Asuswrt-Merlin 378.50 is out

[reznor]

I was so happy to upgrade the router, but seems my RT-AC68U is bricked with this upgrade!

I did the update as usual and went fine but after i did the factory default the router goes on loop every minute and doesn't start anymore! i just got the power led on, all other light are off, WIFI doesn't start, so i try to connect with cable but i'm not able to access the admin page, seems the firmware is not able to start. I try also a hard reset with the button, no way! I'm really upset I hope there is a solution.

My router before the upgrade,

FW 376.49_4
bootloader 1.0.2.0 eu (upgraded from 1.0.1.6)
CPU 1000mhz

Why the factory default made my router dead??

Did you have the turbo mode enabled before the upgrade? I had enabled that on my 68U and ran into the same symptom. After I hit the button to disable that it booted without issue and I then found the admin page said my router was no longer compatible with turbo mode (due to the updated booter).

 

[RMerlin]

@Merlin: thanks very much for the 378.50 release. It works fine on both AC68U or AC87U in router mode. But I've tried to use one of my AC87U in AP mode together with another AC87U in router mode and it freezes my whole network without giving any indication on the problem. When using an AC68 in AP mode everthing works fine. Has anybody a clue of what's happening ?

No idea, but I've seen a lot of similar issues being reported with the stock firmware, where having two RT-AC87U on the same network was somehow causing stability issues.

 

[RogerSC]

Do you guys disable wps or just leave it on?

I configured my printer using wps but that's the only device I do it with so is it best to turn it off now and just turn it on when I need to use the feature.

I'm just unsure if it's secure after reading stuff in the past.

I always make sure that WPS and UPnP are disabled in router firmware during initial configuration. I don't use them, and having them on just increases one's risk level. I'd vote for having both of these disabled by default.

 

[win465]

Why does this keep popping up in the system logs?


Feb 9 00:16:55 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as
source address
Feb 9 00:16:55 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 00:16:56 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 00:16:57 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 00:16:58 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 00:16:59 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 00:17:00 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 00:17:01 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 01:16:54 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 01:16:54 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 01:16:55 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 01:16:56 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 01:16:57 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 01:16:58 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 01:16:59 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address
Feb 9 01:17:00 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address

 

[sbailey4]

3885 contained a fix attempt, which created far more serious issues (for instance, anything that required name resolution done on the router was failing). So Asus has reverted the "fix" after 3885.

Why does this keep popping up in the system logs?

Feb 9 00:16:55 kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as
source address

Answer from page 9 and 18

 

[Gunner84]

I always make sure that WPS and UPnP are disabled in router firmware during initial configuration. I don't use them, and having them on just increases one's risk level. I'd vote for having both of these disabled by default.

I disabled wps but I have no idea where to find upnp in settings, and what it does.
Isn't the later needed for things like console gaming?

 

[8undy]

@Merlin: thanks very much for the 378.50 release. It works fine on both AC68U or AC87U in router mode. But I've tried to use one of my AC87U in AP mode together with another AC87U in router mode and it freezes my whole network without giving any indication on the problem. When using an AC68 in AP mode everthing works fine. Has anybody a clue of what's happening ?

Try using both your AC87Us on a Router/Router config vs. Router/AP config. I was using Merlin FW when I got both routers and the whole network would freeze and shutdown in a Router/AP configuration. Then when I upgraded to the new stock FW I switched to Router/Router config and the whole network including 2.4/5 Ghz signals have been stable on both devices. My most recent uptime was over 20 days and recently rebooted, but everything appears to be working great for me now. Also, I'm not encountering any thermal issues. You may want to experiment if this works out for you, but some users prefer having a Router/AP configuration. Good Luck!

 

[Skirk]

It runs fine on my AC56U, so why it would not work on AC68 or AC87?

I guess you are the lucky one Seriously though, I would have no idea. It does seem odd, I thought the menus would be handled the same way across all of the platforms.

 

[littlewing1208]

Just thought I'd share my 378.50 experience on a RT-N66U (near 'bricking' moment):

I started off with 374.39 and I did screen shots of all my settings and did a factory settings reset. Then I uploaded 378.50 and it started the upgrade. When it got to 100%, it said to restart the router which I did. When it came up, I had my OSX laptop plugged in directly and DHCP assigned me a 169.254.x.x IP which was odd. I put in a static 192.168.1.100 IP and I still couldn't connect to the admin UI for setup.

