Beta Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 Beta (stage 2) is now available

[Kingp1n]

I've installed beta 4b on my ax88u (with factory reset after). I've installed diversion, skynet and scribe also. But now I'm noticing some weird behaviors: sometimes some URLs take a lot to be opened (about ~10 seconds) and sometimes not (sometimes it works normally). Sometimes also accessing the webgui delays. Besides, sometimes also accessing through SSH delays (about 10 seconds to get the prompt). Some minutes ago, I called 'Diversion' through SSH and it took about 10s to open but now it's working normally (the response is instantaneous).

It might be time to fully reset your router & start clean.

 

[agfac]

It might be time to fully reset your router & start clean.

I've done it yesterday when installed the beta 4b: I've done a factory reset after the installation and then re-configured the router manually.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

I've just flashed my RT-AX88U with beta 3 and I've noticed that I am getting lots of entries in the system log like this...

I've no idea what this means, so can anyone enlighten me please?

Also, did I see something somewhere about AdGuard being in these new builds? If so, where is it located?

 

[maxbraketorque]

I've just flashed my RT-AX88U with beta 3 and I've noticed that I am getting lots of entries in the system log like this...
View attachment 29620
I've no idea what this means, so can anyone enlighten me please?

Also, did I see something somewhere about AdGuard being in these new builds? If so, where is it located?

This has been discussed multiple times now in this thread. A common cause is having 5 GHz Guest wifi network #1 enabled. If that's enabled on your router, turn it off and switch to Guest network #2 or #3.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

This has been discussed multiple times now in this thread. A common cause is having 5 GHz Guest wifi network #1 enabled. If that's enabled on your router, turn it off and switch to Guest network #2 or #3.

I've only got one Guest network and that's on the 2.4Ghz band, but it is #1, so maybe I ought to try using one of the others to see if that clears it?

 

[TheLyppardMan]

I've deleted Guest Network #1 at 2.4Ghz and created a new one using #3. That seems to have solved the issue, so it seems that this is caused by both the 2.4 & 5GHz bands.

 

[CarlyElise]

My performance issues were related to using a crappy HDD for my USB drive. Nothing to do specifically with router FW. I think a lot of people are seeing issues that are unrelated to the FW but some other configuration item. I was able to isolate this after checking speed/performance right after a factory reset and everything worked perfect on AX88U on Beta4B.

It's a bit time consuming, but as is always advertised, when in doubt, do a factory reset!

Thanks for your great work sir RMerlin!

I was using two USB drives and noticed my memory would max out when both were attached. I have gone back to one drive for my jffs volume and memory is steady around 450 meg. My update path was 384.x->386b1->386b2->386b3->386b4->386b4(2) RT-AX88U. No issues with the second beta 4 and so far speeds seem consistent. I live in a large condominium building, our provider is RCN and our building is all fiber, I'm provisioned for 1gb but rarely see over 700. Honestly though i don't think it is the router or software but the provider/our building.

 

[Wisiwyg]

FWIW on quoted internet speeds.... I have 1gb Comcast cable service. I had the service techs out b/c I could only get ~350mb and they ran the line from the street to the house. I had my 2gb capable modem directly connected to the incoming line, my AX88u directly connected to the modem, my laptop with 1gb eth connected to the router all set up at the incoming line outside while they were there. The *best* I could get was 700 mb. When I tried to use the speedtest.comcast.net site to test, the tech redirected me to speedtest.net, saying it was more reliable. Still only 700mb. I asked if there was something still wrong (they previously 'found and fixed' something at the street connect to get it to 700) . The answer was not really, 700mb is about the best they can get for residential. Granted, differences btwn fiber and cable. The whole episode left me disappointed. Not complaining too much - lived for years with a <100mb line (and dial-up 1200b early on) and am thankful for the increased speed with all of the family now working, streaming and schooling online at home. But if I'm paying the high price for 1gb I'd really like to get it.

 

[FTC]

Hi, this is to post my 1 week experience with my setup (AX88U + AX56U aimesh node) and firmware 386.1 beta4b after one week. I use AIprotection w/traffic analyzer but not QoS. I also use OpenVPN server, Samba, DHCP with a few static IPs, DNSSEC, DDNS, ipTV, Diversion, Transmission and miniDLNA. My clients are about 25-30 but usually simultaneously connected about 15-20. All types except AX ones. My WAN is FTTH pppoe 1Gb up/down.

