[Release 384/NG] Asuswrt-Merlin 384.5 is now available

[Stach]

Free memory is wasted RAM in linux/unix environment since their memory management is too good and they'll free the memory in an instant whenever it's needed.

I agree with your statement, but I believe Merlin switched to less aggressive memory management (basically less caching) a while back and as you can see my cache size is low and the same size that it started out with. Since the cache isn't growing and only the memory used is, I still think that there's a potential for a memory leak here.

In any case, I'll wait to reboot my router until if / when I hit 0 MB free and am forced to, just to see what ultimately happens.

 

[cmkelley]

Free memory is wasted RAM in linux/unix environment since their memory management is too good and they'll free the memory in an instant whenever it's needed.

True, and unfortunately, the memory display in the GUI is just the output of the "free" command, which doesn't tell you how much memory is "in use" but can be "instantly" freed. What we really want to know is the amount of in use memory that can't be freed, which can be difficult to accurately determine.

Better information can be found by SSHing into your router and running 'cat /proc/meminfo' - at the very least, I think you can add the "inactive" values to "MemFree" to get a better estimate of the amount of free memory. I don't pretend to know what a "reasonable" value for the sum of those is, but it is something you can monitor to see if some process is actually leaking memory.

 

[Stach]

True, and unfortunately, the memory display in the GUI is just the output of the "free" command, which doesn't tell you how much memory is "in use" but can be "instantly" freed. What we really want to know is the amount of in use memory that can't be freed, which can be difficult to accurately determine.

Better information can be found by SSHing into your router and running 'cat /proc/meminfo' - at the very least, I think you can add the "inactive" values to "MemFree" to get a better estimate of the amount of free memory. I don't pretend to know what a "reasonable" value for the sum of those is, but it is something you can monitor to see if some process is actually leaking memory.

Thanks for the tip and here's my output from that command:

cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:         440436 kB
MemFree:           29772 kB
MemAvailable:      17036 kB
Buffers:               0 kB
Cached:            23464 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:            99864 kB
Inactive:           6100 kB
Active(anon):      82500 kB
Inactive(anon):        0 kB
Active(file):      17364 kB
Inactive(file):     6100 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:             0 kB
SwapFree:              0 kB
Dirty:                 0 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:         82500 kB
Mapped:             9256 kB
Shmem:                 0 kB
Slab:             220476 kB
SReclaimable:       2264 kB
SUnreclaim:       218212 kB
KernelStack:        1920 kB
PageTables:         1480 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:      220216 kB
Committed_AS:     171992 kB
VmallocTotal:   260046784 kB
VmallocUsed:      117424 kB
VmallocChunk:   259844788 kB

 

[strumf666]

Try disabling asusnat tunneling on other settings page under tools section. This is used for Alexa and IFTTT support.

Unfortunately it didn't fix the issuse.

 

[baz]

Maybe look at the logs and see if there are any errors? Some saw restored wifi stability after downgrade to 384.3 then reset+reconfigure.

I had to swap the router out with a ddwrt router. Once I did that all devices worked. I wonder what the deal is.
I hope a fix comes out in the next update. Hope soon...

 

[Sean Nelson]

moved from 384.2 to 384.5 (on AC68U) a few weeks ago. Haven't noticed any functional issue. On the other hand, it seems that after a couple of weeks without hard restart (i.e.unplug/replug) the cpu utilization would be getting higher and higher, to the point of hovering above 90% on both cores all the time, at which point the response becomes sluggish, and the temperature becomes high. Soft reboot would not help; but utilization falls back to single digit after unplugging/replugging. Coupled with CPU spike is memory spike; it would be using around 230 of 256MB, which would drop to ~130MB after a hard restart.

It seems there may be some runaway processing being performed. I never had this problem with earlier releases.

 

[cowst]

moved from 384.2 to 384.5 (on AC68U) a few weeks ago. Haven't noticed any functional issue. On the other hand, it seems that after a couple of weeks without hard restart (i.e.unplug/replug) the cpu utilization would be getting higher and higher, to the point of hovering above 90% on both cores all the time, at which point the response becomes sluggish, and the temperature becomes high. Soft reboot would not help; but utilization falls back to single digit after unplugging/replugging. Coupled with CPU spike is memory spike; it would be using around 230 of 256MB, which would drop to ~130MB after a hard restart.

It seems there may be some runaway processing being performed. I never had this problem with earlier releases.

It's time to address the elephant in the room : asus decided to start mining cryptocurrencies

 

[Lotta Cox]

Uptime 35 days 17 hours 5 minute(s) 28 seconds
No bugs dangit

 

[Xentrk]

I noticed that my VPN Client connection stopped working after the update. This issue was ntp server was not able to be contacted to get the correct date and time.
So I remove from my VPN Client the routing connection and reentered it - no, that wasn't the issue.
The only way to get it working was to disable the VPN Client manually, get the update date/time and reenable it manually again.
I don't think this is supposed to work like that, before the update the routing was fine
(Router 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 WAN is the routing). I guess 'Block routed clients if tunnel goes down' isn't working correctly now, as even if it's actived, the routing over the WAN should work!? Using a 86U

There is an entware app called fake hw clock. I suspect the ntp may not be available for a moment or two during reboot. The fake hw clock will be able to pass a time stamp during this period.

