RT-AC86U Upgrade FW to 386.3_2 Issues

[xdj]

Greetings,

Finally upgraded my routers to the latest firmware as I had connection issues with 384.19, so I left 384.18 on them.
The issues were so bad that I purchased a new router, another AC86U because I thought the original was flakey. Yeah, that wasn't the issue, it had something to do with the node connection to my AC66U_B1.
Anyways, everything was working with the newer ac86u and ac66u_b1 and I thought yesterday would be a good day to upgrade to the latest firmware since I was the only one home except my daughter who was recovering from having her wisdom teeth removed. It was pretty much impossible before because my wife is working from home and my youngest child is schooling online due to COVID.
The connection to the node seems ok but the real issue is: My jffs is unmounted and I can't seem to fix it. As well I can't SSH into the 86u because a warning about a remote host identification has changed. Plus, a lot of other issues including the names of devices I give keep changing back to their factory names, the speed test utility doesn't work, the traffic stats are not working, and more...
The older ac86u jffs is mounted after flashing it so I'm not sure what is happening and I can SSH into as well.
I've tried several times doing a hard factory reset, removing the SSD USB drive before the fw upgrade but to no avail.
I did not restore any settings after flashing but once tried to restore the jffs partition but that did nothing as well.
I really don't want to replace the newer ac86u with the old one because...it's old!
Any help would be very appreciated.

Cheers,

X

 

[Centrifuge]

Did you think that because the new router was the same as the old router you could just configure it the same and it would all be easy peasy? Anyway, the host key verification failed. Check out this and/or google

The fingerprint for the ECDSA key sent by the remote host...

for yourself. Not too hard of a fix, if I recall.

 

[xdj]

Did you think that because the new router was the same as the old router you could just configure it the same and it would all be easy peasy? Anyway, the host key verification failed. Check out this and/or google

The fingerprint for the ECDSA key sent by the remote host...

for yourself. Not too hard of a fix, if I recall.

Nothing is ever easy with my AC86U's... I may have to indulge myself and get a new fancy RT-AX86U!
Thanks for the article... I must have had a brain fart as I did not notice it was an issue with my computer and not the router! Tunnel vision...

Cheers

 

[xdj]

Update:
I had to take the main ac86u offline and give it a hard factory reset: Jffs mounted!
But now the aimesh node will not connect to it......
One step forward, 3 back!
Grrrr

 

[d_v_us]

I remember I had a hard time adding my AC86u back to my mesh and encountering that same screen a couple of times before it took. I can't remember doing anything different...just had ta just wait it out till it took?

 

[Adooni]

I understood you have AC86u as main router and AC66U_B1 as node.
you can try few things
1. hard reset AC86U and AC66U_B1 then log to AC66U_B1 and set it as node (will reboot) then try to connect AIMesh.
2. AC66u_B1 do not need to be RMerlin FW - try to put latest AsusWRT and try to connect as node then. Node is slave you do not set the anything , For unknown reason sometimes AsusWRT connecting as AiMesh better.

 

[RangerZ]

Closing the loop here. See this post.
The ASUS instructions do not (currently) work for Merlin 386.2_6 and above.
Use an Ethernet cable connected to the nodes WAN.