I played around with restarting it and turning it off and holding reset and turning it on. At one point, I saw the cfe miniweb server page and I tried uploading 378.50 again to no avail. I tried the 10/10 reset with the WPS button (found that somewhere on this site) and that didn't work.

I finally found this: http://www.chrishardie.com/2013/02/asus-router-firmware-windows-mac-linux/

I got an ASUS firmware build (376.something) and put it to the router and after 5 minutes I restarted it. Still didn't work.

I tried it one more time, but after ftp-ing the trx file to the router, I went to sleep and this morning the router was working fine!

Then I reflashed 378.50 and it didn't display a percentage progress bar like before, but I saw in the status bar of the browser that the upload was very fast and all the screen showed was "applying settings..." for a long time (30+ minutes). I opened a new tab and go to the admin UI and it works and shows 378.50 as the current firmware.

I have reconfigured it and it is working well.

I just thought I'd share, because I have no idea what I did wrong or why this was such a tedious process. If anyone has any insight, I'd like to hear it so I am more confident in an upgrade in the future.

 

[EdoAsus]

Did you have the turbo mode enabled before the upgrade? I had enabled that on my 68U and ran into the same symptom. After I hit the button to disable that it booted without issue and I then found the admin page said my router was no longer compatible with turbo mode (due to the updated booter).

Yes I had enabled it but I used this command line,

nvram set clkfreq=1000,800
nvram commit
reboot

the button never worked (even when i updated the bootloader), so i used the line above instead end worked fine.

The problem now is that the router doesn't boot, I can't even put the router in rescue mode, so what's next? Is that bricked?
I don't understand what went so wrong after the factory default reset despite a successful update.
I did many updates since now without issue and reading all the necessary as I usually do, but this last was deadly for my router.
I appreciate a lot all the job of making Merlin FW but seems with this release is not 100% safe/tested (also due to the bootloader update).
I never use beta release so i waited to use this one. Luckily I got another router. I will talk soon to Asus service and see what can be done, I still got the warranty, hope I didn't waste the money for this router.

 

[leszek]

As per your post - will you enable FA on the 68P in the future? It's currently disabled.

 

[maddler]

Torrent is an horrible way of distributing something as security-sensitive as a router firmware IMHO. Way too easy for people to end up with fake/modded versions through some random torrent they got "somewhere" (and the vast majority of users have no idea what SHA256 is, so they wouldn't have the know-how to validate their torrented version).

Having the official downloads available from one single, specific location, makes things safer IMHO.

I know Softpedia has started carrying my firmwares a few months ago. I don't really like the idea, but I won't stop them from doing so. That's one way people could go as an alternative download source, however I would make sure to validate any download's SHA256 signature first. I have no idea where Softpedia downloads it in the first place, and no way to guarantee that the file is not modified in any way, which is why I don't officially point users as them as a valid download site.

Checking MD5 shoudl avoid that but, yes, I totally understand your security concerns as many ppl (as in 99.9%) would just flash without checking anything.

 

[reznor]

Yes I had enabled it but I used this command line,

nvram set clkfreq=1000,800
nvram commit
reboot

the button never worked (even when i updated the bootloader), so i used the line above instead end worked fine.

The problem now is that the router doesn't boot, I can't even put the router in rescue mode, so what's next? Is that bricked?
I don't understand what went so wrong after the factory default reset despite a successful update.
I did many updates since now without issue and reading all the necessary as I usually do, but this last was deadly for my router.
I appreciate a lot all the job of making Merlin FW but seems with this release is not 100% safe/tested (also due to the bootloader update).
I never use beta release so i waited to use this one. Luckily I got another router. I will talk soon to Asus service and see what can be done, I still got the warranty, hope I didn't waste the money for this router.

I've never used the command line to change those variables. My understanding is that the issue is a conflict between the overclock and the new boot loader. Can you get to a recovery mode and install the old boot loader?

 

[jmantn]

Lot's of noise

I have an RT-AC87 Router directly connected to my modem and an RT-AC68 hard wired as an AP point.

Due to issues I've seen with temps on the AC87 I've turned off the wireless radio's for the time being and been using the AC68 as the only wireless router serving up wifi within my home.

