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Zenwifi XD6 Out of Memory

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Kablamicus

New Around Here
I have 2 XD6 running 3.0.0.4.388_21380. Wired Backhaul. Memory starts at 142mb remaining and over a week trickles down and then my wireless does not work. Wired connections work fine and I can usually connect to the routers GUI but occasionally it is extremely slow. Node will have a flashing red light. Once I reboot everything is fine. Checking the logs I will see Out of Memory. Is there a recommended firmware that would help alleviate the memory issue while I wait for something new from Asus Support? Thanks for your help.
 
The 388 firmware series has a lot of reports of memory-leak issues. You might have luck with rolling back to whatever is the last 386 release for your model.
 
I have 2 XD6 running 3.0.0.4.388_21380. Wired Backhaul. Memory starts at 142mb remaining and over a week trickles down and then my wireless does not work. Wired connections work fine and I can usually connect to the routers GUI but occasionally it is extremely slow. Node will have a flashing red light. Once I reboot everything is fine. Checking the logs I will see Out of Memory. Is there a recommended firmware that would help alleviate the memory issue while I wait for something new from Asus Support? Thanks for your help.
I am having problems with xd6 too. Out of memory, wifi dropping and becoming impossible to connect etc. This happened after 1-2 weeks after a refresh reboot - sometime if I am lucky it happens after a month or so.

I became so pissed that I installed the firmware from Sept 2021 - the earlier 386 variant. It was suppose to be most stable. The next thing I knew was asus force update the firmware to this latest version 21380. This happened overnite.

Drove me crazy, wipe everything off (both router and node), did a factory reset - set log level to 5 via ssh on this latest firmware. It had been 5 days since - memory now showing 148mb remaining. Ram usage was around 50% after factory reset and now it stands around 71%. Other than that - things are ok for now. Usually shirt will start happening after 2 weeks - for now fingers crossed.

My settings are vanilla - wired backhaul - I don’t use smart connect, AIProtection, QoS - literally switched off all functions. Even then - Asus couldn’t make it stable.
 
Last edited:
Was Firmware Auto Upgrade turned OFF in your routers?
Yes. Turned off. That is why I found it amusing that it upgraded automatically. Someone in this forum mentioned that Asus will force upgrade the firmware if they deem the version as highly vulnerable to security attack. From what I encountered - I think this in true
 
Some AXE11000 owners were recently surprised with forced update:


I personally don't like this practice. Better quality control in firmware is needed, not forced updates.
 
Same memory issue here. I reverted back to latest 386 firmware, haven't seen any issue yet.
 
While I haven't noticed OOM per-se, I have noticed some weird connection drops on my Android devices with newer firmwares.

I have no idea why, but something is off about the XD6 firmwares since December 2021. The size jumped from 37.32MB on 3.0.0.4.386.46216 to 74.93MB on 3.0.0.4.386.46859 and it never went down (except for one beta release). It's seems to currently be the largest out of any ZenWiFi router (XT8, ET12 Pro, etc. included in my quick search here).

I rolled back to 3.0.0.4.386.46216 today. Let's see how that goes.
 
As a workaround, you can also st it to auto reboot in the wee hours of the night.
I did that on the latest firmware, but it seems there are other issues that plage the later firmware.

XD6 just doesn't get attention from ASUS anymore and something is clearly off with more recent firmware. I just rolled back to the pre-huge-size-increase one yesterday and, so far, none of my Android devices had weird connectivity issues like they did on the latest firmware.

Seriously, the sudden increase from 40MB (uncompressed) to over 79MB in firmware size is very suspicious, specially since no other device from ASUS has such big files. And it was exactly when stuff started going weird on the XD6.
 
How is the new firmware being tested here? Just flash, and observe?

Has anyone performed a full reset to factory defaults after flashing the latest firmware? Without using a saved backup config file, and minimally and manually configuring the router to secure it and connect to the ISP?

If the latter isn't being done (at a minimum), then the new firmware isn't being properly tested/used.

As for the file size, I don't see anything suspicious about that on its own. This is released from Asus after all, and not downloaded from some random site on the 'net.

Flash the firmware you want to use.

Perform a full reset to factory defaults (I would suggest using multiple ways to do the reset; the WPS method, the Reset Button method, and via the GUI including checking the 'Initialize all settings...' checkbox too).

Do NOT use a saved backup config file. You will negate the full reset you did above.

Do a minimal and manual configuration of the router to secure it and connect it to your ISP.

Do not toggle settings on/off past their defaults, the router may not be in the same state afterward.





 
Seriously, the sudden increase from 40MB (uncompressed) to over 79MB in firmware size is very suspicious, specially since no other device from ASUS has such big files. And it was exactly when stuff started going weird on the XD6.
The firmware doubling in size indicates that it contains two firmware images to support two different hardware versions that share the same name. Exactly the same thing happened with the RT-AC68U firmware.

