firmware assigning wrong hostname to router

[benk91]

Firmware: Merlin 386.11
Equipment: RT-AC88U, RT-AC68U, RTAC66U B1 (daisy chained, aimesh w ethernet backhaul)


Forgive me if this is the wrong topic to post in! I'm very new to home networking, despite having created a complicated setup.
I've been using GPT-4 to help me troubleshoot this issue.

I live in a 2 floor apartment and have 3 diasy-chained hardwired asus routers.
Wired to the ONT is a router with IP 192.168.1.1 that I'll call .1/Bedroom/88U

That leads to router 192.168.1.68, which I'll call .68/Basement/68U.

Then back upstairs to a guest room which needs its own router because of the materials of the walls (Guestroom/686U, not part of this question).

They're set up as aimesh nodes but I tether most of my devices to each router because most are stationary, and because I experience a lot of stability issues.
I run a lot of smarthome devices (total. of about 80 wireless clients connected at a given time), so I set it up this way. Most of them use 2.4ghz.

I often experience authentication issues with the basement router, #2 in the chain.
Devices tethered to that router drop off. My smartphone becomes unable to authenticate on the 2.4ghz SSID (even with correct password) and it takes a reboot of the router to fix this. I imagine this is also happening with the smart devices drooping off.

At the advice of GPT4, I ssh'd into the router and read the logs.
This error keeps coming up:

dnsmasq-dhcp[1447]: not giving name RT-AC68U-E938 to the DHCP lease of 192.168.1.68 because the name exists in /etc/hosts with address 192.168.1.1

I understand this to mean that the .68/Basement/68U Router can't get its hostname (RT-AC68U-E938) because it's already assigned to .1/Bedroom/88U in that router's /hosts file.

The router claiming this hostname is an 88U and should not be claiming it!

I've used ssh to edit /etc/hosts on .1/Bedroom/88U to remove that line and it seems to add itself back.
at GPT4's suggestion I used JFFS on .1/Bedroom/88U to create a new host file and redirect it, but the log still shows this error, which makes sense because /etc/hosts is still regenerating the line.

Is this something I can intervene with? Is this a product of aimesh/merlin?

Is there a script I can use to rewrite /etc/hosts regularly instead of just redirecting?

Finally (not totally urgent), I also get a lot of log messages beginning with this:

kernel: 24:F5:A2:98:FC:EF not mesh client, can't

(and then some action)

Any advice (even if i'm just meant to most this somewhere else) would be deeply appreciated. I really want to improve my stability, and I'm hoping I don't have to switch them all to APs (although I'm open to it).

 

[ColinTaylor]

Have you at any time loaded a "Save settings" file that was created on one of your routers into one of the other routers?

 

[benk91]

I didn't think I had but also - that's not totally unlikely.
The .68/Basement/68U did used to be the first router in the chain. I upgraded and pushed them all down 1 level.

But I've changed the hostname of the main router to "BEDROOM-ROUTER" through the UI and edited /hosts a million times.

You think some deeper setting possibly inherited from an older router could be enforcing this regular appending?


(Working with GPT I've created a script that rewrites etc/hosts on the .1/BEDROOM/88U every hour, but that's obviously a messy fix:

echo 'cp /jffs/hosts /etc/hosts' > /jffs/scripts/update_hosts.sh


chmod +x /jffs/scripts/update_hosts.sh


echo "0 * * * * /jffs/scripts/update_hosts.sh" > /jffs/scripts/services-start
chmod +x /jffs/scripts/services-start

)

 

[ColinTaylor]

Please don't take advice from GPT. It's mostly garbage in, garbage out.

I suspect you're changing the router's "client name" rather than the "host name". In any case I would do a factory reset on the main router and set it up again from scratch.

 

[benk91]

really? I'm changing it in /etc/hosts on that router via ssh, editing the file in nano using the terminal
that wouldn't be the hostname?
it's definitely not the nickname for the MAC, if that's what you're talking about—that's a different area on the UI.
Here is the change on the UI as well:

 

[ColinTaylor]

OK, that is correct. In any case I would still do the factory reset.

