Traffic Monitor Daily no longer works

[Hawker]

I'm having issues with the traffic monitor in that Daily reports do not show and show blank.
It should be saving to a USB stick. It worked, mostly fine before I updated to 386.3_2 from a very old version (384?) but now I can't get it to work.
I say mostly because I had a USB stick that was failing so it would crash every few weeks and need to be restarted. I put a new USB stick in and now 24 hours and real time works but daily does not. I assume monthly does not either but it hasn't been a month.
AFIK I have it properly pointing to the new USB stick and have tried both "create or reset data files" and "create or reset IP Traffic data file" together and individually with no luck. I do not have Traffic Analyzer - Statistic enabled, but this has not prevented Daily from working in the past.
How can I further debug this?

Interestingly enough with the bad USB stick Merlin's check disk reported the stick to be fine, but Windows reported it to be not good and the system log showed USB errors. I see no errors in the log from USB at this time.

Edited to add this is RT-AC88U with merlin 386.3.2. It is air meshed with a RT-AX3000 wired back haul.

Thanx

 

[Jeffrey Young]

Have you tried changing the save location to /jffs/ partition?

I found saving to the USB drive was very unstable

 

[L&LD]

You may need a better/newer quality drive.

 

[Hawker]

I have tried 4 different drives so far. No dice.
I have tried saving to RAM but not the JFFS. I can try that but RAM made no difference. Something strange is going on here.

 

[L&LD]

Yes, it is. You may need to do a full reset to see if it's software, firmware or hardware issues.

 

[tsanga]

I’m seeing this on my traffic monitor:

It stalled on Dec 5 with this erroneous number and stopped logging.

I’ve tried to create a new log file a couple times - each time I get a few days of data and breaks.

Has anyone seen this?

 

[Jeffrey Young]

Which Router? Firmware Version

There is a persistent bug in rstat that results in this. Dispite many efforts, no one has nailed down what is causing it.

VNSTAT on Merlin seems to fix the issue. If you are running Merlin on a supported router, you may want to give that a go.

 

[Hawker]

I’ve tried to create a new log file a couple times - each time I get a few days of data and breaks.

Has anyone seen this?

I was getting this with older firmware. What I also noticed is if I put the USB drive in my Windows computer and did chkdsk /f the drive came up with hardware errrors so I assumed it was the USB disk (The Asus AC88U built in disk check said it was fine).

With a new USB disk and updated firmware (see my post) I have been unable to get daily to work at all, only last 24 hours. Still no clue how to fix this. Could I have something else enabled that is preventing Ausus from getting this data to record? No idea how to debug this.

I seem to be getting huge spikes at hours when I know we are all sleeping so maybe this is the bug @Jeffrey Young is mentioning? Could this be part of the problem.

 

[dev_null]

VNSTAT on Merlin seems to fix the issue. If you are running Merlin on a supported router, you may want to give that a go.

These "ghost spikes" on my RT-AC66U_B1 were the reason I started developing on vnStat-on-Merlin. @Hawker put the router model and firmware version in your footer or your post.

 

[Hawker]

These "ghost spikes" on my RT-AC66U_B1 were the reason I started developing on vnStat-on-Merlin. @Hawker put the router model and firmware version in your footer or your post.

What is vnStat? How do I enable/install it?
I have 4 routers on 2 networks, but the one in question is a RT-AC88U with merlin 386.3.2. It is air meshed with a RT-AX3000 wired back haul.

 

[L&LD]

vnStat - [Release] vnStat-on-Merlin - UI, CLI and email - data use and data limit monitoring - R1 and R2

vnStat-on-Merlin - Release versions - R1 and R2 Update 18 July 2021: Upgrade! For ARM and AARCH-based routers, we've got some great news: vnStat-on-Merlin Release 2 (R2) is now available for non-MIPS devices. This version is based on vnStat 2.7, recently included as an Entware package. More...

www.snbforums.com

 

[tsanga]

Which Router? Firmware Version

There is a persistent bug in rstat that results in this. Dispite many efforts, no one has nailed down what is causing it.

