[Release] Asuswrt-Merlin 384.18 and 384.13_10 is now available

[Maverick009]

This is the part where you were mislead by marketing and not facts.
GT series is "bragging rights" series, not that popular or mainstream (low sales) and always had slower support...

No not mislead, I meant best AX router based on reviews, throughput, etc. Support on other hand is slower then anticipated and I know GT and ROG branding means usually higher price (in my case price was about $30-40 difference between GT-AX11000 and AX6000 (the AC3100 replacement) at time of purchase, and for that price it made sense to get a Tri-Band high-end router) but I don't regret the purchase as it still quite feature rich and the throughput and actual in home speed usage is remarkable. I will just need to build the rest of my Network stack out to compensate some. No Biggie

 

[mbekahs]

I have been having very similar issues on my RT-AC68U (WiFi connection repeated autho/deauth without connection, not being able to access router UI intermittently, slowness etc.) after trying to upgrade to 384.18. I also noticed that even after the upgrade process completed (or it seemed to without any errors), the router would still report the firmware as 384.17 after restart. I have tried updating a few times and have made sure the SHA256 hash is matching correctly to rule out any file corruption issues but the router GUI still reports the firmware as 384.17 after a seemingly successful update.

Reading some of the issues others have posted where factory reset on 384.18 hasn't helped, I am now doing a factory reset and will see how it goes.

 

[Rob Q]

I just flashed my RT-AC1900P and everything seems to be okay.
'Game' and 'Open NAT' look interesting. No idea how they would improve my gaming. I suppose I can try it with GTA V.

 

[salmon]

My nest fire-alarms don't like connecting to this firmware. Tried factory resetting them also. Will revert to see if they start working.

 

[Blacklistedcard]

My nest fire-alarms don't like connecting to this firmware. Tried factory resetting them also. Will revert to see if they start working.

I have 5 nest protects in my house. They are connecting OK to this firmware.

 

[Mr Zippy]

Did I miss something, I've flashed 384.13_10 to my AC87U but it reports as 384.13_8?

I see a post similar about the AC68U reporting previous build after apparent successful flash.

I tried twice just in case I picked the wrong file to upload, the sha256 was correct for the _10 build.

The admin page says this is the latest version too.

 

[L&LD]

@Mr Zippy, you have not upgraded the router.

Remove any and all USB devices from the router. Reboot. Flash the firmware you want to upgrade to.

 

[Mr Zippy]

I will try again tomorrow now, I note no USB devices connected and why doesn’t the firmware page find the new _10 firmware if the updated failed so to speak.

I have been using the Merlin firmware for years and this has never happened before.

 

[Deleted member 51572]

It sounds like the "stability" issue you are having is what alot of people have reported. The webui doesn't respond but the router itself still works fine. I recommend using a tool by the great @Jack Yaz called scmerlin. That script includes the ability to restart just the web browser (or other services it you need).

Edit: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/scmerlin-service-and-script-control-menu-for-asuswrt-merlin.56277/

the web interface can be brought back to life after hanging with: service restart_httpd in an SSH command console. hopefully Asus will address this annoying bug, among many others.

 

[Wade Coxon]

I will try again tomorrow now, I note no USB devices connected and why doesn’t the firmware page find the new _10 firmware if the updated failed so to speak.

I have been using the Merlin firmware for years and this has never happened before.

If the router is low on RAM, the flash process can look somewhat like it completed successfully, but if you read closely, it will show that the flash failed.
I have found that on more than one occasion, I have needed to power cycle the router (not just a reboot) before a new firmware will install successfully.

 

[AntonK]

the web interface can be brought back to life after hanging with: service restart_httpd in an SSH command console. hopefully Asus will address this annoying bug, among many others.

I'm pissed that ASUS has not released the GPL for their latest AC88U firmware, or indeed have not released any updated GPL for 284 days.

