new AC86U crashes after 5 or 6 days

[ech]

I've got a mesh setup which used to run with 3 AC68U devices and I've swapped in a new AC86U as the central device in the mesh... and it works fine (factory reset with Merlin 386.1_2, temp hovers around 77-78C all the time), but it's crashed/rebooted on me twice since I started using it.

After the first crash, there were errors logged about the usb device and swap wasn't working, so I assumed that something had gone wrong with the usb stick, causing swap to be unavailable and that that had caused the crash (even though nothing was logged prior to the reboot). So I replaced the usb stick and set up a new swapfile and had been running w/o incident for about 5.5 days... then it rebooted again, without any indication of a problem in the logs and this time came back up with no usb-related errors.

Is there anything I can do to track down the cause of the problem here?

 

[Matthew Patrick]

Are you using Aiprotection? If yes. Try disabling it. I was the only one from 384.19 getting reboots sometimes every day . Sometimes every 2 days. And more. Nothing on logs.. tried wps reset. Even got a new RMA 2020 unit and it's the same thing. Turns out, it seems to be aiprotection. Disabled it and seems stable now . Try disabling it, reboot and let me know if it works

 

[bbunge]

If you are running scripts, Diversion, Skynet and etc. I would remove them and run the router without any USB device for a while. Then, format the USB stick on another PC with a swap partition of 512 MB and EXT4 for the rest of the thumb drive. Mount the swap partition with a post-mount file and watch the router for a couple of days for increased RAM use. When things are stable add the scripts back slowly and watch for impact. Oh, tou may want to turn off SMB if you use it.
Others will say that I'm nuts for recommending a swap partition but I have observed issues with a swap file from time to time. Might be worth a try...

 

[ech]

Are you using Aiprotection? If yes. Try disabling it. I was the only one from 384.19 getting reboots sometimes every day . Sometimes every 2 days. And more. Nothing on logs.. tried wps reset. Even got a new RMA 2020 unit and it's the same thing. Turns out, it seems to be aiprotection. Disabled it and seems stable now . Try disabling it, reboot and let me know if it works

You mean this:

I've never had that enabled... so I guess that's not my problem.

 

[ech]

If you are running scripts, Diversion, Skynet and etc. I would remove them and run the router without any USB device for a while. Then, format the USB stick on another PC with a swap partition of 512 MB and EXT4 for the rest of the thumb drive. Mount the swap partition with a post-mount file and watch the router for a couple of days for increased RAM use. When things are stable add the scripts back slowly and watch for impact. Oh, tou may want to turn off SMB if you use it.
Others will say that I'm nuts for recommending a swap partition but I have observed issues with a swap file from time to time. Might be worth a try...

Haven't got any samba/usb sharing enabled at all. And since I currently have no scripts running (just FlexQOS which doesn't use the usb device), I guess it might be worth simply removing the usb stick to see if things are stable without it.

 

[bbunge]

Haven't got any samba/usb sharing enabled at all. And since I currently have no scripts running (just FlexQOS which doesn't use the usb device), I guess it might be worth simply removing the usb stick to see if things are stable without it.

Forgot to mention to switch to USB2 operation in System.

 

[bbunge]

I had observed increased RAM usage on my AC86U on recent Merlin and Asus firmwares. I had SMB turned off, had tried Diversion but the family complained and that really ramped up RAM use. I too ran only FlexQOS.
AS I've had plenty of time to "test" things the router was never without a weekly, at least, reboot. And I never had the router reboot on its own or hang. Actually I never checked the year of manufacturer or hardware version until a prospective buyer asked about it (2018 HW Ver R1.5). Did experience the heating issue but bought a fan which fixed that.
Am now having second thoughts about selling this AC86U. Not that it is a bad router. It has great WIFI! Just do not want someone coming back on me if they have problems with it.

 

[ech]

Forgot to mention to switch to USB2 operation in System.

Yep - already had that setting when the problem reboots happened.