Now the summary is that all has worked flawlessly during this week. No disconnects or dropouts, seamless client roaming between the node and the main router, and no complaints from the users. Good speeds also, although of course WiFi clients do not benefit from max speeds due to various factors such as max protocol (PHY max connection 866mbps without AX available and on 2x2 clients) and AiProtection caused 20% decrease. However, for wired clients I can no problem reach the 940mbps max that the protocol allows for.

There are however 2 minor nits with this setup :

- The 'disconnected clients remain in network map' already reported in this thread problem.
- And I can see high false network traffic peaks whenever WAN is dropped (by switching off the ONT or by the ISP itself).

So, all in all being those very minor things and with such stable firmware I'd vote for this firmware to be moved from the 'pre-beta' test builds folder to the official beta firmware folder so that more people can find it and give it a go.

In any case, Thanks again Merlin for your work !

 

[rlj2]

I've just flashed my RT-AX88U with beta 3 and I've noticed that I am getting lots of entries in the system log like this...
View attachment 29620
I've no idea what this means, so can anyone enlighten me please?

Also, did I see something somewhere about AdGuard being in these new builds? If so, where is it located?

Its beta, your going to see more debug code in the logs. Just ignore it.

 

[RMerlin]

Is there any known issue with dnsmasq.conf.add in beta 4? i did a factory restore to make sure but none of my entries seem to be taking hold. Neither did my x3mrouting attempts. To be fair, first time I am trying x3mrouting but I have been using dnsmasq.conf.add regularly on 384 (i moved from 384 because my chromecast devices would frequently disappear from the network)

What does the System Log shows when dnsmasq gets restarted?

@RMerlin, I'm on beta 4 on my AC5300, any idea how to fix this?

I don't know what causes it, as it's very random, and I have never been able to reproduce it. Asus does mention that for accurate results you might need to disable NAT acceleration, so it could be related to that.

Also did WTFast get removed?

Not that I'm aware of. I haven't paid any attention to WTFast in years, so it should be indentical to upstream.

when will you finish the final 386.1 version?

It's not about me having to finish it, it's about me being satisfied with the GPL code I'm working with.

 

[mbze430]

Is it me or I don't see Beta 4 on the AX88U as of 1/17 @ 1:20PM CST

Capture hosted at ImgBB

Image Capture hosted on ImgBB

ibb.co

 

[RMerlin]

Is it me or I don't see Beta 4 on the AX88U as of 1/17 @ 1:20PM CST

Read post #2.

 

[CaptnDanLKW]

I took the plunge. In place upgrade from 384_19 to 386_1 beta4b. Like most, I saw the buggy protocol message for my Guest network, so I moved it over to Guest #2 and that went away.

My 2x RT-AC86U AI Mesh and SmartConnect setup seems quite happy. I DONT use Diversion or Skynet but I do have a couple of others, like scribe, conmon and scMerlin, all are happy.

1 Observation / Question and 1 real question

1st observation (and kinda question is around these log entries - and the flooding

Jan 17 14:38:34 RTAC86U kernel: --:--:--:--:--:-- not mesh client, can't update it's ip
Jan 17 14:39:07 RTAC86U kernel: net_ratelimit: 19 callbacks suppressed
...
Jan 17 14:43:23 RTAC86U kernel: net_ratelimit: 1349 callbacks suppressed
Jan 17 14:43:45 RTAC86U kernel: net_ratelimit: 433 callbacks suppressed
Jan 17 14:44:01 RTAC86U kernel: net_ratelimit: 463 callbacks suppressed
Jan 17 14:44:17 RTAC86U kernel: net_ratelimit: 519 callbacks suppressed
Jan 17 14:44:23 RTAC86U kernel: net_ratelimit: 341 callbacks suppr...
(you get the idea)

I've read they are harmless, but since the quantities are quite high, something doesn't seem right. I know mesh is closed source, but does the message indicate that the AI Mesh code is confused that the MAC addresses of the clients are are seen as nodes? (I see many different MACs, not just one) I may do a M&M in the future to see if they go away but I'm looking for anyone who figured out the cause.

The 2nd one has to do with new entry never seen before.

Jan 17 14:38:36 RTAC86U roamast: ROAMING Start..

