Only 6 clients allowed...? AC68U Merlin 384.19 - USB Network Place Samba

[JohnDeere]

Hi all,

I'm trying to migrate selected settings from a AC68U_WHITE to a AC68U.
NSRU tool with MIGR option made the new AC68U to behave weird, so I decided to migrate only a few settings, like USB Network Place Samba client logins and permissions. That did not work at all (or I did not do it properly... I don't know). So I started to manually copy client list.
On the old router I have 10 clients (plus one router admin client). All clients can access shared folders without problem.
On the new router I get this message when I try to add the 7th client:

"This table only allows 6 items!"

I tried to add a 12th client on the old router, and I get the same message, however I have 10 clients already...

Please someone help me understand what is happening and what to do... Thank you!

 

[L&LD]

It seems like you have surpassed the limits of both routers to me for the firmware version they're on.

 

[ColinTaylor]

You'd have to go all the way back to the 380 firmware versions and before to have 11 user accounts. After that point the limit was changed to 6.

So I'm guessing you hadn't actually tried to change those account settings for a very long time and migrated those old settings to the current firmware?

FYI: http://www.snbforums.com/threads/ftp-concurrent-users-maxed-out-solved.42605/post-590078

 

[JohnDeere]

You'd have to go all the way back to the 380 firmware versions and before to have 11 user accounts. After that point the limit was changed to 6.

So I'm guessing you hadn't actually tried to change those account settings for a very long time and migrated those old settings to the current firmware?

FYI: http://www.snbforums.com/threads/ftp-concurrent-users-maxed-out-solved.42605/post-590078

You are right, exactly this is what happened. I didn't have to change the accounts, but they are still working.
I'm in big trouble then...
Thank you for the link. I've readed through.
I have to try it, I have no other option, since I wouldn't want to go back to that old FW...
And I don't have time to set up a dedicated NAS now.
I haven't done a service start script before, so I really hope I will succeed and will not be a waste of time.
I may need your further help...
Thank you very much.

 

[JohnDeere]

It seems like you have surpassed the limits of both routers to me for the firmware version they're on.

Yes, and I haven't even realized it for at least a year, until now... I am migrating settings to AC68U, but planning to move on to AX88U which is a more powerful hardware.
Do you know if that once will have the same limitation with the latest Merlin?

 

[JohnDeere]

You'd have to go all the way back to the 380 firmware versions and before to have 11 user accounts. After that point the limit was changed to 6.

So I'm guessing you hadn't actually tried to change those account settings for a very long time and migrated those old settings to the current firmware?

FYI: http://www.snbforums.com/threads/ftp-concurrent-users-maxed-out-solved.42605/post-590078

Hi Colin,
thank you for trying to help, but seems that the required steps exceed my knowledge. I tried to create that service-start script with nano (actually I'm not familiar with creating and editing files using ssh), and it gave me an error: "Sorry! Nano crashed! Code: 6. Please report a bug."

My /jffs/scripts folder is empty. So I am a bit lost.

Do you know about any Merlin supported router on which the FW does not limit user accounts to 5?
(sorry if the question sound stupid, but I don't understand the reason for limitation. It works with 11 user accounts in the present moment with latest FW...)

 

[ColinTaylor]

Do you know about any Merlin supported router on which the FW does not limit user accounts to 5?

That web page is used by all Merlin supported routers so the limitation is the same for all of them.

 

[JohnDeere]

That web page is used by all Merlin supported routers so the limitation is the same for all of them.

Thank you for your quick answer. Bad news for me. Last minute bad news.
Do you probably know if any other (e.g. stock) FW would support more than 5 accounts? (apart from going back to 380.xx)

 

[ColinTaylor]

That's how it is on the stock firmware. Merlin hasn't made any changes to Asus' code in this regard.

 

[JohnDeere]

That's how it is on the stock firmware. Merlin hasn't made any changes to Asus' code in this regard.

Thanks again for this info. Seems like I have to keep my old faulty AC68U alive with 11 accounts working on the 384.19 FW until this problem will be solved somehow.
I might not be the only one who needs more than 5 accounts for SMB. I think I may try to ask Merlin to consider "hacking" the limitation.
Cheers!

 

[dave14305]

Can you flash John’s fork instead for the AC68U?

