Asuswrt-Merlin 374.41 is out

[RMerlin]

i so sad that the Run CMD page has been removed.

i will stick to Firmware:374.40 (Merlin build) for now.

Even if it means any website you visit while you are logged into your router can potentially gain root access to it?

 

[Trebuin]

I looked at your recent posts, and none of them explain what are those actual issues, what troubleshooting steps you too, or any details as to which type of WAN connection you have. That will make it impossible for anyone to help you with your problems.

Considering the hundreds of downloads from other people that have no issue with their WAN, I disagree with your conclusion that it's a "failed firmware".

Discovered the problem being that Comcast's DNS lookup servers is having issues. Changing the settings to use OpenDNS fixed the issues, though I have no clue why that actually worked considering restarting the router would also fix the problems sometimes...which would not point to a DNS address issue. I verified by putting in a direct IP address during a period where the router wasn't working, only to see I could access google just fine.

Sorry about the accusation, thought I'd see if anyone else was having similar issues to point to me to not look further.

 

[DrTeeth]

My stance on locale change has always been the same: I just don't support it. If channels aren't allowed in certain country, it's for a reason, not just to annoy their residents.

I agree 110%. I am not doing ANYTHING illegal. I live in the UK and am setting my locale to GB to use what I am allowed to do LEGALLY. So your point is moot in my case. Why should I be denied 15 LEGAL channels on 5GHz? Why should I risk my ham licence that I have held for nearly 40 years? I suppose as my LEGAL locale is borked you are indirectly encouraging me to use an ILLEGAL one!

Make yourself clear, you don't support **illegal** locale change. Why should that impinge or cripple legal changes? It's a bit like banning beer because some idiot may drink and drive.

The special SDK6 build has issue only for people who use a non-supported region.

I wonder how many are unsupported. Have you seen how many regulatory frameworks there are in Europe? The standard Asus SKD6 driver does not have this issue.

In fact, as regards radio frequency allocation, there is NO EU entity (the router's default locale) - each country has it's own separate regulatory framework at 2.4GHz and 5GHz. If the US or CA locales were borked, they would be fixed pretty quickly.

 

[RussellInCincinnati]

DrTeeth this tone best in a private message

DrTeeth everything you are saying makes sense. And you have posted many helpful messages, thanks. It is also true that the tone and typography of this last post of yours is a little rough for what most of us hope is the politest of public fora.

Am further doubting that roughhousing with Merlin is going to accomplish anything constructive. Am also doubting that you, who are not dealing daily, for years, with the issues of creating routing firmware, have much chance of bringing up issues that Merlin hasn't had time to make up his mind about.

Hope you will consider continuing this line of contention and tone in private messages with Merlin, where you will be free-est to make your interesting points in a style you prefer.

 

[RMerlin]

No matter how do I press the refresh button (long or short interval), some connections remains there in the panel, and a day passed, they still 'locked' in there. Even I disconnect the corresponding PC (192.168.10.140), they still show out ! See the pic bellow.

To get rid of them, I have to reboot the router.


View attachment 2228

The default TCP timeout for established connections under kernel 2.6.36 is 4 days. If a connection wasn't properly closed, then I suspect those will remain there for up to 4 days. This is adjustable under Tools -> Other Settings.

 

[DrTeeth]

DrTeeth everything you are saying makes sense. And you have posted many helpful messages, thanks. It is also true that the tone and typography of this last post of yours is a little rough for what most of us hope is the politest of public fora.

Am further doubting that roughhousing with Merlin is going to accomplish anything constructive. Am also doubting that you, who are not dealing daily, for years, with the issues of creating routing firmware, have much chance of bringing up issues that Merlin hasn't had time to make up his mind about.

Hope you will consider continuing this line of contention and tone in private messages with Merlin, where you will be free-est to make your interesting points in a style you prefer.

I beg to differ. All I want to be able to do is what is legal in my country and am prevented so by Merlin's concern that somebody might ,shock, horror, set their locale to an illegal one. Their is NO EU locale in a regulatory sense and most European countries have similar 5GHz channels to the UK, not the low 4 that is offered by default.

Lets think of all the legal things we could ban or 'not support' because somebody may eek:) do something illegal with them. The stance is indefensible.

I'm done for now.

UPDATE: Found another locale that gives me FULL UK channels on the first try.

 

[flinchlock]

On further use, I discovered the absence of the command line page...

i so sad that the Run CMD page has been removed.

For security reasons, the Run CMD page has been removed. In the last few releases Asus has been tightening security in the web server backend, restricting what processes can be launched by it through the webui. Since keeping the Run Cmd page would basically overset all these security improvements, I have decided to remove it. Using putty/XShell4/ssh isn't difficult, and well worth the security improvements.

Mike (My RED)

 

[DrTeeth]

I agree with 'flinchlock'.

Merlin has left some excellent instructions on how to do this somewhere here and I went from knowing nothing, to being competent in a few minutes. Not only that, but I PREFER it too.

He also suggested a program to use, Xshell 4, that is miles better than all the other clients I had downloaded to try out.

 

[Builder71]

@DrTeeth:

All RT-N66U owners hope Asus fixes the range issues wit the stock SDK6 driver soon.
It sucks they take so long.
I (we) do understand your issues.
Problem is, you can't keep complaining here.
It's completely out of RMerlins control, as you can read in his opening post.

I'm glad the "special" driver fixes the range issue for now.
If you or others are not, then change to the stock Asus firmware.
It's as simple as that.
I know you understand that as well.

Keep your posts coming, only not about wireless drivers. ;-)

 

[rlcronin]

I swear, people are never content...