I installed 378.50 on all my routers last night, did hard reset via reset button and WPS reset on each and manually configured all routers (was using the restore utility but evidently my usb stick got fried as I left it connected to the AC87 and when I went to get it last night it was super hot to the touch but that's another story, just clarifying EVERYTHING was setup manually).

I've NEVER seen issues like I'm seeing today. Any device physically connected to any router via a cable works WONDERFULLY and probably most important for time being here. I however noticed some lag today while on wifi and did some tests as included in the screenshot and wondered if someone could help me understand what's going on when from my understanding of what I see is that everything is set up correctly.

My noise is being reported as 100%, Signal quality as Extremely Poor, Signal to Noise is -68db on 2.4 and -80 on 5, Noise avg, min, max is 100%
There's no overlapping networks at least that I can see. My computer is downstairs and the AC68 is upstairs however they're relatively 20-30 feet apart and I've never seen stats like these. Also my computer is also hardwired so this computer isn't a concern, rather the speedtest screenshot was done on my iPhone 6 Plus on 5ghz that was approx 25 feet away on the same floor as the AC68 and I've never had an issue with speed or connectivity at that range (unless I had an issue that affected everything).

My Networks are the ASUS and ASUS_5G

Edit: Split the diagnostics into 2 screenshots.

 

[reference2myself]

setup wizard

Every time I login with this firmware it wants me to go through the setup wizard again...

 

[Chazall1]

I ran via Telnet nvram get bl_version and it bootloader 1.0.1.4. Is this your current bootloader?
Thanks

 

[RogerSC]

I disabled wps but I have no idea where to find upnp in settings, and what it does.
Isn't the later needed for things like console gaming?

It's under WAN, and there's an FAQ there that you can read, too *smile*.

Yes, it's used to automatically open ports that need to be open for games, etc. If I were a gamer, I'd want to open the needed ports manually, rather than using a facility that's running all the time for doing that. However, I don't have a game console, or any use for software that opens ports automatically *smile*.

 

[YasharF]

Howdy folks,

I am currently planning on phasing out official support for the RT-N16. That device is the only one currently based on the old SDK5 (which means various things have to be written/tested/debugged just for that particular device), and its limited nvram make it hard to properly support any longer ... If someone is willing to step up and help by officially taking over maintaining this model, please let me know.

RMerlin,
I can potentially help you with RT-N16. I currently have two of these devices in production and would like to see them having up-to-date code and in a security patched state. On my Ubuntu box, I have also managed to compile your source code from github and generate the TRX image (although I have not tried to use the TRX file that I generated). I have also started to contribute to entware in the last month or so since that project needed some help with security patches and a few other things (see entware issues on github).

What are the problems that you are running into with RT-N16 and how can I help out?

 

[troels]

Yes I had enabled it but I used this command line,

nvram set clkfreq=1000,800
nvram commit
reboot

the button never worked (even when i updated the bootloader), so i used the line above instead end worked fine.

The problem now is that the router doesn't boot, I can't even put the router in rescue mode, so what's next? Is that bricked?
I don't understand what went so wrong after the factory default reset despite a successful update.
I did many updates since now without issue and reading all the necessary as I usually do, but this last was deadly for my router.
I appreciate a lot all the job of making Merlin FW but seems with this release is not 100% safe/tested (also due to the bootloader update).
I never use beta release so i waited to use this one. Luckily I got another router. I will talk soon to Asus service and see what can be done, I still got the warranty, hope I didn't waste the money for this router.

Did you try disconnecting power, connecting with WPS button pressed until led light starts blinking?

 

[EdoAsus]

I've never used the command line to change those variables. My understanding is that the issue is a conflict between the overclock and the new boot loader. Can you get to a recovery mode and install the old boot loader?

Here is were I found to enable turbo mode:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=20506

How I can install the old bootloader if i'm not able to get in rescue mode?
The router resets it's self on loop and it never start.
When I plug the router only the power led is steady on, after a minute I see all lan led flashing for a sec, then USB 2.0 led goes on for 2 sec, this keeps going on loop even after 2 hours. If there is another way to recover bootloader + FW will be fine, seems the reset button is not working now. If there is no solution the only way is hope i can apply the warranty.