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Comment by Gabrys1 | Hacker News Reader

Fix:

1. Reboot the router via pulling and reconnecting the power cord

2. Log in to WWW interface

3. Go to Administration > System. Enable SSH (enable login/password as well, choose a port of your taste)

4. SSH to your router: ssh admin@192.168.50.1 -p 2424 (assuming your user name is admin, the IP is 192.168.50.1 and you chose port 2424 for ssh). Password is the same as for the web UI

5. In SSH session, type: rm /jffs/asd/chknvram20230516

6. In SSH session, type: reboot

Seems to have done the trick for me.

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I mean, this might work for me, but how do we deal with the fact that if I were my wife ASUS has basically turned my very expensive router into a very expensive brick?

Agreed. I had enough issues with my router yesterday I purchased a different brand router and decommissioned my ASUS. I was not aware of this wide-spread issue until today. Much like HP printers, I will think twice about recommending or purchasing an ASUS.

>I will think twice about recommending or purchasing an ASUS.

With the recent ASUS motherboard over voltage, emergency BIOS update, warranty void if update used then reverse that threat.... the insanity of it all. Many people are saying that.

Then purchase what? From what I understand most consumer router manufacturers do push automatic updates. Usually installed when the router is power cycled.

The Net Gear one that I have done as well.

Something that runs openWRT.

Set up and forget.

Set up and forget is a often a bad idea. Keyword: Security Updates

Less than a brick. You can break windows and drive nails or stakes with a real brick. ASUS has created landfill.

At worst, most troubleshooting guides online (one's phone probably has Internet) and probably even in the manual end with "if all else fails, here's how to factory reset". Someone in the comments of the article said a factory fixed it for them.

I understand the frustration, but after some initial anger, people will eventually get there.

For 99% of the non technical people I know, "get there" is to buy a new router. Or call their ISP and wait for a visit.

Plus, if you cannot get online, you cannot get the instructions to fix it.

Deleting a file without understanding what or why... That's a good way to cause bigger problems

Bigger problems that my entire home internet connection essentially being gone?

The router is a brick now, the worst that can happen is that it’ll be a brick after.

In this case yes, but don't forget that there are much worse things routers can be than a brick. They can be a man-in-the-middle, botnet node for ddos, etc.

If the router is not usable by the person who bought it, it is not likely to remain connected to the internet for a theoretical botnet attack.

Wow! You just reminded me that our Roku stick is still plugged in after 3-6 months of being forgotten.

I wonder how many TB of "family isn't watching television; advertise funeral homes to relatives and travel insurance packages to primary user" it has sent home in that time.

I'd be interesting to know what percentage of internet routers are plugged in and forgotten on a disused internet connection at any given time. I'd guess ~ 1%, and that the percentage will increase as wireless broadband gets more popular.

Home routers can be disconnected from thr Net if there is no payment for the services. There were a bunch of ES47, DS20, DS15 along with HP MSA1000 and some others I don't remember, which were still connected and running the last time I saw them, which was in 2018. At least they were on the LAN.

In fairness, it's not really a brick. You can reboot it and use the internet for tens of minutes at a time, and during that time, you can log into the web UI and click "install upgrade" to permanently fix the issue.

My last router was an Asus. It was the best one I'd ever had, not counting an old 25MHz 386 that booted Linux off a floppy disk. The new one (PC Engines + OpenBSD) is better, though, starting two days ago, something keeps kicking my Mac off my unifi wifi networks (full WiFi signal, no connection, all other devices work, and the mac can talk to the starlink WiFi).

My spare MacBook Air (2011) had recently started to drop off one of the WiFi after 10-15 seconds. It works fine on another WiFi and all the other devices seem to be fine on both.

There's no upgrade available for my AP (ASUS ZenWiFi AC Mini CD6) and "upgrading" manually using the current FW from ASUS webpage didn't fix the issue.

The latest version available is 3.0.0.4.386.49693 from 2022/07/21.

Source: https://www.asus.com/pl/networking-iot-servers/whole-home-me...

>an old 25MHz 386 that booted Linux off a floppy disk.

inquiring minds want to know...how long did that boot take?

If there's a fix, then it's not really a brick.

The file in “/jffs/asd” can be named differently depending on your SKU, in my case (ASUS ZenWiFi XD4) it was “blockfile<date>”. Just delete the one with the date appended to it.

I’d recommend renaming the file instead of straight up deleting it.

Given the error they had in the log was no space left on device, then the fix probably does require the removal of the file.

It was no space left on the tmpfs, since the bug causes some kind of memory leak. It's not a matter of disk usage.

It’s still used by asd next time it launches, so you have to at least move it out of that folder.

Do we know if this file is something downloaded from ASUS, rather than a bogus file created on the router itself? If the former, it might be interesting to make a backup copy in case someone can see what it is they did wrong.

Worked on two routers for me. Went from the cpus being maxed to ~%2-3.

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