 

[torch]

How are the "daisy-chained" devices connected? LAN-WAN? LAN-LAN?
When you say "..the router..." which one are you talking about?
Do you have DHCP running on each of the routers?
I suggest you simplify your network to have just one router and multiple APs....

 

[torch]

btw - I hope you only use valid hostnames:

Each element of the hostname must be from 1 to 63 characters long
and the entire hostname, including the dots, can be at most 253
characters long. Valid characters for hostnames are ASCII(7)
letters from a to z, the digits from 0 to 9, and the hyphen (-).
A hostname may not start with a hyphen.

From: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/hostname.7.html

 

[ColinTaylor]

btw - I hope you only use valid hostnames:

The router's GUI validates the input and is more restrictive than the RFC. Which is why it should be set through the GUI rather than using a script.

 

[torch]

OP appears fond of using ssh to change hostnames....

 

[benk91]

How are the "daisy-chained" devices connected? LAN-WAN? LAN-LAN?
When you say "..the router..." which one are you talking about?
Do you have DHCP running on each of the routers?
I suggest you simplify your network to have just one router and multiple APs....

They're connected via cat6 cable, LAN-WAN I believe.
Since they're aimesh nodes I think DHCP settings are only applied at the top level router.
I do think I may need to at the very least factory reset, I'm just really dreading setting them all up again as it's a real faff.

I am only using valid hostnames for sure!

I changed the primary (?) hostname for .1/BEDROOM/88U using the GUI, but the /hosts file keeps regenerating on reboot
and when it does, the offending line (which adds the name of the RT-AU68U) is added back in every time

The hostname I choose in the UI always ends up in the first line of etc/hosts, so that's all fine.
It just keeps adding that junk hostname (which belongs to another router) to its own /hosts file.

 

[dave14305]

Check on the Network Share (Samba) page (under USB apps) to make sure the old name isn’t still there on the newer router.

Also run on the main router:

nvram show 2>/dev/null | grep -i RT-AC68U-E938

And see how many hits you get.

 

[torch]

Suggest you forget the mesh mode and use AP instead. Try:
ONT - (WAN) AC88U -

• LAN IP > Hostname=router, Domain=lan, IP address=192.168.1.1 [Apply]
• DHCP Server > Enable the DHCP server [Apply]

AC88U (LAN) - (WAN) AC68U - set in AP mode

• LAN > Hostname=BasementAP, Domain Name=lan, Get IP automatically=yes, Connect to DNS server automatically=yes [Apply]

Reboot both & don't ssh into anything. Disconnect your AC66U for now. Check your router page to see if all devices get IP address. You probably still need to separate 2.4Ghz devices from 5GHz devices and select best channels for each.

 

[benk91]

Check on the Network Share (Samba) page (under USB apps) to make sure the old name isn’t still there on the newer router.

Also run on the main router:

nvram show 2>/dev/null | grep -i RT-AC68U-E938

And see how many hits you get.

Got this from the AC88U:

dms_friendly_name=RT-AC68U-E938
computer_name=RT-AC68U-E938
daapd_friendly_name=RT-AC68U-E938

those last 4 are the the last 4 of the MAC of the other router, too.

should be
"RT-AC88U-4168" but that appears nowhere in any configs I can find.


EDIT:
Just saw the first suggestion — yes!! It's the old name, for the media server I guess!

 

[ColinTaylor]

Got this from the AC88U:

dms_friendly_name=RT-AC68U-E938
computer_name=RT-AC68U-E938
daapd_friendly_name=RT-AC68U-E938

those last 4 are the the last 4 of the MAC of the other router, too.

should be
"RT-AC88U-4168" but that appears nowhere in any configs I can find.


EDIT:
Just saw the first suggestion — yes!! It's the old name, for the media server I guess!

So that pretty much confirms that you have loaded a config file for the RT-AC68U into your RT-AC88U. So again, factory reset the RT-AC88U to clear up this mess and any other latent problems.