VPN problem rt ac56u John's Fork

[pattox]

Pressing the default option in VPN did not clear the loaded vpn settings on my 56u. The settings remain on the gui and the certs are still in NVRAM (displayed after nvram show).

Perversely, even though the gui shows the settings, after changing the service state to "On" the router goes through all the motions but vpn is not activated.

By way of background, I had wanted to activate one of the vpn clients but after uploading the certificates I received the "nvram space too low" message and tried to reverse what I had entered.

 

[Adooni]

did you made hard reset of your router and set up all setting manually (w/o uploading config file)?

 

[pattox]

did you made hard reset of your router and set up all setting manually (w/o uploading config file)?

I plan to do that anyway because I'd like to refresh the settings etc in whole router.

But that's not central to this firmware problem. ie the default vpn setting should clear settings but it doesn't. Clearly the router is confused because the gui indicates that there are active vpn settings in place but the vpn doesn't work.

 

[eibgrad]

I plan to do that anyway because I'd like to refresh the settings etc in whole router.

But that's not central to this firmware problem. ie the default vpn setting should clear settings but it doesn't. Clearly the router is confused because the gui indicates that there are active vpn settings in place but the vpn doesn't work.

I think the point @Adooni is making is that after any firmware upgrade, if you don't immediately follow that up by erasing nvram and reconfiguring manually, you can potentially leave the router in a bad state, where all kinds of weird things can happen, including operations that should work, but don't. So in that sense, it *is* relevant. Dirty upgrades of any kind are known to cause all kinds of "gremlins", and it's hard to predict where they might happen. It could be just about anything.

 

[pattox]

I think the point @Adooni is making is that after any firmware upgrade, if you don't immediately follow that up by erasing nvram and reconfiguring manually, you can potentially leave the router in a bad state, where all kinds of weird things can happen, including operations that should work, but don't. So in that sense, it *is* relevant. Dirty upgrades of any kind are known to cause all kinds of "gremlins", and it's hard to predict where they might happen. It could be just about anything.

Thanks. I do understand that and it's quite possible that this residual "debris" is causing the problem. On the other hand it could be a problem with the firmware code.

Anyway I plan to do a clean manual reinstall of the settings and this may resolve the problem.

 

[Adooni]

yes, but before you put on forum any info that something is wrong you should generally.

1. flash latest FW
2. perform hard reset to clear nvram
3. setup all manually

and then if it is not working wrote new post

 

[john9527]

Took a look at the code and spotted what may be a problem during client reset.
Generated a fix, but can't test it right now. If you would like to give it a try, 51D7 is up in the Development downloads.

 

[pattox]

Took a look at the code and spotted what may be a problem during client reset.
Generated a fix, but can't test it right now. If you would like to give it a try, 51D7 is up in the Development download

Initially tried unsuccessfully to load 51D7 from 51D4 -three attempts with 3 reboots. At the end of the upgrade process the gui still showed 51D4.

Then tried a reflash to E3 which "took". After that, reflashed from E3 to 51D7 which then worked. Low NVram warning then appeared. Used the default VPN button which cleared the NVRam warning and the VPN data.

So again thank you john9527 for your wonderful work.

Just one more thing. If I find other problems like this and several others I came across recently, which is the best way to alert you to them, or to address them? Is it by posting on the forum?

 

[john9527]

Just one more thing. If I find other problems like this and several others I came across recently, which is the best way to alert you to them, or to address them? Is it by posting on the forum?

Yes...opening a forum thread is the best way. In addition to me seeing it, this community is very good and many times can also help out.

PS - If you are running low on nvram space, you can move certs to jffs, but on this fork it is a manual process via CLI. See the Merlin_Fork_Options.txt file for details.

 

[pattox]

Even though residual "debris" was apparently not an issue in this case I decided to clear all the settings anyway and re enter them manually just to see the effect.

The end result was NVram utilisation went from 85% to 67%.