 
The firmware doubling in size indicates that it contains two firmware images to support two different hardware versions that share the same name. Exactly the same thing happened with the RT-AC68U firmware.

Oh, maybe that's because of the XD6S then?

Either way, the next release is on the 388 branch already.

EDIT: and it possibly screwed something up either way
 
How is the new firmware being tested here? Just flash, and observe?

Has anyone performed a full reset to factory defaults after flashing the latest firmware? Without using a saved backup config file, and minimally and manually configuring the router to secure it and connect to the ISP?

If the latter isn't being done (at a minimum), then the new firmware isn't being properly tested/used.

As for the file size, I don't see anything suspicious about that on its own. This is released from Asus after all, and not downloaded from some random site on the 'net.

Flash the firmware you want to use.

Perform a full reset to factory defaults (I would suggest using multiple ways to do the reset; the WPS method, the Reset Button method, and via the GUI including checking the 'Initialize all settings...' checkbox too).

Do NOT use a saved backup config file. You will negate the full reset you did above.

Do a minimal and manual configuration of the router to secure it and connect it to your ISP.

Do not toggle settings on/off past their defaults, the router may not be in the same state afterward.





I've done everything you can think of.

Flashed and reset, flash without reset, rollback without reset, rollback with reset, flash each station separately, reverse the order, etc.

I never use backups and I've reset using many methods.

So far, the only things I know for sure are:

* After version 3.0.0.4.386.46216, something f**ks up and some Android devices will stay technically connected, but won't perform well until you disconnect them and reconnect.

* If you ever touch the Wi-Fi settings such as enabling WPA3, or MU-MIMO, or other advanced settings, everything will start dropping connection at some point and/or stay connected but frozen, or at least one station
 
It's not about you doing everything I can think of (and I would do many of the things you list, btw).

It's about doing things in a proper sequence and doing them all together. And not repeatedly doing things you know don't work (see the 'toggling' part of my post above).

The network is a unique combination of your router, firmware, environment, client devices, drivers/OS, and your expectations too. Not everything will work everywhere for everyone.

Be methodical, take good notes, and tune the router/network to your particular needs. And don't continue to play with it afterward.

And if you do want to experiment, do the following so that you can at least get to a good/known state quickly

 
It's not about you doing everything I can think of (and I would do many of the things you list, btw).

It's about doing things in a proper sequence and doing them all together. And not repeatedly doing things you know don't work (see the 'toggling' part of my post above).

The network is a unique combination of your router, firmware, environment, client devices, drivers/OS, and your expectations too. Not everything will work everywhere for everyone.

Be methodical, take good notes, and tune the router/network to your particular needs. And don't continue to play with it afterward.

And if you do want to experiment, do the following so that you can at least get to a good/known state quickly

Those are indeed great tips for people who are new to this. I'm not, but I lack the time to elaborate stuff well when writing in forums and whatnot, so I guess I come across as inexperienced when you read that at first.

My use-case is quite basic. I only have a handful of WiFi devices and my only requirement is getting a stable and fast connection on them for regular usage. Nothing too crazy. My serious networking usage is all cabled.

The XD6 nodes I have are only acting as bridges. They don't even run in router mode or with anything extra enabled.

My notes basically boil down to each configuration I tried (and back when I first got the XD6, being my first WiFi 6 mesh system, I tried a bunch of new things, like MU-MIMO, WPA3, some airtime fairness options, etc.) and each firmware update since I got it.

And, of course, I started fully clean each time.

I don't have time to write everything down, but I was as methodical as my free time allows me to (plus receiving complains from other people in the house about instability and whatnot).

So far, my notes boil down to:

* 3.0.0.4.386 serie is the last good one. All after that have been bad. I've had the most luck (maybe by chance?) with 3.0.0.4.386.46216. Later ones do work, but some devices have weird connectivity issues when roaming.

* The only WiFi options that are safe to change are:
* Network name & Password
* Security (but not WPA3)
* 2.4GHz channel
* 5GHz channel (but not 160MHz width, later firmwares have a hard time with DFS)
* Disabling WPS, setting a reboot schedule, and setting it to wired-only backhaul is also safe.

I don't have that much time to spent tinkering, but I hoped I could enable some of its features without major problems, at least.

At least with those settings it mostly works.
 
I encountered with similar bug on ZenWiFi AC Mini running 3.0.0.4.386_49693-gecfd731 firmware, mesh WiFi, wired backhaul. Every several weeks access point disappears. Despite ethernet continues to work, i can't neither load web interface nor connect via SSH. The only two messages in log before hangup indicate memory leak:
Code:
Dec 10 19:49:05 avahi-daemon[544]: netlink.c: recvmsg() failed: No buffer space available
Dec 10 19:49:10 miniupnpd[26977]: recvmsg(s, &hdr, 0): No buffer space available
 

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