Installing Skynet corrupts attached USB drive (RT-AX68U 388.2)

[nzwayne]

1st attempt: Installing from scratch new firmware (388.2) and merlin-add ons on a previously operational RT-AX68U. All was going well until I tried to install Skynet. At the point of creating the 2MB SWAP drive, the installation process hung. Nothing occured in about 15mins (usually created within a minute). Checking the Router GUI the USB was no longer showing attached to the USB 3.0 port. Powered off/on the Router, the USB drive still missing. Placed USB drive in my Win11 laptop and used EASE to reformatted the USB drive to make operational again.
2nd attempt: Used a different (new) 32MB USB Samsung drive. Once again at the point of Skynet's stage of creating SWAP drive, it hung. This time the drive still showing present in the GUI. After a long time powered off/on the router. On accessing the Router again via SSH, "out of memory error". AMTM would not start "out of memory". I reloaded the RT-AX68U again to get the SSH access operational again, formatting JFFS wasn't enough.
My 3rd attempt plan... Install everything except Skynet, save Router config & JFFS configs and install Skynet again....to see what occurs.
Any ideas how to resolve? Thks.

Update: I used the SW (create swap partition) utility on AMTM to create a 2MB partition. Then installed Skynet, no errors (yippee). Left with the conclusion when Skynet creates the Swap Partition as part of the Skynet install, the USB data corruption & "other stuff" occurs.

 

[L&LD]

You shouldn't be creating a swap drive (or partition), you should be creating a swap file.

There is nothing wrong with Skynet (are you indicating you're using a backup config file to configure the router?), I would be wary of the USB drive(s) used.

 

[Tech9]

Installing from scratch new firmware (388.2)

There is no Asuswrt-Merlin 388.2 firmware. There is unsupported Alpha only.