/ In the end, Asus tech support agreed with me that it was toast. Power should be clean, run through a Back-UPS XS1000. I did have it sitting on top of the (4-bay Drobo) NAS it was sharing out, but we keep our house at 67° in the winter, and this was late November. In any event, I've moved the 3200 about 6" away from the Drobo. It still shares the same poorly-ventilated enclosure the 3100 had. Very annoying. (That said, the self-reported temps in the GUI were never ridiculous.)

If, like me, you view the forum on a mobile device, you won’t see L&LD’s signature, so here’s the link to his world famous, tried snd tested, guide
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/n...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573
Follow it religiously and you won’t go wrong.

Nice. Will have to wait until the in-laws leave.

As it seems you need to do a factory reset, you’ll find you will do it in a fraction of the time you would have spent troubleshooting, posting in the forum, and, in the end, you’d still have to do a reset.

Point taken.

Follow the guide, no short cuts, and let us know how you go on. And do pay attention to L&LD’s advice about taking one step at a time: if you reinstall all the “extras” at once (Diversion, Skynet, pixelserv-tls, DNSCrypt) and you hit a glitch, you’ll end up resetting again. And I’d be tempted to install DNSCrypt only when you’re totally confident your router is stable, even if that takes a few weeks.

Fair enough. I'll follow-up in here after I get started. I do wonder why L&LD suggests changing the SSIDs?

 

[L&LD]

That didn't seem necessary since I had literally just unboxed it.

That raises a related question, though. If you guys are doing a factory reset with every version upgrade, is there a faster way to reestablish all of your settings than just going through every tab and trying to remember how you had them set?

This (bolded in the quote above) is what most users can't seem to get their head around.

A reset to factory defaults isn't just needed on a used router.

A reset to factory defaults doesn't just erase your settings, it puts the routers currently installed firmware to its defaults too - which may or may not have changed from the previously running firmware.

To get most of your current settings, use the NVRAM export commands RMerlin has provided countless times to have a text-based version of these settings. A simple search should get you started.

With this file stored in a safe place, it is a quick copy/paste job to get a new router up and running.


Here is an excerpt from the README-merlin.txt file included with RMerlin's firmware:

NOTE: resetting to factory default after flashing is strongly recommended for the following cases:
- Updating from a firmware version that is more than 3 releases older
- Switching from a Tomato/DD-WRT/OpenWRT firmware

If you run into any issue after an upgrade and you haven't done so, try doing a factory default reset as well.
Always read the changelog, as mandatory resets will be mentioned there when they are necessary.

In all of these cases, do NOT load a saved copy of your settings!

This would be the same thing as NOT resetting at all, as you will simply re-enter any invalid setting you wanted to get rid of. Make sure to create a new backup of your settings after reconfiguring.

 

[Tekneek]

Fellow RT-AC3200 owner here.

I only reboot when installing new firmware, making significant configuration changes (rare now), or the router has become unresponsive (was a non-issue until recently on 384.9, when I had to reboot a few times in the same week). There is work happening 24/7 on our network, so I strive to keep downtime to a minimum.

 

[Vexira]

why? is it really needed or do you not trust the router and think it will "blow up" on its own. I used to run an R7000 on Shibby Tomato with an uptime of 122 days without a single issue. But maybe you have other reasons. Not here to tell you what to do, just curious why you reboot it daily

Because my router is a early revision with issues it tends to slow down or even not forward upnp ports of I leave it up for a certain amount of time, I can't remember if it was days or hours, I would just flake out on the Xbox One or the PC , being a real pain to use, though I will replace it, I'm on the verge of deciding to by an rt-ax 88u as an upgrade path.

 

[martinr]

L&LD mentioned Merlin’s commands to export a text-based version of your NVRAM settings. I’ve looked it up for my own benefit; here’s a link:

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/reporting-router-settings.15441/#post-105026

 

[martinr]

L&LD mentioned Merlin’s commands to export a text-based version of your NVRAM settings. I’ve looked it up for my own benefit; here’s a link:

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/reporting-router-settings.15441/#post-105026

Alternatively, you can take screenshots beforehand, but be sure to visit every page. Or if your custom settings are very few, pen and paper’s enough.

