270 Firmware - Number does not change

[cvonline]

Hi

I bought N66u about a month ago. The firmware it came with was 3.0.0.4.260. In first few days i started having drop outs. I upgraded to 270 26B by RMerlin. And it was smooth as till date.

However, few things have happened since the upgrade.
1) the firmaware screen and home screen still show version 260 as current

2) when i click on reboot though home screen, the lights remain ON all the while. So i am not sure if the box has rebooted or not. The home screen comes up with how much % completed. But the lights are on throughout the reboot.

3) when I go to firmware screen - as i said it still shows 260 - but when i click on Check Version it comes back saying you have latest version. Is it talking about 260 being latest or 270?

4) And there are no logs to suggest upgrade has happened.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[RMerlin]

Hi,

Just reflash it. Most likely the flash didn't go through. I suggest flashing after a freshly rebooted router to ensure you're not low on memory, and disable Download Master first if you had it enabled (once again to ensure you don't run out of memory).

 

[Pierino]

Also don't trust the "check for update" page. Manually look for a new fw.

 

[joegreat]

3) when I go to firmware screen - as i said it still shows 260 - but when i click on Check Version it comes back saying you have latest version. Is it talking about 260 being latest or 270?

4) And there are no logs to suggest upgrade has happened.

Hi,

ad 3)
Please go diretly to the Asus Homepage for the latest firmware!
Or (even better) go for Merlin's enhanced version from his download server!

ad 4)
By checking for new firmware you will NOT GET the new firmware.

Download the version of your choice, unzipp it, install it and be happy!

With kind regards
Joe

 

[cvonline]

Thanks Pierino.

joegreat - I did feel that checking for new version is not meant to do that.

RMerlin - you nailed it. I had to reflash it with DownloadMaster unistall. Now it shows 270. Soon i may go on to 354 28b. Thank you kindly.

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks Pierino.

joegreat - I did feel that checking for new version is not meant to do that.

RMerlin - you nailed it. I had to reflash it with DownloadMaster unistall. Now it shows 270. Soon i may go on to 354 28b. Thank you kindly.

I recommend staying with 270 on the RT-N66U, due to major issues with the wireless driver used in build 354.

 

[cvonline]

Thanks for the advise. I was about to perform the upgrade now.

Out of curiosity, will or can some builds in future increase the max USB capacity from 2TB to more like 4TB etc.

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks for the advise. I was about to perform the upgrade now.

Out of curiosity, will or can some builds in future increase the max USB capacity from 2TB to more like 4TB etc.

Large disk support is already implemented... as well as it can be done anyway. Part of the problem isn't the firmware, but USB enclosures themselves that are buggy. For instance, some Vantec enclosures will incorrectly report the hardware sector size. It works under Windows either due to a workaround Microsoft has in the OS, or through sheer luck. But any Linux machine (even one running a recent 3.x kernel, such as my Ubuntu HTPC) won't work with it. This is the case with the USB 3.0 enclosure that I have here for instance. In these cases, the fault lies with the manufacturer of the USB enclosure, and there isn't much that either Asus or even Linux kernel developers can do. Manufacturers have to get off their lazy butts, and start validating their cheap junk under Linux.

 

[cvonline]

makes perfect sense. It is about time these guys get their act together.

Thank you kindly.

 

[DrTeeth]

The only way they will start to check if their stuff works under Linux is if end-users ask that. Before buying try to email the company and ask. Also, at least here in the UK, one can return something as 'not fit for purpose' if one asks is something works under Linux and it does not.

Once one has a bit of kit and then keeps it, it is too late to complain.

 

[RMerlin]

Padavan tracked down yet another kernel patch from 2012 which improves compatibility with some of these SATA to USB bridges. Looks like Ubuntu 13.04 has a kernel with that change since it is now able to correctly access my 3 TB Caviar Green - which failed to mount under Ubuntu 12.04.

The good news is: with that patch added, my RT-N66U is now able to succesfully access the disk (despite the fact the silly bridge reports 512-byte sectors instead of the native 4096 bytes sectors the disk uses). The bad news: it only works with ext3. Looks like Paragon's ufsd fails to mount it if formated under NTFS, as it's unable to replay the journal. Ubuntu was able to mount it using NTFS-3G, but the performance of that driver is so painful, you wouldn't want to use a large capacity disk on a low-powered device with that driver.

You can't reformat the disk from the router either - not enough RAM to create the filesystem. Ubuntu 13.04 + gparted were able to reformat it.

I'll commit that patch to my repo so it will get included in my next release.