 

[RMerlin]

I'm pissed that ASUS has not released the GPL for their latest AC88U firmware, or indeed have not released any updated GPL for 284 days.

Why? It doesn't matter, the RT-AC88U binary blobs I used in 384.18 are based on GPL code that is about 5 weeks old (they were compiled off the latest GPL code available at that time), so it doesn't matter.

 

[RMerlin]

In fact, the 384.18 RT-AC88U binary blobs were newer than the most recent firmware release from Asus at the time.

 

[AntonK]

Why? It doesn't matter, the RT-AC88U binary blobs I used in 384.18 are based on GPL code that is about 5 weeks old (they were compiled off the latest GPL code available at that time), so it doesn't matter.

Thanks! I didn't realize that. That is good news.

 

[Morac]

In fact, the 384.18 RT-AC88U binary blobs were newer than the most recent firmware release from Asus at the time.

How were they newer if the blobs you used were 384.81918 and the latest released firmware at that time was 385.20585?


In any case, I would argue that the fact ASUS hasn’t publicly released the GPL code for the RT-AC88U in over 9 months despite having 4 releases, demonstrates that ASUS doesn’t take the GPL license agreement that seriously. They are treating it as an afterthought, which not only jeopardizes future third party firmware support, but also opens ASUS up to law suits.

Who knows how long it will take for ASUS to update the blobs for the latest release which contains a bunch of critical security fixes, including one that was reportedly already fixed years ago (if the release notes are accurate).

 

[SheikhSheikha]

I have 5 nest protects in my house. They are connecting OK to this firmware.

+1 - Nest Protects no issue with this firmware

 

[RMerlin]

How were they newer if the blobs you used were 384.81918 and the latest released firmware at that time was 385.20585?

Because 384_81918 code is newer than 385_20585 code.

 

[octopus]

Just tested and found a "Bad argument `RETURN'" in "updown-client.sh" raw 37

echo /usr/sbin/iptables -t nat -I DNSVPN$instance -s $VPN_IP -j RETURN >> $dnsscript

Mon Jul 20 12:50:41 2020 /sbin/ifconfig tun11 10.128.2.188 netmask 255.255.252.0 mtu 1500 broadcast 10.128.3.255
Mon Jul 20 12:50:41 2020 updown.sh tun11 1500 1553 10.128.2.188 255.255.252.0 init
dhcp-option DNS 46.227.67.134
dhcp-option DNS 192.165.9.158
Bad argument `RETURN'
Try `iptables -h' or 'iptables --help' for more information.

Done.
rmdir: '/etc/openvpn/dns': Directory not empty
rmdir: '/etc/openvpn': Directory not empty
Mon Jul 20 12:50:46 2020 /sbin/route add -net 217.64.148.55 netmask 255.255.255.255 gw 158.xxx.xxx.x
Mon Jul 20 12:50:46 2020 /sbin/route add -net 0.0.0.0 netmask 128.0.0.0 gw 10.128.0.1
Mon Jul 20 12:50:46 2020 /sbin/route add -net 128.0.0.0 netmask 128.0.0.0 gw 10.128.0.1
Mon Jul 20 12:50:47 2020 Initialization Sequence Completed

@RMerlin @Xentrk

 

[salmon]

I have 5 nest protects in my house. They are connecting OK to this firmware.

I had a look into it some more and disabled DoT and they seem to be working now, odd. Can you see what happens if you enable DoT with cloudflare if you get a chance?

 

[john9527]

I had a look into it some more and disabled DoT and they seem to be working now, odd. Can you see what happens if you enable DoT with cloudflare if you get a chance?

You may want to look at this thread...

Nest Protect cannot connect with DoT enabled - RT-AX88U 384.18

After updating to 384.18, all 8 of my Nest Protect devices went offline, and I was unable to add any new Protect devices onto my account. I have one 2nd Gen and the rest 1st Gen. I went through all troubleshooting, and finally after totally disabling DoT, they were able to connect and I could...

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