RT AC86U Spontaneously Started Crashing on 386.2_4

[PT25]

I have no idea why it would not let me post all of that in one post?? Sorry for the many small parts. But could the TimeMachine be the cause?

 

[vaboro]

I have just finished running the Health Check scanner in the GUI for the attached disk and it has found errors in a single sector - the TimeMachine location!! It said, "The volume TimeMachine could not be repaired after 3 attempts." Could this all be connected?

It might well be connected and the TimeMachine might be the cause of your problem.

 

[vaboro]

Is there anything in that Crash Log that refers to the TimeMachine process?

I will check tomorrow if you don't mind Maybe somebody else will be ready to help earlier.

 

[RMerlin]

Just be patient until one of the mods approve your post. No need to repeat it multiple times.

 

[vaboro]

Could this all be connected? Is there anything in that Crash Log that refers to the TimeMachine process? Last night when all of this started happening my MacBook was plugged in and was plugged in all night syncing a lot of content with my head office - obviously it would have tried to backup up to TimeMachine on several occasions. And, Last night was the first time I have had my MacBook turned on since upgrading to 386.2-4. Is this all just a coincidence or..?

You may consider uninstalling everything related to TimeMachinge and then installing it again. You'll see what you will get.

 

[Tech9]

@PT25, read below what I think about this situation. I can't read and analyze all the accumulated posts above, sorry.

- firmware update is unlikely to cause reboots. I have 3x AC86U test routers and they all were running 386.2_4 fine, no "panics"
- your router may have developed hardware issue over time - test it with clean stock Asuswrt and observe the behavior/syslog
- I wouldn't run a home router as NAS. The hardware inside is much weaker than Raspberry Pi and has very little RAM available
- spdMerlin saturates your WAN connection twice per hour just to show you a nice graph, it may interfere with your work
- Cake QoS turns your Gigabit WAN-LAN router into up to 300Mbps router due to incompatibility with Broadcom's Runner and Flow Cache
- You never shared any details on what your current ISP connection speed is, I understand you had DSL in the past
- It's not very clear for me what is your always-on VPN client protecting

If your Internet access is extremely important, use your router as router. This is the brain of your network. Offload other tasks (Pi-hole, real NAS) to other devices on your network. I know it's convenient and cheap to run all-in-one, but when one thing goes down your entire network goes down.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Is there anything in that Crash Log that refers to the TimeMachine process?

Yes. There is a crash dump of the Time Machine process that is preceded by HFS+ filesystem errors on the USB drive.

 

[vaboro]

Is there anything in that Crash Log that refers to the TimeMachine process?

How are things? Have you been able to resolve your reboot issue?
In the meantime I also had a look at your crash log. Starting from line 753 multiple processes start failing. PID's 4631, 15170, 16686, 18019, 32276, 16336, 28575, 29709, 8119, 19172, 29007, 2586, 15486, 25021, 1033, 6604, 28642, 31645, 14125, 21380, 2189, 2841, 5566, 14003, 29038, 32660, 4436, 19089, 12833, 14563 of dcd (don't know what this is, maybe Domain Controller deamon?) and finally PID 7181 of afpd (Apple Filing Protocol daemon) on line 1366. Then goes the stack trace on line 1460 and fatal exception on line 1511.

 

[Morris]

My RT-AC86u was having intermittent watchdog timer events and sometimes seemed to stall. I added a 120mm computer fan and it's been stable for 3 days. You might want to try this.

Morris

 

[mromero]

@PT25, read below what I think about this situation. I can't read and analyze all the accumulated posts above, sorry.

- firmware update is unlikely to cause reboots. I have 3x AC86U test routers and they all were running 386.2_4 fine, no "panics"
- your router may have developed hardware issue over time - test it with clean stock Asuswrt and observe the behavior/syslog
- I wouldn't run a home router as NAS. The hardware inside is much weaker than Raspberry Pi and has very little RAM available
- spdMerlin saturates your WAN connection twice per hour just to show you a nice graph, it may interfere with your work
- Cake QoS turns your Gigabit WAN-LAN router into up to 300Mbps router due to incompatibility with Broadcom's Runner and Flow Cache
- You never shared any details on what your current ISP connection speed is, I understand you had DSL in the past
- It's not very clear for me what is your always-on VPN client protecting

If your Internet access is extremely important, use your router as router. This is the brain of your network. Offload other tasks (Pi-hole, real NAS) to other devices on your network. I know it's convenient and cheap to run all-in-one, but when one thing goes down your entire network goes down.

