RT-AC87U keeps locking up

[smring78]

Hopefully this helps somebody...

My AC87U would lock up and all clients would lose connection. I'm currently running the latest Merlin firmware (378.55). With a laptop cooling pad underneath my temperatures would still hover around:
2.4Ghz - 50C to 55C
5Ghz - 70C to 75C
CPU - 70C to 80C

The AC87U does not have vents on the bottom, so airflow from the laptop cooler wasn't making a difference. I have since removed the top shell of the AC87U, and built a cooler that sits above the router blowing cool air directly on to the processors and radios. The Cooler consists of two 120mm fans (It's a very crude design, and I will be working to refine it). I've been running this for 48 hours and had extremely stable performance. My current temperatures are:
2.4Ghz - 37C
5Ghz - 37C
CPU - 45C

 

[stinkybum]

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/internet-bandwidth-networking-clinic-4/[maylyns-review]-asus-rt-ac87u-4781419-295.html

Thanks, I'm going to try it out Adding a reboot scheduler is pretty much the definition of 'I give up, this device is a piece of crap'.

I tested the hggomes firmware and wow does it make a difference! Everything is a lot more responsive. I haven't tested it long enough to know if it solves the issue of locking-up problem. Unfortunately the source isn't available and no one really knows who hggomes is, so I wouldn't stick with this firmware.

It's a shame hggomes won't release his source because the wireless power increase is very useful. It lets me finally get the same coverage that I got from my Apple Time Capsule.

Hopefully this helps somebody...

The AC87U does not have vents on the bottom, so airflow from the laptop cooler wasn't making a difference.

There are vents at the bottom, they're at the sides, not in the middle. I have a fan blowing air into those vents underneath and it drastically dropped my temps. But I don't believe this latest issue with the router locking up is related to overheating.

 

[wireless]

There's no Traffic Analyzer on the RT-N66U, as it doesn't support the Trend Micro engine.

Hello RMerlin,

I wanted to put a pressure, that this issue is probably not related to traffic analyzer and even to a particular router model but rather to a particular firmware.
I have described my configuration and this problem here:

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/37...cannot-login-anymore.27227/page-3#post-207052

 

[stinkybum]

I've had 21 hours uptime on the official Asus beta firmware 9.0.0.4.378_9110

It's still a bit too early to tell but I'm hopeful my problem may finally be solved!

I used to consider a few months as decent uptime for my Apple router. I consider anything more than 4 days as a major success for this Asus router.

 

[wireless]

I've had 21 hours uptime on the official Asus beta firmware 9.0.0.4.378_9110

It's still a bit too early to tell but I'm hopeful my problem may finally be solved!

I used to consider a few months as decent uptime for my Apple router. I consider anything more than 4 days as a major success for this Asus router.

Agree - 21 hours is too short ... This problem usually appears for the first time (in my configuration) between 2 and 3 days from total restart of all of my RT-N66U routers ....

 

[Jong]

I had 2 ac87s up for 100 days using 378.4950, but they have had real problems since. I'm hopefully, based on 9110, we are getting close to another good one though.

 

[stinkybum]

So for those that said the problem is related to traffic analyser. I think you might be right.

I had nearly 2 days of uptime so I figured I'd try turn on the traffic analyser. After a couple of hours I noticed things were lagging a bit. After around 4 hours, the router locked up completely, requiring a hard reboot.

 

[Stevemcclure]

2 days up time here since turning off traffic analyzer off, is usually day 2 or 3 the lockups appear, so fingers crossed.

Now i don't know about these thing so am just chucking the ideas out there, but is it possible the traffic analyzer is filling the memory of the router up, and after 2-3 days it has a melt down and locks up?

 

[Stevemcclure]

4 days 16 hours now, this is the longest it's ever been running. Looking highly likely traffic analyser is the culprit here.


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[stinkybum]

4 days 16 hours now, this is the longest it's ever been running. Looking highly likely traffic analyser is the culprit here.


