AX86U Pro - what taking up all memory (not USB storage)

[SteverinoLA]

I'm trying to figure out why file transfers to the USB attached storage (yes, i know i should be using NAS instead) has dramatically slowed down to 10MB/sec on my gigabit network. Normally, when I reboot the router it starts off with several hundred MB of free memory, which then drops to 30 MB or so if and when I start accessing the USb storage. That is expected. It should be using any available RAM to cache the storage.

But now when I reboot the router, it starts off w/only 30MB free RAM. FRom the boot log, I see:

command: cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 1018584 kB
MemFree: 526200 kB
MemAvailable: 546132 kB
Buffers: 17740 kB
Cached: 56120 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 62204 kB
Inactive: 40752 kB
Active(anon): 29468 kB
Inactive(anon): 872 kB
Active(file): 32736 kB
Inactive(file): 39880 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 12 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 29356 kB
Mapped: 16516 kB
Shmem: 1096 kB
Slab: 135760 kB
SReclaimable: 7272 kB
SUnreclaim: 128488 kB
KernelStack: 2668 kB
PageTables: 1912 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 1018584 kB
Committed_AS: 77840 kB
VmallocTotal: 263061440 kB
VmallocUsed: 0 kB
VmallocChunk: 0 kB
Percpu: 752 kB
CmaTotal: 180224 kB
CmaFree: 3072 kB
command: free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1018584 492652 525932 1096 17740 56120
-/+ buffers/cache: 418792 599792

 

[ColinTaylor]

I'm not seeing the problem. It looks like your memory is 48% used. Or are you saying that if you SSH into the router you get different numbers to those in your post? If so, post these other numbers.

What do you have running on the router that makes use of the USB drive? e.g. Media Server, Time Machine, third party scripts, etc.

Which firmware version are you running?

You say it slows to 10MB/sec. What speed was it previously going at?

 

[bbunge]

Are you still running Asus firmware? If so what version? Which LAN port are you using for the file transfer? If the 2.5 GB port switch to one of the 1 GB ports. If using WIFI disable DFS and use 80 MHz with Dual Band SmartConnect. Also, a factory reset with a manual configure may be in order. There is a beta Asus firmware that may help.

 

[SteverinoLA]

Well that was from the boot log. As soon as router is up, i see:

 

[SteverinoLA]

I'm not seeing the problem. It looks like your memory is 48% used. Or are you saying that if you SSH into the router you get different numbers to those in your post? If so, post these other numbers.

What do you have running on the router that makes use of the USB drive? e.g. Media Server, Time Machine, third party scripts, etc.

Which firmware version are you running?

You say it slows to 10MB/sec. What speed was it previously going at?

I'm on latest available firmware. Stock Asus, not Merlin.

I have a 8GB drive attached to the USB3.0 port and just use for archiving backups and media storage which I can then play on my TV. So just Media Server with Remote Access.

I used to get 75MB/sec pretty consistently when copying a file to or from the USB drive.

 

[SteverinoLA]

Wait a minute, I am an idiot. My thumb drive was stuck in USB 3.0 5Gbps mode. Using CrystalDiskMark, I see what I expect to see:

 

[SteverinoLA]

And I found what is taking up 300MB of my 1GB RAM - AI Protection.

 

[bennor]

I have a 8GB drive attached to the USB3.0 port and just use for archiving backups and media storage which I can then play on my TV.

While your title says "not USB storage", having the RAM spike to 97% is very common when the USB device is being used (read/write) often. There are a number of past discussions that are similar, extremely high RAM usage when people use USB storage devices on the router.

One troubleshooting step to try is to delete the router's cache and see if that drops the RAM usage down to normal levels (for your use case). However, clearing the router cache is a temporary solution since the RAM usage typically shoots back up to above 90% after a period of time due to USB drive usage. One can try one of the following three SSH command line entries (SSH into the router and issue one of the commands) to see if they can lower their router's used RAM.

sync; echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
or
sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
or
free && sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches && free

Some have resorted to creating a CRON job to clear the cache at specific times. See this post.