Downgraded firmware after power lost

[HonzaCZ]

If you are still on 270.26,try this plz....
Remove usb drives,reboot
Flash with 378.55 (https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1030651/)
Follow all steps.
Reboot
Flash with 380.67
Reboot to see if 380.67 is still there

Sorry, back on 380.67_0 now. Couple of restarts behind me and it seems OK. But it seemed OK last time too...

 

[ColinTaylor]

Now, after factory reset, I have constant cca 65 KB/s inbound on WAN. Same as before - no outbound on LAN or WLAN in graphs. Is there any option to check what process or even what endpoints of communication belong to this traffic? In FreeBSD there is tool like pftop. Or tcpdump would be great. Can it be installed on this Asus?

I think you'd have to install entware-ng to get those tools. But if there's nothing responding to the WAN traffic you might not see any related process activity. It could be broadcast traffic on your ISP's network. Have a look at the iptables output, and see if that inbound traffic is just being dropped.

 

[HonzaCZ]

Filtered SSH again. Completely clean system - factory reset, clean nvram, jffs... I suspect "Enable SSH Brute Force Protection", but I have this always disabled. Even if it is disabled, it's process is running.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Can you enable telnet and get in that way? What about the GUI interface, does it say the firmware version has reverted again?

If you can get in via telnet can you post the output of "ps w" please.

 

[HonzaCZ]

No downgrade today

It seems, that something blocks ssh in some moment but I dont know why. When it happened I saw slowdown of https web gui - some queries didnt end at all - stuck in browser on "negotiating secure connection". When hit refresh once or two times it works again. Router is very hot when it happens. It is as if something was killing a cpu.

Restart solve it for a while.

I did not think of telnet. Next time maybe.

Actual "ps w":

  PID USER       VSZ STAT COMMAND
    1 honza     5088 S    /sbin/init
    2 honza        0 SW<  [kthreadd]
    3 honza        0 SWN  [ksoftirqd/0]
    4 honza        0 SW<  [events/0]
    5 honza        0 SW<  [khelper]
   20 honza        0 SW<  [kblockd/0]
   50 honza        0 SW   [pdflush]
   51 honza        0 SW   [pdflush]
   52 honza        0 SW<  [kswapd0]
   53 honza        0 SW<  [aio/0]
   97 honza        0 SW<  [mtdblockd]
  120 honza        0 SW<  [kmmcd]
  124 honza      648 S    hotplug2 --persistent --no-coldplug
  180 honza     5072 S    console
  181 honza     1536 S    /bin/sh
  189 honza        0 SWN  [jffs2_gcd_mtd5]
  193 honza     1524 S    /sbin/syslogd -m 0 -S -O /tmp/syslog.log -s 256 -l 7
  195 honza     1528 S    /sbin/klogd -c 5
  268 honza     5080 S    /sbin/wanduck
  271 honza     1336 R    protect_srv
  275 honza     1336 S    protect_srv
  276 honza     1336 S    protect_srv
  278 honza     1188 S    dropbear -p 192.168.183.1:22 -s -j -k
  289 honza     1224 S    /bin/eapd
  291 honza     5080 S    wpsaide
  294 honza     1636 S    nas
  306 honza     2444 S    /usr/sbin/acsd
  309 nobody    1300 S    dnsmasq --log-async
  310 honza     4936 S    httpds -s -p 8443 -i br0
  312 honza     1528 S    crond
  313 honza     1188 S    /usr/sbin/infosvr br0
  318 honza     5080 S    watchdog
  319 honza     5080 S    sw_devled
  320 honza     2304 S    rstats
  326 honza     5080 S    ots
  332 honza     1232 S    lld2d br0
  335 honza     1052 S    mDNSNetMonitor
  336 honza     1248 S    networkmap --bootwait
  345 honza     5080 S    erp_monitor
  385 honza        0 SW<  [khubd]
  498 honza     5080 S    usbled
  499 honza     2296 S    u2ec
  500 honza     1288 S    lpd br0
  501 honza     2296 S    u2ec
  502 honza     2296 S    u2ec
  569 honza     5080 S    ntp
  592 honza      864 S    miniupnpd -f /etc/upnp/config
  710 honza     6628 S    /etc/openvpn/vpnclient1 --cd /etc/openvpn/client1 --config config.ovpn
  713 honza     1540 S    /sbin/udhcpc -i eth0 -p /var/run/udhcpc0.pid -s /tmp/udhcpc -t2 -T5 -A160 -O33 -O249
  714 honza     5080 S    disk_monitor
 1074 honza     1216 R    dropbear -p 192.168.183.1:22 -s -j -k
 1080 honza     1544 S    -sh
10257 honza     1528 R    ps w

 

[ColinTaylor]

OK, thanks for the update. If something is maxing out the CPU then the GUI will become unresponsive.

