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Very early in my experience with Merlin's firmware, I had experienced a problem restoring from a backup, where part of the configuration stays as before the restore (let's say, you are restoring onto a brand new router, and the 2.4GHz SSID is loaded from the restore, but not the 5GHz SSID)
At the time I dismissed as a glitch but, since then, it forced me into a "ritual" where I always make 3 backups of the NVRAM from the GUI. Throughout the years it has happened again, but I am usually in a hurry and just restore from another backup and move on.
A couple of weeks ago it happened again, and I found that 2 of the 3 backup files wouldn't restore properly. Moreover, the backup that worked was the #2: The first and the last of the three didn't work. That is more than just a glitch.
Using WRTSettings, I found that, while the "good" backup looks fine, the two "bad" backups had some entries that combined a bunch of NVRAM variables together with an "\x00" separator (see attached image).
I don't know what to make out of this information, but it has happened in the past (as early as 374.40 and as late as 380.59) on multiple models (RT-N16, N66U, AC56U).
At the time I dismissed as a glitch but, since then, it forced me into a "ritual" where I always make 3 backups of the NVRAM from the GUI. Throughout the years it has happened again, but I am usually in a hurry and just restore from another backup and move on.
A couple of weeks ago it happened again, and I found that 2 of the 3 backup files wouldn't restore properly. Moreover, the backup that worked was the #2: The first and the last of the three didn't work. That is more than just a glitch.
Using WRTSettings, I found that, while the "good" backup looks fine, the two "bad" backups had some entries that combined a bunch of NVRAM variables together with an "\x00" separator (see attached image).
I don't know what to make out of this information, but it has happened in the past (as early as 374.40 and as late as 380.59) on multiple models (RT-N16, N66U, AC56U).