 

[Sinner]

My 3100 been up since dec27 last time i tweaked my qos script. No issues

 

[PolarBear]

Just had to reboot because the telco sent me a new modem. Uptime on RT-AC86U was 113 days.

 

[Marc66]

I usually reboot when updating to a new Merlin version. Since I have an AC66U with no more updates, I haven't rebooted for a few months

 

[JaimeZX]

Well, I was going to hold off doing the L&LD reset until the next Merlin version came out, but this morning my log is full of errors... like

Mar 11 10:02:26 kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): previous I/O error to superblock detected
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): previous I/O error to superblock detected
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs error (device sdb1): ext4_find_entry:921: inode #2: comm amtm: reading directory lblock 0
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): previous I/O error to superblock detected
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs error (device sdb1): ext4_find_entry:921: inode #659458: comm [: reading directory lblock 0
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): previous I/O error to superblock detected
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs error (device sdb1): ext4_find_entry:921: inode #659458: comm [: reading directory lblock 0
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): previous I/O error to superblock detected
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs error (device sdb1): ext4_find_entry:921: inode #2: comm amtm: reading directory lblock 0
Mar 11 10:02:42 kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): previous I/O error to superblock detected

...and my thumbdrive is not currently recognized, AND my wife is out of the house. So... this could be an ideal time to futz with things.

Edit: at the bottom of the NVRAM output, what is "zebra_passwd=zebra" ??

 

[RMerlin]

Edit: at the bottom of the NVRAM output, what is "zebra_passwd=zebra" ??

Default password for a networking service which your router is most likely not running.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Zebra

Or for the specific version Asuswrt uses, Quagga: http://savannah.nongnu.org/news/?group=quagga

 

[JaimeZX]

OK. Reset per L&LD's guide complete! Fingers crossed.

 

[jerry6]

never with my 320's , have 1 going on 3 months no reboot , the others only when i update FW

 

[sfx2000]

Hehe - after 48 days - I finally had to reboot my Mac, yeah, I was surprised as well...

My pfSense box is working on 2.4.4-p2 - so that's since Jan 7th, which was a firmware reboot for the update - so it's Pi Day 3.14

Hotel Server (Core i5 NUC) and Jumpbox (RPi3B+), we reboot as needed with updates. Same with the NAS - QNAP issues regular updates and most need a reboot other than hotfixes...

I'll have to check my Netgear GS-108T switch - it's been a long time there, last time I recall was back last summer...

 

[L&LD]

Asus routers? Set and forget (usually).

pfSense box? Multiple times daily, not to mention re-installs within days of each other (all 2.4.4-p2). The most frustrating piece of routing equipment I've ever attempted to use.

I get it is something new (to me), but the vast and usually outdated 'info' available is either unusable today, or simply doesn't do what the article title may indicate. Looking forward to when I can forget about this science experiment gone awry.

Soon!

 

[sfx2000]

Asus routers? Set and forget (usually).

pfSense box? Multiple times daily, not to mention re-installs within days of each other (all 2.4.4-p2). The most frustrating piece of routing equipment I've ever attempted to use.

pfSense (and forks thereof) along with OpenWRT - they're a different market compared to things like AsusWRT (and to some degree DD-WRT).

Consumer distros - They hold your hand for the most part, the devs know this...

One must have some knowledge and skill in the networking realms when dealing with these distro's...

OpenWRT/pfSense eats unskilled babies - give me some tasty kibbles - nom, nom, nom...

 

[L&LD]

pfSense (and forks thereof) along with OpenWRT - they're a different market compared to things like AsusWRT (and to some degree DD-WRT).

Consumer distros - They hold your hand for the most part, the devs know this...

One must have some knowledge and skill in the networking realms when dealing with these distro's...

OpenWRT/pfSense eats unskilled babies - give me some tasty kibbles - nom, nom, nom...

Agreed. But why does simple logic have to go out the window when trying to use pfSense?