Asuswrt-Merlin 378.52 is available

[MasterBash]

Recently bought a rt-ac87u. Very happy with its performance so far except for the bugs. I am currently using 378.52_2 .

When I go to Tools, it tells me I am using CTF Only as Hardware Accelerator. Shouldnt it be CTF + FA ? I dont have any QoS settings on or per IP monitoring.

Also, is there an option somewhere to disable Web History?

Lastly, does it matter if I put it on a wall? I am talking about temps. CPU is already at 73C, 5ghz at 61C and 2.4ghz at 44C

 

[DaveMishSr]

Sorry to sound like a 5-year old, but to store customized config or scripts - to accomplish what on this router? Where can one find out more about this? Always learning, thanks.

I use it to have my AC87R reboot automatically each morning at 5:15. The Wiki is your friend.

 

[sk1z0fr3n1k]

Hi Merlin,

First of all, thanks for your wonderful work!

I have a question..
On your firmware, by default, JFFS partition is enabled and I noticed that both the syslog.log & traffic.db (from Traffic Analyser) frequently write to it.
Isn't this problematic due to prematurely wear of the flash RAM?

Is there a way to move these files to a USB disk instead?

Regards,
sk1z0fr3n1k

 

[RMerlin]

Hi Merlin,

First of all, thanks for your wonderful work!

I have a question..
On your firmware, by default, JFFS partition is enabled and I noticed that both the syslog.log & traffic.db (from Traffic Analyser) frequently write to it.
Isn't this problematic due to prematurely wear of the flash RAM?

Is there a way to move these files to a USB disk instead?

The flash is rated for 100,000 program/erase cycle. It's a part specifically targeting logfile storage, so it will be fine.

The JFFS partition is enabled by default on the stock firmware as well.

 

[RMerlin]

Recently bought a rt-ac87u. Very happy with its performance so far except for the bugs. I am currently using 378.52_2 .

When I go to Tools, it tells me I am using CTF Only as Hardware Accelerator. Shouldnt it be CTF + FA ? I dont have any QoS settings on or per IP monitoring.

FA is automatically disabled by the firmware for various situations (and I haven't tracked them down, so I don't know which one specifically).

Also, is there an option somewhere to disable Web History?

No.

 

[RussellInCincinnati]

Lastly, does it matter if I put it on a wall? I am talking about temps. CPU is already at 73C, 5ghz at 61C and 2.4ghz at 44C

The CPU temperature of 73C, and the radio temperatures you observe, are not problematic. It is certainly reasonable to mount the router on a wall for a couple of hours and see if the temperatures go up a significant amount, my prediction is that it will not be problem.

 

[DaveMishSr]

I believe I may have found a bug in 378.52_2. I have been going crazy for about 6 weeks or so. Every so often my WAN connection would tank. All would appear to be in order, the router would allow me to access it and would report a working WAN connection (IP Address, gateway & DNS servers listed on Network Map>>>Wan Status). However, most sites were inaccessible and the ones that did render were cached versions. If I cleared the browser cache then nothing would render at all.

So, after about a dozen factory resets, an average of 2 each week for six weeks, I decided to try and ascertain the problem and I think I have found it, Traffic Analyzer. I have now successfully reproduced the problem and fixed it 3 times after meticulously activating features one at a time and rebooting. First, it only happens when Traffic Analyzer is switched to "on" and after the router has been rebooted. It happens on IE, Chrome, Firefox and Pale Moon. I have a script in place using JFFS to automatically reboot my router at 05:15 each day. So anytime I would try activating Traffic Analyzer the following day the WAN connection would be broken, seemingly on its own.

So, as soon as I had switched Traffic Analyzer on and rebooted the issue instantly appeared upon the router coming back up. Turn off Traffic Analyzer and reboot (rebooting client as well) and guess what? You got it, the problem would be gone. I have now reproduced the issue twice after initially discovering its apparent cause so I am fairly confident that something untowards is occurring. In thinking about this issue it started as soon as Merlin added the TA feature for the AC87x platform, IIRC.

My ISP is COX, I have an Arris/Moto SB6183 modem, all new cabling from the tap on the street all the way to the modem (took a 2 man crew about 3 minutes to run RG-11 from the tap on the street to the side of my house) and a Cat6 cable running between the modem and router.

 

[sbailey4]

I use it to have my AC87R reboot automatically each morning at 5:15. The Wiki is your friend.

Just curious but why would you need to reboot the router daily? I had old Dlinks that never rebooted for a year or more unless power went out. Current AC66 pretty much only gets rebooted when new firmware is released. (21 days or so from .51 to .52) and no issues at all.

 

[DaveMishSr]

I prefer to have a fresh boot each day for reasons I would rather not disclose. Sorry.

 

[charmainelooi]

I'm also seeing this issue on my RT-AC66U. About every 24 hours I have to restart the router and then it's fine for about 24 hours (give or take a few hours). Any ideas? I'm on 378.52, but don't see any notes in the 378.52_2 changelog noting a fix. I'll try to update it to 378.52_2 once I get home to see if anything changes. When it happened yesterday I noticed the wireless clients can't access anything, including the web GUI once the arises, but I can access the web gui from LAN clients.

Does anyone have a custom script for Merlin so that it will reboot if it detects an abnormal shutdown event is occurring?