True. In my 35 years of software development, I've found that if you please half the people and tick off the remainder, you're doing fine. In the end you have to be true to yourself.
--
bc

 

[DrTeeth]

I can confirm this behaviour on both 374.40 and 374.41 (and probably all other versions!). It is caused by changing the regulation domain from EU to GB.

The GUI shows all the extra channels for GB but it is in fact stuck at channel 1 (for 2.4GHZ/40MHz) and 36 (5GHz).

Changing the domain back to EU makes everything work as expected but with fewer channels and less power.

Try Iceland .

 

[DrTeeth]

@DrTeeth:

All RT-N66U owners hope Asus fixes the range issues wit the stock SDK6 driver soon.
It sucks they take so long.
It's completely out of RMerlins control, as you can read in his opening post.

The standard driver is not broken; just the 'special' one. That I do NOT have any problem with at all - I honestly do not. I appreciate Merlin's work and have a lot of respect for him. With his connections, I am sure he could help matters if he were sympathetic to the broken GB locale issue.

I just strongly disagree with his reasoning for not helping users change their locale - it just does not pass muster or critical examination IMHO.

It is the standpoint of not supporting the changing of locales as shock, horror, somebody may change a locale to an illegal one.

Let's think of all the legal things we can not support because somebody may do something illegal with them? Where do we start? Cars, beer, guns, computers, petrol/gasoline, etc? Silly isn't it? Even posts containing instructions to change the locale do not get deleted.

All I wanted to do is use my router legally for my own country. Not helping a legitimate user is sure going to stop all those naughty users isn't it LOLZ? I have even found and tested the code to strip ALL restrictions out of the wireless driver. I tested it but do not care to use it. It has been saved for future use if necessary.

Anyway, problem solved on the first hit. It's very cold here in Iceland . Just one illegal channel (for the UK) on 5GHz which I will have no need to use. All the rest as per the UK as well as the power settings.

 

[shpankey]

I'm definitely with you on this, and I don't see anyone saying they don't appreciate all of Merlin's outstanding efforts. We all do, but point well made, sir.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Try Iceland .

Thanks. I understand they have a great banking system!

Without getting drawn into to rights and wrongs of the issue, I think I can understand why it has arisen. ASUS manufactures one type of router for sale throughout the EU. It would be impractical to manufacture different versions for different countries (what with the free movement of goods, etc). Hence, the wireless capabilities are set at the lowest common denominator of all countries in the EU. Given that there is no official way of setting the wireless country in the standard firmware it follows that any regional bugs in the driver (like the GB one) would not be tested for and discovered. It would be nice however to think that ASUS are aware of the bug so that they might fix it at some point in the future for us enthusiast users.

 

[Grievous Angel]

Well I got 16 days of uptime with .40 with no stability or speed issues. . almost hate to bring it down to put on .41, but like Pavlov's dog, I cannot resist.

 

[myserver57]

samba issues?

Hi all.

First, thanks to Merlin for his work

Second, is anybody else having samba issues in this version? Specifically:
1) I noticed that LAN access to the samba share is blocked when the firewall is on. It works fine if you turn off the firewall, or if you make a firewall rule to allow port 445 through. (it doesn't affect shields up port scan, it's still stealth). I think this is still related to Asus somehow thinking samba traffic is internet traffic, since QOS still affects read throughput.
2) I can no longer access my share by the netbios name, I have to go by IP. If I set a hosts entry to the IP, then my logon credentials aren't accepted. This one doesn't matter if I have the firewall enabled or allow traffic, it just never works.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[KGB7]

You're not the one getting emails, PMs, Tweets and forum posts all the time asking those kind of questions...

Then use me as guine pig to test it and find flaws. With DD-WRT firmware and on any past routers, the repeater mode is very simple; change it to Client Bridge and everything works, even all WiFi settings are present.

So let's work together to make the firmware even better.

 

[GoNz0]

Try Iceland .

region codes are hit and miss on different models and versions of software.

IC code still causes issues on the 68u.

 

[steven168]

on 374.41 i try to copy from my router usb samba share to my android phone, my copy stop halfway.

previously on 374.40 no issues no mattar how big the size of the files.

 

[Stimpy]

The standard driver is not broken; just the 'special' one. That I do NOT have any problem with at all - I honestly do not. I appreciate Merlin's work and have a lot of respect for him. With his connections, I am sure he could help matters if he were sympathetic to the broken GB locale issue.

I just strongly disagree with his reasoning for not helping users change their locale - it just does not pass muster or critical examination IMHO.

It is the standpoint of not supporting the changing of locales as shock, horror, somebody may change a locale to an illegal one.

Let's think of all the legal things we can not support because somebody may do something illegal with them? Where do we start? Cars, beer, guns, computers, petrol/gasoline, etc? Silly isn't it? Even posts containing instructions to change the locale do not get deleted.

All I wanted to do is use my router legally for my own country. Not helping a legitimate user is sure going to stop all those naughty users isn't it LOLZ? I have even found and tested the code to strip ALL restrictions out of the wireless driver. I tested it but do not care to use it. It has been saved for future use if necessary.

Anyway, problem solved on the first hit. It's very cold here in Iceland . Just one illegal channel (for the UK) on 5GHz which I will have no need to use. All the rest as per the UK as well as the power settings.

Fantastic post Dr!

I feel exactly the same as you, this is a very frustrating issue, and one that could be so easy to fix. What I don't understand is ASUS's position on locale setting, THEY should be the one adding it to the UI, not Merlin. I simply cannot see the logic surrounding this issue. Many modern electronics ask for your location when you run the initial setup, so why can't ASUS do this?

And one other thing Dr, thank your for doing the hard work and finding out which country settings work.