RT-AX86U Clear NVRAM?

[umrico]

So I received an RT-AX86U yesterday. I set it up on the latest firmware and all was well.

Today I wanted to play with Merlin as well as ASUS alphas and betas. However I could not get them to work. GUI was not displaying correctly, or wireless clients wouldn't connect. So I chalked it up to be too buggy and fell back to stock.

However, I put on the stock firmware, tried defaulting thru the check mark in gui as well as by the WPS button power trick defaulting per the manual. Yet 90 percent of my 2.4 clients wouldn't connect automatically and 80 percent of my 5ghz clients wouldn't either. I even went as far to do the asus firmware restoration. I called asus support but that proved to be useless and I couldn't get a higher tier support person on the horn.

Finally while on hold after 30 minutes speaking to the rep, I threw my backup config at it and magically everything started reconnecting.

My issue is I feel like there is stuff missing and wrong. For instance, there are no logging level buttons. I know they were there previously.

I feel that there are some settings stuck or missing and confused from the different firmware installed today. Is there an NVRAM reset or low level format that is done to really get back to stock default? I asked the rep however he said there is no NVRAM reset on this router and I couldn't find anything online.

Any help you can provide would be amazing!

 

[ColinTaylor]

My issue is I feel like there is stuff missing and wrong. For instance, there are no logging level buttons. I know they were there previously.

Logging levels are not present in stock Asus firmware, it's something Merlin added.

 

[umrico]

Logging levels are not present in stock Asus firmware, it's something Merlin added.

Well that's a relief I guess I am too used to Merlin firmware!

However I would really like to know if there is indeed an NVRAM reset and what is the guaranteed method for making sure it's 100 percent cleared. I would really like to try the alpha/betas again but today was brutal trying to go back to stock!

Thank you!!!

 

[ColinTaylor]

The most thorough reset is the factory default reset with the "Initialize" box checked.

 

[Ronald Schwerer]

You could log-in via ssh and run nvram erase
There might be leftover stuff in /jffs. Worst case is it is just wasting space. IDK if any of it is required after a reset. When you made your backup, did you also include jffs?

 

[umrico]

You could log-in via ssh and run nvram erase
There might be leftover stuff in /jffs. Worst case is it is just wasting space. IDK if any of it is required after a reset. When you made your backup, did you also include jffs?

That is not a bad idea! Would I do that after defaulting or before?

As for jffs, no I did not as I am not currently on Merlin on the rt-ax86u router. Is there a command line for that as well? Should I manually try to delete that as well from a command line?

I just want to make sure that I'm on a hundred percent clean slate as I've read some amazing things about this router as well as others having issues so I don't want to introduce issues at the start of the gate

 

[ColinTaylor]

WPS reset, GUI factory reset and nvram erase all do exactly the same thing with respect to clearing nvram.

 

[Ronald Schwerer]

That is not a bad idea! Would I do that after defaulting or before?

Actually, it doesn't matter. I'm new the the AX series, which is different from my old AC68U. Plus I never ran stock firmware on my AX3000 - went directly to Merlin 384.19. I see some dhcp and client list stuff has been moved from NVRAM to files in jffs. I'm not sure if stock firmware has this also. And I'm not sure if nvram erase affects those files.

 

[umrico]

Thank you all for your help! Forgive the paranoia just trying to do due diligence!