This reboot situation is

 

[Danny Sasmita Natapradja]

Hi Merlin

I've been using your firmware ver. 378.52_2 on my ac68u to connect to ipvanish vpn server using openvpn. The problem is, if I change Accept DNS Configuration to Strict or Exclusive, once I disconnect the vpn I could not connect again unless I restart the router. This problem does not happen using my linksys e1200 running tomato shibby with the same settings. I hope this will be fixed inthe next release. Thank you for your hard work

 

[Martineau]

Hi Merlin

I've been using your firmware ver. 378.52_2 on my ac68u to connect to ipvanish vpn server using openvpn. The problem is, if I change Accept DNS Configuration to Strict or Exclusive, once I disconnect the vpn I could not connect again unless I restart the router. This problem does not happen using my linksys e1200 running tomato shibby with the same settings. I hope this will be fixed inthe next release. Thank you for your hard work

Instead of rebooting the router, if you SSH/TELNET to the router and issue

service   restart_dnsmasq

does this then allow the reconnection to the IPVanish VPN?

 

[HBb]

Hi
I am surprised to see questions on how to disable web history. If by web history we understand the list of accessed URLs by each client, like in Tomato, I have not found how to do this.
I this a feature already available and where is this located? I looked into the traffic manager and log pages... and noticed that cstat and rstat files contain quite a lot of info but are not readable directly.
Thanks!

 

[RMerlin]

Hi
I am surprised to see questions on how to disable web history. If by web history we understand the list of accessed URLs by each client, like in Tomato, I have not found how to do this.

It can't be disabled. Asus's web history uses the Trend Micro DPI engine, while Tomato uses an old Netfilter kernel module. The DPI engine is closed source.

Two completely different implementations.

I this a feature already available and where is this located? I looked into the traffic manager and log pages... and noticed that cstat and rstat files contain quite a lot of info but are not readable directly.
Thanks!

cstats/rstats have nothing to do with web history, those are merely for traffic monitoring.

 

[Danny Sasmita Natapradja]

Instead of rebooting the router, if you SSH/TELNET to the router and issue

service   restart_dnsmasq

does this then allow the reconnection to the IPVanish VPN?

done that but still no luck

 

[Martineau]

done that but still no luck

I incorrectly assumed that restarting DNSmasq would flush the modification that occurs after the first VPN Client2 connection but breaks subsequent attempts:

Apr 17 00:44:45 openvpn[2336]: RESOLVE: Cannot resolve host address: phx-a04.ipvanish.com: Name or service not known

So in the interim I would specify the I/P address rather than DNS name in the VPN Client2 config

Pinging phx-a04.ipvanish.com [69.16.147.192] with 32 bytes of data:

then try and identify which file is being altered so you could then remove the inappropriate entry by a custom Openvpn 'down' script.

/etc/dsnmasq.conf

 

[Danny Sasmita Natapradja]

So in the interim I would specify the I/P address rather than DNS name in the VPN Client2 config

I tried using ip address instead and works but after I disconnect the vpn my internet stop working.

then try and identify which file is being altered so you could then remove the inappropriate entry by a custom Openvpn 'down' script.

/etc/dsnmasq.conf

I'm no expert so I don't know how to do this

 

[Byron Anderson]

Hi I posted in the 378-51 thread about this. I jumped on the .52-2 today and within a few hours the same problem.

Should I try a factory reset or just go back stock firmware?

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,

First of all thanks to the developers of this firmware. Finally the parental controls work properly and I can control the kids access!!!

I've been using 378.51 on my 6 month old AC68U for about a month and it's all been stable, however twice, once five days ago and this morning the whole network stops. By that I mean all internet access on wireless is lose and all wired access is lost. The wireless devices are still connected to wifi but you can't connect to anything and on my hardwired devices it reports that there is no internet access, however you can't access anything even other devices on the net. The router is uncontactable (even ping) and you have to reboot it.

After reboot it's all back to normal. The system log last entry is about 9 hours before the current outage.
Mar 27 21:52:10 dnsmasq-dhcp[600]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.44 b8:17:c2:c3:ee:91
Mar 27 21:52:10 dnsmasq-dhcp[600]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.44 b8:17:c2:c3:ee:91 Apple-TV-Bed-1

I'm a bit baffled, but I have to assume it's the current firmware losing the gateway or something like that? It's so random and days apart, after being stable for ages.

Is there extra logging I can turn on?
Has anyone else seen the issue?

Any pointers on how I can resolve, or troubleshoot appreciated. I really don't want to go back to stock firmware.

Thanks

Byron

 

[Martineau]

I tried using ip address instead and works but after I disconnect the vpn my internet stop working.

I'm no expert so I don't know how to do this

I believe the issue is caused by your custom Openvpn config, so really the router firmware cannot be expected to undo any customisation that you have manually set.

So if the issue only occurs if you change Accept DNS Configuration to Strict or Exclusive - presumably Relaxed or Disabled and the problem does not occur?

There are references to use a script https://github.com/masterkorp/openvpn-update-resolv-conf that apparently saves the state of the DNS configuration prior to initiating the VPN Client connection, then when the VPN Client disconnects it restores the saved DNS configuration.

So not sure which of the three files is being modified

/etc/dnsmasq.conf
/etc/resolve.conf
/etc/hosts

but following the wiki https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki you should be able to create a user/custom configuration script.

 

[HBb]

It can't be disabled. Asus's web history uses the Trend Micro DPI engine, while Tomato uses an old Netfilter kernel module. The DPI engine is closed source.

Two completely different implementations.



cstats/rstats have nothing to do with web history, those are merely for traffic monitoring.

Thanks a lot for these clarifications.
Just one more question : is it possible as of today to get a log of client-accessed URL in your firmware? If yes, how can I do this?