Unmount external USB-stick on RT-AC56U

[makksi]

Hi,
I'm usinge the latest Asuswrt Merlin release on ASUSWRT RT-AC56U router.
I have also installed entware on an external USB stich attached to the router.
Very often it happens at reboot tle log says that the USB stick was not clean unmounted, and sometimes I have errors on some inode.
Even using a new- fresh formatted USB-stick the problem arises after a while.

My thought is that for some reason the entware partitions is not unmounted at reboot.
Reboot I'm talking about has been made from the router web page, or by cron scheduling using the reboot command.

Attached is the reboot log.

 

[L&LD]

There are no attachments to your post.

The 'latest RMerlin release' for this router is very old now (almost 2 years old, actually). I hope you are using the @john9527 RMerlin fork instead?

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/fork-asuswrt-merlin-374-43-lts-releases-v43e6.18914/

I suggest you install the latest 43E6 firmware from the link above and do a full reset to factory defaults (you may find the M&M Config in the link in my signature below helpful) afterward. Then, minimally and manually (i.e. M&M) configure the router to secure it and connect to your ISP. Do not use a saved backup config file. Do not 'blindly' change settings other than those indicated in the guide above.

At this point, I would follow the amtm Step-by-Step guide (found at the same link below) to format the USB drive using amtm. Note that you do not have to install amtm if you have the 43E6 firmware or later.

HTH.

 

[makksi]

There are no attachments to your post.

The 'latest RMerlin release' for this router is very old now (almost 2 years old, actually). I hope you are using the @john9527 RMerlin fork instead?

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/fork-asuswrt-merlin-374-43-lts-releases-v43e6.18914/

I suggest you install the latest 43E6 firmware from the link above and do a full reset to factory defaults (you may find the M&M Config in the link in my signature below helpful) afterward. Then, minimally and manually (i.e. M&M) configure the router to secure it and connect to your ISP. Do not use a saved backup config file. Do not 'blindly' change settings other than those indicated in the guide above.

At this point, I would follow the amtm Step-by-Step guide (found at the same link below) to format the USB drive using amtm. Note that you do not have to install amtm if you have the 43E6 firmware or later.

HTH.

Thanks a lot, but for now I prefer to stay with latest Merlin firmware because I have too many script and customization and I'm using the router for the "smart working" .I cannot risk to screw up anything at this moment.

 

[makksi]

The missing attachments just in case someone could help me to solve this issue

https://www.mediafire.com/file/yor92zbjlsyit6k/RT-AC56U_reboot.txt/file

 

[L&LD]

Thanks a lot, but for now I prefer to stay with latest Merlin firmware because I have too many script and customization and I'm using the router for the "smart working" .I cannot risk to screw up anything at this moment.

No need to risk anything. Download (and verify) the router firmware you currently have installed. Create a backup config file from the GUI. Safely put away the USB drive you are using in the router right now. Create a backup of the JFFS partition too, just in case. Now you have all the tools needed to quickly get back to where you are now.

Flash john9527's RMerlin fork 43.E6 and set up the router as you need with a new USB drive. Make sure you follow the instructions on the first post of that thread carefully.

If the issues are dealt with in the updated and more secure firmware, you're done. If you do run into any issues, simply flash the current firmware you downloaded and safely put away, and after doing a full reset to factory defaults again, reload the saved backup config file you created to be right back where you are now (and in about 15 minutes time).

 

[makksi]

Thanks a lot. I probably understood the main reason of the very often unclean entware filesystem at reboot.
It was because I'm using a swap file on that partition.
Usually during a reboot you need to do a swapoff. That is done using Merlin jffs scripts on "unmount" script.
As I changed the location of swapfile, the swapoff was not working.
For more robustness I also added in unmount script the fuser command to kill any process pointing to entware partition:

fuser -mkv /mnt/entware
awk '/SwapTotal/ {if($2>0) {system("swapoff /mnt/entware/swap")} else print "Swap not mounted"}' /proc/meminfo


I tried several reboots so far in a day and the entware partition is clean unmounted.