Asuswrt-Merlin 378.50 is out

[trueimage]

I have the RT-N66U should I be always just updating to the latest of these builds, or is there a most stable version for the n66u?

 

[EdoAsus]

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

Yes I just tried, but it's not going in rescue mode .... thanks anyway

 

[AndreaS]

Yes I just tried, but it's not going in rescue mode .... thanks anyway

If you can't go to rescue mode by pressing the reset button at power-on and leaving it pressed until the power led blinks, chances there are that something went wrong with your CFE upgrade. I assume that you already tried to power-cycled your router (swich it off, remove any attached plug, power included, wait at least 2 minutes, attach only power and switch-on)

If this is the case, as far as I know, the only possible alternatives are Recover via JTAG (something I never tried) or return to support.

 

[shitter]

Updated my AC68U and set everything up from scratch. Everything works fine so far.
His coverage makes me disappointed, I have a DSL-2740e which has MUCH better coverage.

 

[RMerlin]

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.

One thing to note is that flashing through the Firmware Recovery mode (either web-based or the tool from Asus's website) can take anywhere between 20 and 40 mins to complete on the RT-N66U (due to its slower flash). This is typically longer than the firmware restoration tool will wait. Just giving it a good 40 minutes or so and ignoring any error message is recommended. Once the flash process is done, the router will reboot itself, and you should know by the fact that the wireless LEDs will be back on.

 

[RMerlin]

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

What the previous poster meant is, make sure the button at the back of the router (the one that will control either the LEDs or the Turbo mode) isn't pressed, or it might prevent the router from booting.

Based on the fact that there has been over 4000 downloads for the RT-AC68U firmware so far with no other report, I doubt that it's to "lack of testing". This firmware went through nearly three weeks of public beta test, which actually made it one of the most widely tested release so far. Something else is at play in your particular situation.

 

[RMerlin]

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

I'll have to make sure that enabling FA support at build time does not create issues with the RT-AC68U, which lacks the HW support for it, and still shares the same firmware as the AC68P.

So far I don't know if FA makes any performance difference on top of CTF. Sometimes, I suspect it might be more a marketing thing from Broadcom than something actually helping in the case of these routers.

 

[RMerlin]

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

As indicated in the changelog, the CFE update is *only* for the RT-AC68U.

 

[RMerlin]

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

What router model?

Make sure you complete the whole QIS so it will properly configure all basic settings. Also try a different browser.

 

[RMerlin]

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?

Mostly lack of time to test, and possibly debug issues that might be specific to that model. Having to flash a new release to test its basic functionality can be quite time-consuming, and I currently have to do it for:

- RT-N16 (to test single band MIPS SDK 5)
- RT-N66U or RT-AC66U (to test MIPS SDK6)
- RT-AC56U or RT-AC68U (to test ARM SDK6)
- RT-AC87U (to test Quantenna)
- RT-AC3200 (currently in development, to test the three-band support)

The RT-N16U is radically different from all other platforms I listed in part due to its older SDK. The wireless code itself is quite different from SDK6. Any time I change something to the Wireless Log page, for instance, I must also do the same in a separate file that handles SDK5 devices. Add to that the fact that the RT-N16 flash is quite slow, and it makes testing quite time consuming.

I can offload at least some of that support to either forks available as they both support the RT-N16, although John's not going to be adding any new feature, and Andrey's fork does divert a bit from my code.

Ideally, what I'd need would be for someone to take any release code that I make, and handle compiling the RT-N16 build, testing it, releasing it, and taking charge of fixing reported issues that are specific to that model. I'd be willing to accept pull requests to merge back any fixes into my master repository. I could also take care of hosting the downloads into an "unofficial" section of my Mediafire download site if need be.

 

[john9527]

What router model?

Make sure you complete the whole QIS so it will properly configure all basic settings. Also try a different browser.

And, make sure you have any password manager set up in your browser set to ignore the router's ip address.

 

[RMerlin]

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

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.

That little bit of additional information is very important, as it marks a big difference between "bricked" (which means the bootloader is toast, and unable to even start booting) and "crashing" (which is your situation).

In your case, your router does begin its boot process since it goes far enough to start initializing the USB interface. That means that your bootloader is fine, the issue is either a corrupted firmware, or a corrupted nvram.