VNSTAT on Merlin seems to fix the issue. If you are running Merlin on a supported router, you may want to give that a go.

Mine is RT-AC66U B1 running Merlin 386.3_2.

Thanks for the tip on VNSTAT everyone. I’ll give it a look.

 

[Hawker]

vnStat - [Release] vnStat-on-Merlin - UI, CLI and email - data use and data limit monitoring - R1 and R2

vnStat-on-Merlin - Release versions - R1 and R2 Update 18 July 2021: Upgrade! For ARM and AARCH-based routers, we've got some great news: vnStat-on-Merlin Release 2 (R2) is now available for non-MIPS devices. This version is based on vnStat 2.7, recently included as an Entware package. More...

www.snbforums.com

Is there somewhere with clear instructions on how to install VNStat? The install instructions in that thread assume I know more about the routers internals than I do.
I have no idea what "Running amtm and installing from the menu" means.
Is this something I need to putty into to do? Command line console stuff? I have never ventured that far before so I may need some serious hand holding.

 

[tsanga]

Is there somewhere with clear instructions on how to install VNStat? The install instructions in that thread assume I know more about the routers internals than I do.
I have no idea what "Running amtm and installing from the menu" means.
Is this something I need to putty into to do? Command line console stuff? I have never ventured that far before so I may need some serious hand holding.

Did you look through the github entry?

GitHub - de-vnull/vnstat-on-merlin: vnstat-on-merlin

vnstat-on-merlin. Contribute to de-vnull/vnstat-on-merlin development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Hawker]

Did you look through the github entry?

GitHub - de-vnull/vnstat-on-merlin: vnstat-on-merlin

vnstat-on-merlin. Contribute to de-vnull/vnstat-on-merlin development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

I did.
It appears to assume I already know how to work with the command line interface to the router and install some sort of viewer, and be somewhat familiar with Liniux scripting. Also a lot of the instructions assumed I had an earlier version installed and am just updating. None of that is true for me. I can follow clear instructions but I am a component level hardware engineer, not a software engineer. I need something that doesn't assume I am a deep IT geek or software engineer. I am way more competent than most but i am not to that level of knowledge. I spent about 2 hours trying to figure it out and never did find clear instructions. Every instruction assumed I had background I did not. I couldn't even figure out how to enable this built in console - something about running a script to turn it on but no idea how to run the script, just what to run if I know how. Looks like I need to learn 2 or 3 new tools before I get there.
Have never done putty and the last command line I did was CP/M and DOS days. So yeah, going to need better clearer instructions.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Perhaps it's best to just ignore this problem and not worry about it.

 

[tsanga]

I did.
It appears to assume I already know how to work with the command line interface to the router and install some sort of viewer, and be somewhat familiar with Liniux scripting. Also a lot of the instructions assumed I had an earlier version installed and am just updating. None of that is true for me. I can follow clear instructions but I am a component level hardware engineer, not a software engineer. I need something that doesn't assume I am a deep IT geek or software engineer. I am way more competent than most but i am not to that level of knowledge. I spent about 2 hours trying to figure it out and never did find clear instructions. Every instruction assumed I had background I did not. I couldn't even figure out how to enable this built in console - something about running a script to turn it on but no idea how to run the script, just what to run if I know how. Looks like I need to learn 2 or 3 new tools before I get there.
Have never done putty and the last command line I did was CP/M and DOS days. So yeah, going to need better clearer instructions.

Maybe a good place to start is the Merlin wiki. First learn how to ssh into the router.

Home

Third party firmware for Asus routers (newer codebase) - RMerl/asuswrt-merlin.ng

github.com

It really is thoroughly written and cannot be clearer.

Installing Entware is literally nothing more than just typing in the command and following the instructions on screen. You only need Diversion for the email setup, again just follow directions: https://diversion.ch/diversion/installation.html

If you’re not comfortable with this, then yes perhaps just leave it alone.