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Long shot: Anyone with WiFi issues on 386.10, 386.11 and 386.12.1/2/3/4 running Home Assistant?

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Woody

Occasional Visitor
From watching threads here - and my own careful testing, we know this:

1. A number of folk have WiFi issues - typically 2.4Ghz with it either appearing to fail or allow no further connections until the router is power-cycled.

2. To avoid the issue, some folk run a script that reboots their router every night - and in the past, I note users RMA'ing their routers..

2. My WiFi (and occasionally LAN) fails 6-7 days after a reboot and in very careful testing:

a) The failure occurs on BOTH Merlin and Asus firmware (Merlin from about 386.10 and Asus 3.0.0.4_386_51915).

b) On either firmware (my testing confirms) the WiFi and/or LAN failure occurs when used memory is high (>480mb).

c) In my particular case, failure occurs when the httpds -s -i br0 -p 8443 process increases in size (VSZ) to > 150M. [I either catch the problem at around this size and gracefully re-boot OR my logs show a router crash due to an out of memory condition - as confirmed by Merlin).

I am running stock firmware with no additional scripts - so it's not like I have something else going on (within the router environment).

Doing a *LOT* of online research, I notice some folk discussing browser versions/makes (Firefox/edge/chrome and the like) - and how that can affect the router, and that made me feel that I might be getting warm, given the nature of the above process using all the memory, so I tested with different browsers and made sure none were left active etc, but that didn't make a difference. So then I came up with a cunning plan..

Delete/remove the Asus router integration in Home Assistant.

Two days on, my Asus memory usage is still sub 290mb - whereas it would ordinarily have been > 380mb by this point, so simple question:

Is anyone else who suffers from the WiFi issue or crashing (not caused by dsd) running Home Assistant with the Asus integration?
 
You might look at your temps. I have fans attached to my AC86U and experience no WiFi problems that I know of.
 
Very interesting and going to delete it now from my Home Assistant and see how it plays.

Cool - will be interested to know if this has an impact.

In the meantime, I have a Mikrotik cAP ac - on which I can run Dude, if only because it has a great syslog server. So I am now pointing the syslog from my RT-AC86U to Dude, so that I have a contemporaneous record, should it crash again.
 
You might look at your temps. I have fans attached to my AC86U and experience no WiFi problems that I know of.
That's a good shout - and something to check - but I am not sure how a toasty router can cause a massive VSZ for httpds. Nevertheless, we should leave no stone unturned, and I can tell you that in a room with 19C ambient temperature, 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz is reporting 45 °C and CPU 70 °C (this is with 386.12_4, that has been running for 48 hours now).
 
lol I just noticed that my Home Assistant was pointing to the wrong router as I had updated my main about 5 moths ago and thats now a node.
 
Unless I've missed something, almost the opposite of your hypothesis here.

Running HA with the Asus integration and since installing 386.12 (and disabling trend micro) been more stable than ever. Even got rid of the weekly reboot a couple of months back (now the asd memory leak is resolved) and the router hasn't blinked.
 
Unless I've missed something, almost the opposite of your hypothesis here.

Running HA with the Asus integration and since installing 386.12 (and disabling trend micro) been more stable than ever. Even got rid of the weekly reboot a couple of months back (now the asd memory leak is resolved) and the router hasn't blinked.
Ah, that's interesting - and very useful feedback. Thanks!

I think I must have already disabled Trend - haven't I? (because there is no "Withdraw" link at this page)

1702374002999.png
 
Did you reboot via the GUI afterward?
 
What version of HA are you running? I'm still on 2023.10.3 here which could explain it given the ticket was raised against 2023.11.0- I was about to upgrade but reading that ticket I might hold off for now...
 
Yes - multiple reboots - as I swapped between Asus and Merlin firmware.

HOWEVER, have I just narrowed this down and found a (known) smoking gun?

See: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/103230

So turning off SSH access to the router should solve the problem in the short term perhaps - worth a try there just to see...

One can always enable on a case by case basis, but having dropbear running with admin access is a security risk in any case, as there is no privilege separation...
 
What version of HA are you running? I'm still on 2023.10.3 here which could explain it given the ticket was raised against 2023.11.0- I was about to upgrade but reading that ticket I might hold off for now...
So to answer your specific question, my HA currently looks like this:
  • Core: 2023.12.1
  • Supervisor: 2023.11.6
  • Operating System: 11.2
  • Frontend: 20231208.2
But there is some additional info that might be relevant - I mention it only because I now realise in hindsight, that I was being inexact and had yet to delve deeper (which I now have):

1. In HA, there are two potential integrations for Asus routers: ASUSWRT AND AsusRouter (https://asusrouter.vaskivskyi.com/)

2. I have removed and deleted both.

3. Even so - and I have absolutely no idea why/how, despite my disabling and then removing, I still have four entities that are still live and updating in realtime:

RT-AC86U-23C0 WAN status
RT-AC86U-23C0 Upload speed
RT-AC86U-23C0 Download speed
RT-AC86U-23C0 External IP

ALL the other entities provided by the above integration, are no longer available - as would be expected - so I have no idea why the above persist and how they update. The only thing I can presume, is that maybe these are native to HA and it is making some sort of API call (like the Android Asus management app)?

Whatever, we are another 24 hours further on and with 386.12_4, all components are still stable including, memory use (that has only crept up slightly to 297mb) and temps are sill at 46C for 2.4/5Hhz and 80C for CPU with an ambient room temp of 19C. Nothing untoward is also showing up in syslog.

It's still early days (I think I need to wait another 2-3 weeks) to say that the symptoms I was seeing (on any firmware) was caused by an external influence (HA) OR that these HA induced symptoms are responsible for others (as well as my own) WiFi issues. But at this stage, it is starting to look like I may be on the right tracks - particularly when I think back and realise that my WiFi issues only started around the time I started to experiment with HA (as I was/still am a Domoticz user - and only started to look at HA once it got less YAML and with a concern that Domoticz will soon die due to losing a critical mass of users).
 
So turning off SSH access to the router should solve the problem in the short term perhaps - worth a try there just to see...

One can always enable on a case by case basis, but having dropbear running with admin access is a security risk in any case, as there is no privilege separation...
SSH access was turned on - but only for LAN (not WAN) access. This is as per the vanilla config that comes out of the box - I don't recall ever setting it on.

Whatever, I have taken you advice and have turned it off completely - but even so, HA entities:

RT-AC86U-23C0 WAN status
RT-AC86U-23C0 Upload speed
RT-AC86U-23C0 Download speed
RT-AC86U-23C0 External IP

Are still updating in real time - so some sort of remote access is till available.

Scanning with WiFiMan (then Android Management app for Unify/Ubiquity) reveals that the following ports are still available:

22
53
80
515
3394
3838
5473
7788
8443
9100
18017
18099
59711
 
3. Even so - and I have absolutely no idea why/how, despite my disabling and then removing, I still have four entities that are still live and updating in realtime:

RT-AC86U-23C0 WAN status
RT-AC86U-23C0 Upload speed
RT-AC86U-23C0 Download speed
RT-AC86U-23C0 External IP
That information can be retrieved via UPnP.
 

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