Usually, you should be able to use either recovery mode (by booting with the reset button pressed) or factory default resets (by booting with the WPS button pressed). However it's possible that the RT-AC68U might suffer from the same issue as the RT-AC56U, where corrupted nvram can prevent the router buttons from working at boot time.

In such a case, the router is always recoverable through the use of a TTL to Serial cable. No need to go thermonuclear with JTAG (which is far, far more complicated to do than recovery using a Serial to TTL cable).

You mention the USB led turning on - try booting your router with NOTHING plugged to it: no USB disk, no LAN, no WAN cable. See if it completes its boot sequence. If it does, now try pressing the reset button for 5 secs, until the power led flashes, then release it. That will do a factory default reset.

 

[RMerlin]

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.

Try completely turning off the router for about 30 secs, and turning it back on, to fully reset the Quantenna CPU in addition to the rest of the router. Also, double check that the antennas are properly screwed, in case one might have been knocked out loose (I always have a hard time myself accessing my USB thumbdrive at the back without having to re-check that the antenna is still properly screwed).

 

[jmantn]

Thanks! I do have two antenna's (all are factory) on the 87R that are always loose despite ensuring they are screwed in correctly.

I didn't realize that would have created the issue however. Things are working well after unplugging and adjusting the antennas which as you inferred I typically never touch but did this time as I was gonna use the configuration utility.

Think it was a faulty USB thumb drive but out of curiosity has anyone had any experience with a drive getting super hot when plugged into the back of the 87R?

 

[Junky321]

I am not sure if this related to 378.50 firmware but my setup worked reliably before the update from 376.49.4.

AC68U router > AC66 AP > AC66 MB

With 378.50, internet would stop working completely within hours. I have seem this issue awhile back before Asus fixed their issues with the AC66 in Bridge Mode. For now, I will set the AC-66 in Repeater Mode to see if my internet is stabilized. I will report back if I concluded my findings.

Thanks for the nice updated firmware.

 

[RMerlin]

Think it was a faulty USB thumb drive but out of curiosity has anyone had any experience with a drive getting super hot when plugged into the back of the 87R?

Not with a USB thumbdrive, but I remember years ago getting into the workshop at work, and sniffing a strong smell of burning electronics. It was a USB mouse that had died on my workbench, and shorted out. It was burning hot when I unplugged it.

 

[RMerlin]

As a follow-up on recent discussion about hosting and mirrors, here are the traffic stats for Asuswrt-Merlin's download site, for the last 30 days (which includes two major releases, 376.49 and 378.50):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VzRXfqIPRmSjTBpvQQgEFzFCyqmLbk8smNY081JPN2c/edit?usp=sharing

 

[VacTacks11]

First time, long time.

AC87R, 378.50 (from beta 1 and beta 2). Any ideas why I would need to run through the Quick Internet Setup each time I have to reboot the router?

If I reboot and try to access, say, cnn.com, I'm taken to 192.168.1.1, asked to log in, and I can't access the internet unless I run through the Quick Internet Setup. The fields are already in there, because I restored 378.50 from scratch, and had to enter them anyway.

Thank you

 

[johtaja]

@RMerlin

What about my problem, loosing IPv6 when enabling URL filter, worked fine with 376.48_3.

Is that a bug or a feature of new IPv6 code? My router is RT-N66U, using Tunnel 6rd

EDIT: if I just enable URL filter with empty filter list it works, but when I add anything to list, IPv6 dies.

 

[DSwit]

I've noticed the following appearing in my system log following the flash to 378.50 to my RT-N66U:

---
Feb 9 22:24:22 dnsmasq[566]: using nameserver x.x.x.x#53 for domain local
---

I'd post the entire relevant set of log entries, but the security system triggers and prevents it.

The x's are of course my providers DNS servers and the x.shawcable.net domain is assigned by its DHCP. I don't attempt to use the shawcable.net domain for any purpose. I don't have any devices joined to the .local domain.

The default setting for forwarding local queries is disabled by default and remains unchanged. The router is set to forced local browsemaster and the WINS server is not enabled.

The DHCP server has four reserved addresses that are below the starting DHCP pool address of x.x.x.10.

Is the forwarding of local domain queries to my providers DNS servers expected behavior? Do I need to create a custom script to prevent this behavior?

tia!