I can't see anything obviously amiss from the ps output, I'm guessing it's from after you restarted the router.

Do you have any USB devices plugged into the router? A disk scan might max out the CPU.

If you are able to get into the router next time it happens, do another ps to see if there is any malware running and also do a top to see what is consuming the CPU.

 

[HonzaCZ]

OK, thanks for advice.

No USB, no samba, no unusual services. Only ssh, https, one AES-128-CBC OpenVPN client and Asus.com DynDNS.

 

[HonzaCZ]

Now it suddenly disables 5G wifi. Probably some IT bad aura here... LOL

 

[ColinTaylor]

Now it suddenly disables 5G wifi. Probably some IT bad aura here... LOL

Maybe it's as simple as being faulty hardware.

 

[HonzaCZ]

It's 4 and half years old. I admit that it could be entitled to die. Wear on flash memory? Maybe too hot weather here. But that would probably not be related to that downgrade.

 

[mstombs]

Not seen this mentioned yet : do clear cache on browser. Same name web pages from same IP address, your browser could be showing old version. F5 or ctrl-F5 usually to force refresh

 

[HonzaCZ]

Not seen this mentioned yet : do clear cache on browser. Same name web pages from same IP address, your browser could be showing old version. F5 or ctrl-F5 usually to force refresh

Absolutely not possible for browser cache issues. But thanks for your idea.

 

[HonzaCZ]

So complete power off, wait, power switch on with disconnected power cord, wait, power on... 5G wifi is back. Reboot only didn't help.

 

[HonzaCZ]

Is this can be the problem?

Aug  5 22:54:42 kernel: jffs2_flush_wbuf(): Write failed with -5
Aug  5 22:54:42 kernel: Recovery of wbuf succeeded to 00460000
Aug  5 22:54:42 kernel: Write of 946 bytes at 0x00fbefb0 failed. returned -5, retlen 0
Aug  5 22:54:42 kernel: Not marking the space at 0x00fbefb0 as dirty because the flash driver returned retlen zero
Aug  5 22:54:43 kernel: jffs2_flush_wbuf(): Write failed with -5
Aug  5 22:54:43 kernel: Write of 1363 bytes at 0x0046a624 failed. returned -5, retlen 0
Aug  5 22:54:43 kernel: Not marking the space at 0x0046a624 as dirty because the flash driver returned retlen zero
Aug  5 22:54:43 kernel: jffs2_flush_wbuf(): Write failed with -5
Aug  5 22:54:43 kernel: Write of 1441 bytes at 0x00440c9c failed. returned -5, retlen 0
Aug  5 22:54:43 kernel: Not marking the space at 0x00440c9c as dirty because the flash driver returned retlen zero

 

[ColinTaylor]

Is this can be the problem?

I'd just read your previous post and was about to reply "keep an eye on the syslog for jffs errors" when...

Looks like it's time for a new router!

 

[HonzaCZ]

Any chance to map jffs partition to USB stick or something? I tried search some tool it can test and mark bad blocks, but no great success. There is a question if controller of that mem has some wear leveling. If not, there is a chance that worn cells are only over a part of chip.

Well, I probably will not waste any more time with that. Fortunately, this is not my router.

So, now there is a decision between another ASUS, probably RT-AC66U B1 or Mikrotik hAP ac (RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT) that I have very good experience with.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Given what Merlin said about the RT-AC66U's flash memory here I think it's more likely that the whole chip is about to fail rather than just parts of it. Either way, I personally wouldn't trust any work-arounds to last very long.

Interestingly, that error message may actually refer to corruption of data in RAM or the DMA transfer and not the JFFS. Whatever the reason it still looks like the router is end of life.

 

[joegreat]

So complete power off, wait, power switch on with disconnected power cord, wait, power on... 5G wifi is back. Reboot only didn't help.

I recall a posting from Merlin that not all chips in the router are reset properly with reboot only - power down is a good thing from time to time.

 

[HonzaCZ]

Hi, so nothing special happened last week. Log is clear, only DHCP related messages. I'm curious what will happen after next system update.