 

[johhnyu]

The bug where guest wifi hosts show as ethernet in the network map was not fixed in 384.5. Is this on the roadmap for 384.6?

 

[primitivo]

There must be a bug somewhere. I have RT-AC86U running 384.5 and the moment I enable WAN GUI access from restricted WAN IP, the whole router GUI becomes inaccessible. Was able to reproduce it twice in a row and had to restart the router holding WPS and flashing FW...

 

[Jack Yaz]

The bug where guest wifi hosts show as ethernet in the network map was not fixed in 384.5. Is this on the roadmap for 384.6?

Network map is closed source, ask Asus to fix it.

 

[johhnyu]

Wow, it's broken in stock AsusWRT also? That's a bummer.

 

[dm2000]

Has anyone had unreliable WiFi since update? I've done a power off then on cycle. The wired ports are working. Wifi is up and I connect but getting <10Mbps instead of 300 as before and sometimes it simply won't connect. Thanks. I have the AC88U router. Updated from the last most recent release to this last week.

It's also telling me at times the password is incorrect for the wifi network when it hasn't changed.

 

[baz]

Has anyone had unreliable WiFi since update? I've done a power off then on cycle. The wired ports are working. Wifi is up and I connect but getting <10Mbps instead of 300 as before and sometimes it simply won't connect. Thanks. I have the AC88U router. Updated from the last most recent release to this last week.

It's also telling me at times the password is incorrect for the wifi network when it hasn't changed.

I've been having all sort of wifi issues with my AC88U. I've also noticed if I change wifi setting I have to manually reboot the router. I've tried multiple setting, but have not had any luck. My Nest will connect to the cloud, then disconnect, my Picobrew is a pain to get on line, my sense smart meter cant even get on line. Some of my devices cant connect to Netflix. I'm not sure what all these devices have in common, but I wish I could find a fix. All devices show on my network, and some devices just randomly drop off.
If you figure anything out, please let me know...this is driving me nuts...short drive!

 

[Clark Griswald]

I've been having all sort of wifi issues with my AC88U. I've also noticed if I change wifi setting I have to manually reboot the router. I've tried multiple setting, but have not had any luck. My Nest will connect to the cloud, then disconnect, my Picobrew is a pain to get on line, my sense smart meter cant even get on line. Some of my devices cant connect to Netflix. I'm not sure what all these devices have in common, but I wish I could find a fix. All devices show on my network, and some devices just randomly drop off.
If you figure anything out, please let me know...this is driving me nuts...short drive!

My 88U (Dec 15) had been great, until 4 months ago. I began to have wireless issues and dropouts (wired/wireless) experienced by others, and I replaced with an 86U. I have moved my 88 into my network, as an AP, and all seems fine.
Contributing factors in my environment, which may have led to my 88's "glitches" My main router is kept in a media closet, age, gigabit internet which my Family and their freeloading friends are always streaming, gaming, etc. My current situation has been working well.

 

[dm2000]

My 88U (Dec 15) had been great, until 4 months ago. I began to have wireless issues and dropouts (wired/wireless) experienced by others, and I replaced with an 86U. I have moved my 88 into my network, as an AP, and all seems fine.
Contributing factors in my environment, which may have led to my 88's "glitches" My main router is kept in a media closet, age, gigabit internet which my Family and their freeloading friends are always streaming, gaming, etc. My current situation has been working well.

I don't know if it was the update since it happened around the same time but my range has dropped to a few feet at best. I might have to try going to the old firmware and see what happens.

 

[skeal]

Updated my AC3100 to 384.6_alpha1-g4284a1146 no issues to report.

 

[dm2000]

I did a factory reset. Connecting reliably again but even standing next to the router, my speed is around 70 instead of 300mpbs.

I don't know if it was the update since it happened around the same time but my range has dropped to a few feet at best. I might have to try going to the old firmware and see what happens.

As a follow up, I downgraded to 384.4_2 after doing a factory reset and am getting full 300mpbs again. I still have some devices that won't connect though. This 88U has been a frustrating device since I'm on my third one.

 

[baz]

My 88U (Dec 15) had been great, until 4 months ago. I began to have wireless issues and dropouts (wired/wireless) experienced by others, and I replaced with an 86U. I have moved my 88 into my network, as an AP, and all seems fine.
Contributing factors in my environment, which may have led to my 88's "glitches" My main router is kept in a media closet, age, gigabit internet which my Family and their freeloading friends are always streaming, gaming, etc. My current situation has been working well.

It has something to do with the firmware I'm pretty sure. When I did my update, I did a factory restore, did the update, factory restore, and a minimal config. I've tried multiple things with no real luck. I've also noticed, if I'm connected to the router wireless and make a network change on the wireless, I get dropped, and it never comes back, so I have to hard reboot, or connect hardline. In general, its very bizarre behavior.