Pros and cons moving to 384

[cmkelley]

Annnnd, it's 384. Or at least it appears to be. I was able to "downgrade" to ASUS' official firmware, RT-AC3200_3.0.0.4_380_7743, then from there back to Merlin 380.69, with quite a few hard resets in there. And it just simply works.

I'm at a loss for what this could possibly be. Others have been successful with the AC3200.

Sorry for hijacking the thread, I'm going to start a new one ...

 

[st3v3n]

CM, so your 3200 is now on 380.69 now? That's amazing; any plans for writing up a procedure, seriously? If I understand what you wrote, you switched yours to the Asus FW, then loaded Merlin 380.69 with quite a few hard resets along the way. Any elaboration or explanation of how to get from there, to back where you are now, might be enough to tempt us into giving 384 a try.

We've been sitting tight on 380.68_4 on our 3200 since last fall, and have been happy with it. I've seriously considering dropping back to the prior build that allowed more than two simultaneous OpenVPN tunnels (last June), but now that the newest FW code/versions have finally expanded the 3200's NVRAM to 128MB, the ability to run more than two configs at a time would be a good reason, or at least the best reason for us to actually move forward, not backward, but/except....once you upgrade the 3200 to the new code/384, after expanding the NVRAM, there's no going back to any other fork much less, jump back two steps within the 380 version. Unless you remember the magic words that brought yours back In the words of Dirty Harry, that would make my day Cheers.

 

[quaz]

I'll stay on 382.2b3 for now, as I overclock my AC86U to improve the openVPN speed (and also firewall and Samba shares). I hope that someone finds a way to overclock the new firmware so I can upgrade

 

[cmkelley]

CM, so your 3200 is now on 380.69 now? That's amazing; any plans for writing up a procedure, seriously? If I understand what you wrote, you switched yours to the Asus FW, then loaded Merlin 380.69 with quite a few hard resets along the way. Any elaboration or explanation of how to get from there, to back where you are now, might be enough to tempt us into giving 384 a try.

We've been sitting tight on 380.68_4 on our 3200 since last fall, and have been happy with it. I've seriously considering dropping back to the prior build that allowed more than two simultaneous OpenVPN tunnels (last June), but now that the newest FW code/versions have finally expanded the 3200's NVRAM to 128MB, the ability to run more than two configs at a time would be a good reason, or at least the best reason for us to actually move forward, not backward, but/except....once you upgrade the 3200 to the new code/384, after expanding the NVRAM, there's no going back to any other fork much less, jump back two steps within the 380 version. Unless you remember the magic words that brought yours back In the words of Dirty Harry, that would make my day Cheers.

Well, no, what it is, is in the electronics recycle bin. It "just worked" back on 380.69 initially, then when I went to enable IPv6 (I think that was the thing), it went wonky and then I spent several nights then a day fighting it to get it stable without success. So I decided either something wasn't getting cleared correctly or one of the cats had managed to thermal stress something sitting on the thing and it was never going to be right again. So now I have a new AC86U hooked up and running Merlin's 384.4. My wife was getting tired of no internet connection and I was getting tired of spending every spare minute trying to fix it.

All I did to revert from 384 was download FW_RT_AC3200_30043807743.ZIP from ASUS and use the upgrade firmware GUI interface. I think I did a "hard" reset (i.e. push the reset button for 10 seconds or whatever) before as well as after. It had problems initially connecting so I hard reset my modem as well and went through re-setting that up. I think I didn't remove the USB but supposedly you should.

I don't see/understand why once you upgrade you shouldn't be able to go back ("ASUS says you can't" is not a reason). It wouldn't let me go back to an earlier Merlin directly, but it didn't complain about going back to the earlier ASUS firmware. Sorry, I can't help you other than it let me downgrade to the earlier ASUS FW and then I just kept hard resetting stuff until it worked.

For all I know, it was the downgrade that made it all unstable. I was just tired of it. At least the cats can't sit on the AC86U.

 

[RMerlin]

I don't see/understand why once you upgrade you shouldn't be able to go back ("ASUS says you can't" is not a reason).

The reason is that 382.xx upgrades the RT-AC3200 bootloader and flash partitioning to increase the amount of nvram space to 128 KB. Older firmware are not designed to handle that new partition layout, hence Asus's declaration that you can't go back to older versions.

It's not a "just because they say so", it's a technical limitation.

 

[cmkelley]

Maybe then my issues were caused by downgrading the firmware from 384 to 380? I dunno. But I couldn't get it working at all with 384. I wouldn't mind playing with it some more if not for the fact that having no internet makes my wife very unhappy. And you know what Jeff Allen said: "Happy Wife, Happy Life".

I'll just hold onto my belief that the router was heat damaged and I didn't just spend $200 for nothing.

And how the heck does firmware change the amount of NVRAM??? I'm getting old, I just can't keep up with the technology anymore, no matter how much I want to.

Oh, reading fail. Flash _partitioning_ Meaning I presume it takes it from JFFS space??

 

[st3v3n]

As for cats sitting on routers, it makes for a cute photo but historically, allowing cats to nap on routers isn't recommended/SOP. Since the cats out of the bag, and doesn't care if the blame is placed at it's paws, this ones on the cat. Perhaps everyone shares a lack of comprehension of what the end results will be, ie, trying to revert FW definitely not recommended in this case. No way around it, as it was spelled out on the release. Since the primary party, i.e Wife is happy so all is well.

The increase in NVRAM for the 3200 is a very good thing, and the time to move ahead and leave the older FW with fond memories was at hand; 380 was a great build, and the 3200 will be the better for it.

We should all be grateful Merlin chose to move the project forward, re the expanded VRAM on this model. When anyone makes a choice to upgrade any router or move to another fork, it's incumbent on the owner to read and learn everything before actually doing anything, or to ask questions whenever one isn't clear on specifics of what may result.

I'm not attempting to be snarky or petty; but if one doesn't like being unable to be revert, then there are other choices out there (for Kitty). Maybe a hot water bottle or heating pad in the cat's bed would be a worthwhile upgrade for him/her. Cheers.

 

[cmkelley]

LOL, we chased them off every time we caught them of course, but obviously we can't be around it 24/7. Ah, well, the AC86U is impossible for them to nap on, which was actually probably the deciding factor on going with that instead of buying another AC3200. I doubt we have enough WiFi devices that the dual 5GHz radios were really helping anything.

 

[jappish84]

BTW, have there been any changes in 384 compared to 380.xx to FTPS or nfs?

Are they configured as before?

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Ok, since I got hacked and decided to update to latest stable I'll answer my own question; yes, there have been changes, the ftp server now only supports 5 additional users to be added instead of 10 as it was on the old fw.

So a big thanks again to @ColinTaylor that helped me work around the limitation

https://www.snbforums.com/index.php?threads/45298/

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