Release Asuswrt-Merlin 3006.102.4 is now available

[Stephen Harrington]

I'll throw in another option to consider that may appeal to some?

Much more compact than an SSD, but maybe (??) more reliable than a cheapo USB drive - I've been using this combo for a few years without issues for numerous AMTM addons and Entware. I have two complete "units" and rotate and back them up semi-regularly in case of a failure. The uSD card is designed for car dash-cams / security cameras and the like. They are (or were) both available on Amazon. It's very low profile and barely sticks out of the back of the router ...

SanDisk SDDR-B531-GN6NN MobileMate USB 3.0 microSD Card Reader​

+​

Sandisk 64GB Max Endurance microSDHC Memory Card​

Cheers

 

[Daveo]

I'm using a SanDisk 64GB USB3 stick (bought brand new) for my new router (BE88U).

Old router (AX88U) was using a Nero branded SanDisk 32GB USB3 stick for years with no issues.

 

[agbommarito]

I've used a 64GB Samsung Fit USB 3.1 stick for many years without problems.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Quick question related to this, I am thinking I might want to order a more stable USB drive. The one I am using is a brand new USB but it was just some random PNY 32G flash drive so I am open to testing out another brand which might be more stable.

Recently I uninstalled Adguard and Skynet as someone mentioned the dnsmasq errors could have been related to Skynet restarting during an update, or due to the blocklists in adguard.

I still have the PNY flashdrive running AMTM with Tailmon and BKMon (and I think that is it), but I haven't had a reboot or issue since I uninstalled both AGH and Skynet. I am wondering if this would be an indicator this could be an issue with memory full issues as the usb drive is still present.

Please make sure you hit that search button... there have been lots of discussions around best practices for external storage. Here's one, for instance:

USB recommendations for Diversion / Skynet?

Looking for recommendations for USB drives to be used for scripts / swap running Diversion / Skynet on an AX86U pro. Not interested in anything large-ish, as I only use this drive for running the amtm scripts and not for NAS in any way. Try to keep my io to a minimum since it pushes the CPU so...

www.snbforums.com

 

[Ev0]

Last week I purchased a USB 3.0 Seagate 8TB hdd to use with my BE92U, it's connected with USB 3.0 cable and the router is set to USB 3.0.

The transfer speeds are 40MB's max, the exact same as when the router is set to USB 2.0.

Connected to the PC, the Seagate speeds are 200MB's via USB 3.0 and 40MB's via USB 2.0

Also noticed that since connecting the hdd to the router, that the ram constantly drains when I run a pc backup, to the point that the router drops offline and I have to power it off and on again.

 

[Jeffrey Young]

Last week I purchased a USB 3.0 Seagate 8TB hdd to use with my BE92U, it's connected with USB 3.0 cable and the router is set to USB 3.0.

The transfer speeds are 40MB's max, the exact same as when the router is set to USB 2.0.

Connected to the PC, the Seagate speeds are 200MB's via USB 3.0 and 40MB's via USB 2.0

Also noticed that since connecting the hdd to the router, that the ram constantly drains when I run a pc backup, to the point that the router drops offline and I have to power it off and on again.

All of which is normal. The router is not a NAS. It can't be expected to perform like one.

 

[Makaveli]

i've been using an old Crucial MX500 in an SATA enclosure for a couple years now with zero issue after having burning through a couple USB sticks when I first started to use Addin's.

​

 

[FourthandShort]

Did you really mis this post...?

Fortunately I did not miss that post.

The reboots started prior to the firmware upgrade. The only reason i added comments to this thread was there were similar comments related to the 6000 by another user mentioning the very same issue.

I originally posted this post where I mentioned I was having issues with AGH on the previous 3004.388.8_4 firmware. I then also saw this thread where another user mentioned issues very similar to mine (dnsmasq) where his appeared to be related to Skynet restarting and dnsmasq having issues related to that restart. So to try and see if these might be the issue, I removed both, which seems to have restored the stability. However now I am seeing others seem to think its unrelated to those scripts but could be related to instability of the USB flash drive (which is still in use now).

If the issue is the USB flash drive, i am curious why I am not seeing issues today. Yet others are seeing issues specific to the GX6000 and I am trying to figure out what the common theme is with the reboots.

 

[MDM]

Fortunately I did not miss that post.

The reboots started prior to the firmware upgrade. The only reason i added comments to this thread was there were similar comments related to the 6000 by another user mentioning the very same issue.

I originally posted this post where I mentioned I was having issues with AGH on the previous 3004.388.8_4 firmware. I then also saw this thread where another user mentioned issues very similar to mine (dnsmasq) where his appeared to be related to Skynet restarting and dnsmasq having issues related to that restart. So to try and see if these might be the issue, I removed both, which seems to have restored the stability. However now I am seeing others seem to think its unrelated to those scripts but could be related to instability of the USB flash drive (which is still in use now).

If the issue is the USB flash drive, i am curious why I am not seeing issues today. Yet others are seeing issues specific to the GX6000 and I am trying to figure out what the common theme is with the reboots.

Also could be related to both.

Probably the addons themselves, but...
The USB just might show it weakness on one addon and not another. That fast or not at all, simply by the possibility of BB ending on one addon write area and not the other.