[Fork] Asuswrt-Merlin 374.43 LTS releases (Archive)

Archive thread for releases up to 44EA and discussions through 30-October-2020. New releases are now posted under separate threads.

www.snbforums.com

 

[ColinTaylor]

thank you for trying to help, but seems that the required steps exceed my knowledge. I tried to create that service-start script with nano (actually I'm not familiar with creating and editing files using ssh), and it gave me an error: "Sorry! Nano crashed! Code: 6. Please report a bug."

If you can't get nano to work you could try doing it from Windows using WinSCP. There is a guide to using that here.

Can you flash John’s fork instead for the AC68U?

The same limitation is present in John's firmware. In fact it's slightly worse because there is also a compiled-in maximum of 11 that can't be exceeded with a user script (EDIT: actually there is a way around it but then things start to get ugly).

 

[JohnDeere]

Can you flash John’s fork instead for the AC68U?

[Fork] Asuswrt-Merlin 374.43 LTS releases (Archive)

Archive thread for releases up to 44EA and discussions through 30-October-2020. New releases are now posted under separate threads.

www.snbforums.com

I have an AC66U router on which I will flash this fork. And I still have a RT-N16 too waiting for this
Anyway, if it does not help me get more SMB accounts on the AC68U (nor on the upcoming AX88U), then I have to find some other solution.
Thanks for pointing me on this fork though.

 

[JohnDeere]

If you can't get nano to work you could try doing it from Windows using WinSCP. There is a guide to using that here.


The same limitation is present in John's firmware. In fact it's slightly worse because there is also a compiled-in maximum of 11 that can't be exceeded with a user script (EDIT: actually there is a way around it but then things start to get ugly).

Thank you for the new tip. I will try WinSCP, hoping that it will be a little more straightforward for me.

I might think that my 11 accounts working on 384.19 could cause the QoS menu not working... But that menu doesn't work even after the hardest reset.

I wonder how many users could be interested in having more than 5 smb accounts...?

 

[JohnDeere]

If you can't get nano to work you could try doing it from Windows using WinSCP. There is a guide to using that here.

Thank you for this link, finally I could manage to do it with WinSCP.
For those who are not familiar with scripting - like I was... here is what I did:
I created a file named services-start.sh with WinSCP. I pasted the code you mentioned in post #3., into that newly created file.
Modified the file properties to be executable. After executing the script from within WinSCP terminal window, I could add more than 5 SMB access accounts. I could add and delete accounts. This is what I was looking for - thank you again!

 

[ColinTaylor]

I created a file named services-start.sh with WinSCP. I pasted the code you mentioned in post #3., into that newly created file.

@JohnDeere Your script needs to be called "services-start" not "services-start.sh" otherwise it won't work when the router is rebooted.

 

[JohnDeere]

After this successful operation I was curious if I could still somehow migrate SMB accounts from the old AC68U to the new one. Even if the limit is max 5.
I started experimenting with save-mynvram.sh

I found that if I add the user variable "acc_num" next to the "acc_list" and I restore it to the new router like this, then all my saved 11 accounts will be visible... but the first 5 accounts lost their access rights... weird. The R and W rights are restored only for the accounts starting from nr 6.

Last time when I did this, I forgot to add the "acc_num".
I realized that saving only the "acc_list" variable ("sh save-mynvram.sh acc_list") the accounts will be restored to the new router but they will not be visible in the GUI. If I save nvram settings then I can see all 11 accounts in the relevant txt file, so they are stored in memory.

I think this can be dangerous because you can still add accounts from the GUI (whithout knowing that there are already 11 stored) and who knows how and where will the new ones be stored...

I tested on the new router if I can delete, modify accounts - yes, it works.
I I want to add a new, then it says max 6 allowed. OK.
Now that I have the GUI solution with service-start script, this is not a problem anymore.

Unless there is something we don't know about yet...

 

[JohnDeere]

@JohnDeere Your script needs to be called "services-start" not "services-start.sh" otherwise it won't work when the router is rebooted.

You see, I told you I am not familiar with scripting Thank you for correcting me on this! I have deleted the "file extension" and it works after reboot.
Everyone please listen to Colin

 

[john9527]

Just a guess, but they may be trying to artificially limit the number of simultaneous transfers by limiting the number of users. Samba can use a lot of memory, and I could envision slowdowns with multiple transfers in progress.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Yes I was thinking it's probably something like that. But there's already the "Maximum number of concurrent connections" (max 9) which would be a better way of doing it IMHO. Although I think that's not in stock firmware.