Well said. The mantra "The right tools for the right job," applies here. Asus and Merlin builds are flooding the router with too many gizmos. You can use a cheap and reliable Raspberry Pi to offload many tasks such as ad and malware filtering. Add a firewall / VPN device in front of your network and let the Asus router do its job as a ROUTER.

 

[PT25]

Thanks for all of your replies. Interestingly I have discovered that there is a corrupted Time Machine backup on the USB NAS which I think was causing the issue. I have not used Time Machine at all for the last few days and I have not had any issues at all.

I am intrigued by the 'Right tools for the job' comment. I was under the impression I had bought the correct tool for the job. I understand the AC86U to be a very competent piece of kit designed to used as a VPN Server and NAS server for example, and designed to run scripts to enhance its other features. Is this not the same reasoning as buying a car with a Stereo? The car is designed to drive, so by the 'Right tools for the job/ mantra you should also then buy a battery radio rather than using the one built in?

If it is the case that I cannot do what I was lead to believe I could with this router then I will return it and go back to the drawing board.

Again, thanks for all of you input

 

[ColinTaylor]

I am intrigued by the 'Right tools for the job' comment. I was under the impression I had bought the correct tool for the job. I understand the AC86U to be a very competent piece of kit designed to used as a VPN Server and NAS server for example, and designed to run scripts to enhance its other features.

The ability to run scripts is not feature advertised or supported by Asus. It is only available in Merlin's unofficial firmware.

Is this not the same reasoning as buying a car with a Stereo? The car is designed to drive, so by the 'Right tools for the job/ mantra you should also then buy a battery radio rather than using the one built in?

Your analogy is the wrong way around. The stereo that comes with your car is sufficient for basic music listening. If you want the full high fidelity experience you listen to the high end audio equipment in your home. Same with the router's USB storage. It's OK for lightweight storage of non-critical data but if you want to store large volumes and/or critical data then you should be using a dedicated NAS.

All router manufacturers will claim they can be used as a NAS but that is really just marketing-speak. They never mention anything about reliability or redundancy which is what a dedicated NAS would offer.

With all that said, if you repair the filesystem errors on the USB drive and delete the corrupted backup you'll probably be fine again.

 

[PT25]

The ability to run scripts is not feature advertised or supported by Asus. It is only available in Merlin's unofficial firmware.


Your analogy is the wrong way around. The stereo that comes with your car is sufficient for basic music listening. If you want the full high fidelity experience you listen to the high end audio equipment in your home. Same with the router's USB storage. It's OK for lightweight storage of non-critical data but if you want to store large volumes and/or critical data then you should be using a dedicated NAS.

All router manufacturers will claim they can be used as a NAS but that is really just marketing-speak. They never mention anything about reliability or redundancy which is what a dedicated NAS would offer.

With all that said, if you repair the filesystem errors on the USB drive and delete the corrupted backup you'll probably be fine again.

Thanks for your explanation, that does make sense. I think when I say I am using NAS that is probably a stretch. What I have is a powered caddy with a 3TB HDD in which is 90% used for Time Machine Backups (of which ASUS enormously advertise as a robust feature). The other 10% is using it as network storage but this is seldom accessed. I do appreciate that were I worried about the need for RAID configurations etc then yes there are more robust solutions, but I honestly believe that just for Time Machine, a feature ASUS push, then my car and stereo analogy is sound

For now, I am going to set aside some time to do a nvram reset and factory reset of my router and start from scratch with a fresh Merlin install and sort out the filesystem errors on the HDD, which to be honest I will probably format the drive and start again with Time Machine as I don't need any historical backups since my Mac is working fine

Taking the advice from above, I will also run it for a week or even longer without any additional scrips (other than creating a SWAP) and I will leave the VPN now until I am certain it is stable.

Thanks for all of your help.