 

[jksmurf]

How large of an NVME drive are most running? Are some running other applications than just the swap file/amtm? Are people using the drives for file sharing as well? Just curious.

Probably more a topic for another thread but I run the smallest NVMe I could find at the time, one router has 128MB, the other 240MB. I only use amtm and a few scripts (Diversion, Skynet, MerlinAU and Tailmon), along with some supporting packages/utilities (Entware, Email, Diskcheck, LED, Shell History). I

have a 2GB Swap (also a topic for another thread and there are many on this too), but it’s enough. So yes, underutilized but it’s hard to find a smaller disk these days unless you have an old one (and that probably won’t be NVMe, which is also ok). Lots of room for wear levelilng apparently.

 

[Tech9]

Also noticed that since connecting the hdd to the router, that the ram constantly drains when I run a pc backup, to the point that the router drops offline and I have to power it off and on again.

Discussed multiple times. Home routers are not good for NAS. With Asus this feature is used mostly for advertising purposes.

 

[rickysuperdog]

I only attached a cheap USB3.0 Sandisk 16GB to the router and do some files transfer when outside only. The speed of the router USB port is not fast.

 

[aru]

My router is not configured to use Samba as a NAS; instead, it simply runs the scripts listed in the signature and mounts a swap file.

By monitoring the scheduled execution of /tmp/mnt/usbkey/entware/sbin/fstrim -v /mnt/usbkey every day at dawn, I’ve noticed that approximately 2–3 GB of space is trimmed (marked as reclaimable) each day. This suggests that some services are generating a consistent amount of temporary or deletable data daily.

This indicates that if an external USB flash drive or SSD can reliably handle several gigabytes of write and delete operations daily, it should be capable of supporting the router’s related service demands without issue.

Let me know if I misunderstood anything.

 

[stevieosaurus]

This version broke my 2.4Ghz Wireless connection I had working well on previous firmwares. Wireless devices try to connect to the same 2.4 networks as previously - supposedly pass the password & MAC test - then I see "Obtaining IP address" and it disconnects, then tries the entire process again and again.

Did several reboots, tried disabling MAC filter & remove password, nothing works. Anybody else experience this?

Found this in the log:

Jun 18 11:37:23 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(645): eth6: Deauth_ind 40:45:xx:xx:xx:xx, status: 0, reason: Deauthenticated because sending station is leaving (or has left) IBSS or ESS (3), rssi:0
Jun 18 11:37:23 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(662): eth6: Disassoc 40:45:xx:xx:xx:xx, status: 0, reason: Disassociated because sending station is leaving (or has left) BSS (8), rssi:0
Jun 18 11:37:23 hostapd: eth6: STA 40:45:xx:xx:xx:xx IEEE 802.11: disassociated

 

[bennor]

This version broke my 2.4Ghz Wireless connection I had working well on previous firmwares.

Anybody else experience this?

Yes, there are a number of other discussions in the both this subforum and others where people are having WiFi issues with the 3006 firmware. One can use the forum search feature to find those other discussions. Here are some troubleshooting suggestions for 2.4Ghz WiFi issues:

• Disable Smart Connect.
• Use WPA2-Personal, not WPA2/WPA3.
• Set a specific Control Channel (ex: 1 or 6 or 11).
• Set Channel Bandwidth to 20Mhz
• Ensure the WiFi client supports AES encryption.
• Instruct the WiFi client to "forget" the WiFi connection and create a new connection.
• Avoid using special characters in the WiFi password.
• If using long complex passwords and SSID's, test with shorter passwords and SSID's.

 

[stevieosaurus]

Yes, there are a number of other discussions in the both this subforum and others where people are having WiFi issues with the 3006 firmware. One can use the forum search feature to find those other discussions. Here are some troubleshooting suggestions for 2.4Ghz WiFi issues:

• Disable Smart Connect.
• Use WPA2-Personal, not WPA2/WPA3.
• Set a specific Control Channel (ex: 1 or 6 or 11).
• Set Channel Bandwidth to 20Mhz
• Ensure the WiFi client supports AES encryption.
• Instruct the WiFi client to "forget" the WiFi connection and create a new connection.
• Avoid using special characters in the WiFi password.
• If using long complex passwords and SSID's, test with shorter passwords and SSID's.

Did all that, nothing worked. Here is what worked for me, as I noticed connecting to the Guest Network worked perfectly, even with my initial (unchanged) settings: it's somehow a DHCP conflict issue (no idea how or why)
So I ended up simply:

1. deleting the DHCP entry from the router (for the problematic devices in question).
   Unfortunately in the System Log - DHCP leases the MAC-IP association still remains for the remaining ~24 hours.
2. setting a static (different) IP in my device when connecting to the 2.4Ghz network, same subnet.

IT WORKED! No more DHCP conflict.
Hope it helps for anyone having same issue. No need to change any other setting. Hopefully tomorrow when the DHCP lease expires (changing it manually to a lesser timeframe DOES NOT work), everything will go well even with a DHCP setting on the end device. Still no idea why this happens, and only on the 2.4 wireless. 5Ghz worked fine from the start of the firmware upgrade.

 

[MDM]

Unfortunately in the System Log - DHCP leases the MAC-IP association still remains for the remaining ~24 hours.

Just reboot router (or retart service via SSH)...