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Same here, works perfectly but if I turn on traffic analyser it crashes after 2-12 hours. It seems the more traffic I have, the sooner it locks up.

 

[RMerlin]

Same here, works perfectly but if I turn on traffic analyser it crashes after 2-12 hours. It seems the more traffic I have, the sooner it locks up.

Can you check the size of /jffs/traffic.db after a while?

 

[jslay]

I have been running Traffic Analyzer. I get lockups every 3-36 hours on the regular. Brand new to ASUS gear and AsusWRT. Old linksys DD-WRT guy here.

Really loving this router (RT-AC3200) and the firmware, just hope turning off TA will solve my issues. Trying to run a server here that is constantly serving clients 24/7. Just turned it off, will be doing a router reboot and formatting jffs in a few hours when traffic dies down. Ill keep an eye on my uptime and report back.

EDIT:

/jffs# ls -la traffic.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 jslay root 3481600 Oct 3 22:00 traffic.db


Just checked my syslog server, nothing but DROPs and the regular start up mumbo jumbo after it locks up. Did have this kern disk_monitor: Got SIGALRM... but that was a solid 5 minutes before it locked up, and from everything I have found about this, it isnt a critical thing or abnormal. Just looks like a system event to possibly notify other daemons of an action happening.

 

[Stevemcclure]

Same here, works perfectly but if I turn on traffic analyser it crashes after 2-12 hours. It seems the more traffic I have, the sooner it locks up.

Analyser still turned off and now been up for 5d22h.
I can happily live without traffic analyser, but for others who want to use it, then I suppose it's a good that this is looking like a software issue rather than hardware. So one would imagine that a fix in the firmware would be the solution, one for the experts to comment on tho as that's beyond my knowledge.



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[jslay]

Analyser still turned off and now been up for 5d22h.
I can happily live without traffic analyser, but for others who want to use it, then I suppose it's a good that this is looking like a software issue rather than hardware. So one would imagine that a fix in the firmware would be the solution, one for the experts to comment on tho as that's beyond my knowledge.



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I just passed my 36 hour mark. Haven't been able to do that since I had the router (3 weeks now), but I turned on TA right after I got it setup. Looking like TA is what is actually causing issues. This makes me sad because I was really excited about this feature. But I can live without to maintain stability.

 

[DanielCoffey]

Has anyone tracked the size of traffic.db over time?

 

[Stevemcclure]

Has anyone tracked the size of traffic.db over time?

I wouldn't know how to, I presume you would have to go into the jffs partition through ssl?
I am away all week, but will try and find out how when I get back, enable traffic monitor and try and to find the size of traffic db when it locks up.


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[DanielCoffey]

In Windows, puTTY is a good tool for looking at the jffs partition. Mac and Linux users can just use the terminal to ssh (although linux users can get a copy of puTTY too with "sudo apt-get install putty").

 

[DanielCoffey]

Just to give you a data point, Merlin, I am a very light user of my AC87U (3x wired, 3x 2.4GHz, 1x 5GHz) and believe I have the Traffic Monitor off since /jffs/traffic.db is 0 bytes.

On a fresh reboot the router reported 73Mb RAM used. After 6d15h30m it reported 104Mb used.

I get occasional crashes on 378.55 once or twice a week where the router stops permitting traffic but lights are normal and a reboot is needed. Temperatures are Ambient 22C, 2.4GHz 43C, 5GHz, 70C, CPU 71C. The router is on feet to allow better airflow but is not actively cooled.

 

[VANT]

@DanielCoffey
try latest official fw from Asus. I also have "occasional crashes on 378.55 once or twice a week".
Now im on .9177, and still no crashes (before i test beta fw .9110 and also no crash).
IMO bug is in asus sources used in .55 FW

 

[DanielCoffey]

I will watch and report the allocated memory used over the next few days before I switch firmware - I have just rebooted today and managed six and a half days from the last reboot.