This is different than roam assist on the professional tab and the roamastd entries in the log.

Does anyone have a real detailed understanding of the difference and how they might interact with each other?

My '1 hour experience into the new 386 codebase' educated guess is the new roamast process has something to do with the new 802.11k/v/r protocols and the old roamastd is still the dumb process of forcing off a client when it reaches a certain signal level.

FYI, I DONT use Roam Assist on the professional tab, so since I see this log entry and a roamast process running, its definitely something new.

 

[khg]

Hello, with beta4 fw @ac66ub1 conntrack has some wierd behaviour. conntrack -L and conntrack -D --src 192.168.1.67 (valid IP) answered with failed status, "invalid parameter". only conntrack -S results any answare. What is missing? Thanks Gabor

 

[Yota]

Managed to install OEM firmware and get TELNET [ Yuk ] enabled. I can now cli to the device and see the JFFS isn't mounted or something else

What router ? On my AC3100 formatting JFFS don't work. The router always boots back up unmounted. A simple reboot with out formatting seems to bring it back to mounted and working.

Usually this means that your jffs partition has bad block(s), so your jffs partition cannot be erased and formatted and it shows that it is unmounted.

You should see the following log after trying to format and reboot:
Aug 1 07:00:21 kernel: nand_erase_nand: attempt to erase a bad block at page 0x0000fa00

read more: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac88u-jffs-mount-problem-merlin-firmware.30205/post-236138


I had such a router before, the jffs partition can be mounted after reboot, but it can never be formatted, and when trying to fill the jffs partition, writing data to bad block will cause system errors.

 

[Calkulin]

FWIW on quoted internet speeds.... I have 1gb Comcast cable service. I had the service techs out b/c I could only get ~350mb and they ran the line from the street to the house. I had my 2gb capable modem directly connected to the incoming line, my AX88u directly connected to the modem, my laptop with 1gb eth connected to the router all set up at the incoming line outside while they were there. The *best* I could get was 700 mb. When I tried to use the speedtest.comcast.net site to test, the tech redirected me to speedtest.net, saying it was more reliable. Still only 700mb. I asked if there was something still wrong (they previously 'found and fixed' something at the street connect to get it to 700) . The answer was not really, 700mb is about the best they can get for residential. Granted, differences btwn fiber and cable. The whole episode left me disappointed. Not complaining too much - lived for years with a <100mb line (and dial-up 1200b early on) and am thankful for the increased speed with all of the family now working, streaming and schooling online at home. But if I'm paying the high price for 1gb I'd really like to get it.

Connect the laptop directly to the modem and test, that should tell you where the issue is, modem/provider or router,

 

[Wisiwyg]

Connect the laptop directly to the modem and test, that should tell you where the issue is, modem/provider or router,

At the time of the test the AX88U was running Asus stock firmware.

 

[Wowbagg3r]

The exact same config files didn't cause these warnings before moving the client to 386.1.b4b, so perhaps there is something different about the new version of OVPN in b4b. Or maybe something to do with how you implement OVPN? I did manage to excise all the warnings just a few minutes ago by tinkering with the configurations. I had to make the following changes:

Server side
- Cipher Negotiation: Enable with Fallback. Set fallback to "AES-128-GCM". This was the same as before except that I previously had the Fallback set to "AES-128-CBC".

Client side
- I manually added "cipher AES-128-GCM" to the config.

Everything else in the configs was set the same as before. It seems that there is some sort of mismatch associated with the initial attempt at cipher selection between OVPN 2.4.9 on the server side and OVPN 2.5.0 on the client side. I would update the server to 386.1.b4b, but I don't want to attempt a remote update with no one around to manually reboot it if needed. I guess I'm wondering whether there is something about how you implement OVPN that could cause this too.

I'm getting the same warning on my AC68U/384.19 OVPN client since upgrading to beta4 on my AX86U OVPN server. I just noticed yesterday so not sure if these warnings were there on earlier alphas or beta.

Will try your settings and see

 

[Psu2ski32]

Hi all- I was running 386 beta 4 on my AC 5300 for the past 5 days and was working great. I came home this evening and it would appear that my 2.4GHZ radio is dropping left and right. Ive tried a factory reset to 386 beta 4. Any other thoughts? Anyone noticed this? About to go back to 384.19