Merlin 380.68_4 GUI & VPN client problems (AC88U)

[unclebuk]

Hello,

Just upgraded AC88U to 380.68_4 and have run into problems navigating the GUI on the VPN page which freezes when I click VPN Client, VPN Status buttons, also VPN Client is activated but nothing is listed in VPN Status.

If anyone has experienced this or similar issues can you please provide suggestions on how I may be able to resolve this.

I upgraded via file d/L from loststream.ca, rebooted the router, returned all vpn Client settings to Default and re-entered vpn Client details. Still facing GUI freezing problems on the VPN page only....very strange.

Thanks in advance.

bUk

 

[Thorton]

Updated AC87U today. Just checked all VPN sections, no problems.

 

[unclebuk]

Updated AC87U today. Just checked all VPN sections, no problems.

Well, thats good for you. I am having issues with AC88U, not 87.

 

[JEWBSV]

On my AC88U I do not see a problem

 

[Xentrk]

Hello,

Just upgraded AC88U to 380.68_4 and have run into problems navigating the GUI on the VPN page which freezes when I click VPN Client, VPN Status buttons, also VPN Client is activated but nothing is listed in VPN Status.

If anyone has experienced this or similar issues can you please provide suggestions on how I may be able to resolve this.

I upgraded via file d/L from loststream.ca, rebooted the router, returned all vpn Client settings to Default and re-entered vpn Client details. Still facing GUI freezing problems on the VPN page only....very strange.

Thanks in advance.

bUk

I experienced this as well. The status screen would not display the status and would hang after clicking the Client tab.

Unfortunately, it makes it hard to determine the root cause as I was also in the midst of some development for selective routing and added a third OpenVPN client. A few days later, the router LED lights started flashing and the router appeared to be bricked. It would not boot up normally and could not be put in recovery mode. After leaving it turned off for two days, it is working again. I was ready to return it for repair this morning. But I decided to turn it on to see how long it took before it crashed agaub. But this time it did not crash. I turned off the 3rd VPN client and completed my development. I will leave things alone and monitor.

I recommend doing a factory reset and restore settings manually or use the nvram-backup and restore utility.

 

[unclebuk]

I see there is a warning in the change-log:
380.68 (18-Aug-2017)
- IMPORTANT: due to major webui changes, you will need to

either flush your browser cache, or force it

to reload the page (shift-reload) the first time

you access the webui after upgrading to 380.68.

I have cleared the cache, reinstalled the FW, re-booted, did a factory restore on all versions of FW from 380.66_4 to 380.68_4 and none of these firmwares work as intended on the AC88U except 380.66_4.

If anyone has the magic touch please tell me how you can run this firmware (380.68) and use openVPN problem free?

Thanks.

 

[RMerlin]

Try a different browser.

 

[unclebuk]

Hmmm, tried them ALL. Perhaps I need to invent a new browser.

Seriously, after the browser warning in the change-log, I cleared the cache's on chrome, safari, edge, firefox over and over again and there was no change.

I really like the addition of the Description field in the latest FW, nice feature!

Thanks,
Buk

 

[Xentrk]

How many openvpn clients are you running?

 

[unclebuk]

Only one vpn Client, but tried with >1, no difference.

 

[ir0nfist]

Did you manage to solve this issue? I have what seems to be a very similar issue if not the same issue. I'm using an AC66U running 380.68_2. Navigating to the VPN Status page when a vpn is not active works fine. Once I activate a VPN and try to access that page or any of the sub pages causes the page to take upwards of 3-4 minutes to load. Accessing any of the other router pages after attempting to access any of the vpn pages while a vpn is active has the same result of taking an inordinate amount of time to load. Turning the vpn off causes things to return to normal and load normally. One thing I did notice is my Certificate Authorities somehow vanished during an upgrade I'm assuming? I had to refill this info. Possibly related but I don't know.

 

[Xentrk]

Did you manage to solve this issue? I have what seems to be a very similar issue if not the same issue. I'm using an AC66U running 380.68_2. Navigating to the VPN Status page when a vpn is not active works fine. Once I activate a VPN and try to access that page or any of the sub pages causes the page to take upwards of 3-4 minutes to load. Accessing any of the other router pages after attempting to access any of the vpn pages while a vpn is active has the same result of taking an inordinate amount of time to load. Turning the vpn off causes things to return to normal and load normally. One thing I did notice is my Certificate Authorities somehow vanished during an upgrade I'm assuming? I had to refill this info. Possibly related but I don't know.

I experienced this again when I was mucking around yesterday. I use Policy Rules with AB-Solution. I have to set Accept DNS Configuration to Strict for ABS to work over the vpn tunnel cuz dnsmasq will not work when otherwise. I also have to add the line dhcp-option DNS 9.9.9.9 for example, in the custom config section. If I don’t do this, I get routing issues. I am unable to download files using wget for example. In this state, the system hangs when trying to access the vpn client GUI or vpn GUI.

May want to try turning off any browser privacy add ones temporarily or try with another browser if you still have issues.

 

[ir0nfist]

I experienced this again when I was mucking around yesterday. I use Policy Rules with AB-Solution. I have to set Accept DNS Configuration to Strict for ABS to work over the vpn tunnel cuz dnsmasq will not work when otherwise. I also have to add the line dhcp-option DNS 9.9.9.9 for example, in the custom config section. If I don’t do this, I get routing issues. I am unable to download files using wget for example. In this state, the system hangs when trying to access the vpn client GUI or vpn GUI.

May want to try turning off any browser privacy add ones temporarily or try with another browser if you still have issues.

I use policy rules also, but not strict. I turned it off and the problem goes away. Turning it back to policy rules and same issue. So it seems it's something with having policy rules enabled that causes this.

 

[Xentrk]

I use policy rules also, but not strict. I turned it off and the problem goes away. Turning it back to policy rules and same issue. So it seems it's something with having policy rules enabled that causes this.

Can you try adding the dhcp-option DNS some.dns.ip.address in custom config to see if that resolves the issue. Curious me wants to know. Adding this line seemed to fix the issue for me.

There is one issue with the hack I have to perform in order to get ABS to work over the VPN tunnel. Setting Accept DNS Configuration = Strict causes DNS to leak. The routing issue bothers me too. I do not have these issue when using Policy Rules on pfSense. I can create IPv4 lists in the pfSense web gui and define the supporting firewall rules in the GUI. No scripts required. So I recently decided to go 100 percent pfSense at home.

On pfSense, the higher end CPU with AES-NI support enabled makes for one speedy OpenVPN connection compared to what I can get on the AC88U. I am finishing up some scripts I wrote and plan to post on github. I will then regulate the Asus router to back-up duty. I still plan to use the Asus at two other sites I support and still recommend it for most end users. @john9527 Fork handles DNS and policy rules differently and does not have this issue. But the fork does not work on some of the newer Asus routers.

 

[ir0nfist]

Can you try adding the dhcp-option DNS some.dns.ip.address in custom config to see if that resolves the issue. Curious me wants to know. Adding this line seemed to fix the issue for me.

Adding that does fix the loading issue. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Xentrk]

Adding that does fix the loading issue. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks for letting me know. It fixed the issue on my AC88U running 380.69_2 for me and wanted to confirm that was indeed the fix and not some random fluke.