This weekend, I have freshly installed OpenWRT 19.07.3 on my new EA8300 router, hoping this one would allow me to use the full 1 GB fiber connection, which my TP-Link Archer C7 was unable to provide (max about 600-650 Mb/s). A speed test connected directly to the Linksys showed about 900 Mb/s so, I was happy about that.
This morning, I was informed by VMWare Fusion that there is an update, so I clicked the install button and after a few seconds, the download stopped... A disappointed son told me that the TV stopped working and my wife told me she no longer had wifi... Hmmm, oh and the router no longer pings.
I rebooted the router and a few minutes later, again, while trying to update VMWare Fusion it crashed again... and another try... again. So, my TP-Link is back in place for now.
Has anyone else experienced these issues with the Linksys EA8300? And any suggestions for a solution?
I'm thinking of adding swap space. Could that help?
Thanks, right... I have some "not so great" experience with snapshots (hard-bricked a router once). So, before I do that, I'll try adding virtual memory, which should be easy.
fwiw, are you using IPv6 on WAN? If yes, there is a known issue with ethernet controller failing on IPQ40 devices. The workaround was to disable IPv6 on WAN.
My provider does not do IPv6, yet (not getting any address), but I'm using a 6to4 tunnel to HEnet. I may have to explicitly disable IPv6 on the WAN port, though.
Thanks. I read that the plan for 19.07.4 is mid-August, so if that is the case, I can wait a few days and install the stable version. I can live with "only" 650 Mb/s on my old router for a few days more If it takes (a lot) longer, I'll try the snapshot.
Once the EA8300 is stable enough, I can move the TP-Link Archer C7 to the attic and finally have good WiFi there, too.
I used 19.07.4 and it stopped the crash, but it was unusable for me, due to a (rather fatal) change in how VLANs are used... I was no longer able to map the VLANs in the right way, so waiting for 20.xx.0...
I found that 19.07.4 works fine, and you can get vlan to work just as it did in 19.07.3, as long as you do your own build and remove target/linux/ipq40xx/patches-4.14/716-essedma-vlan-double-tag.patch
I've seen that, but I first need to figure out how to set up my build system (I used to build my own Linux kernels in the old days, but that's a long time ago... In the 0.x and 1.x days...). There are only so many hours in a day
So, actually, I was still getting crashes in v19.07.4 (and even master/snapshot). The crash was taking place at various points in the rx skb handling in drivers/net/ethernet/qualcomm/essedma/edma.c. And I was not understanding what could possibly be going wrong. The packets coming in were just suddenly corrupted, and sometimes it even persisted after the triggered soft-reset, which would then cause a permanent lock-up (until a hard power-cycle).
But (after a day of debugging and too much coffee / maybe a beer) I finally messed with cpu frequency scaling, and the crashes are gone! Just put this in your /etc/rc.local:
You mileage my vary, but it did it for me. I read somewhere that Linksys pegs the cpu to max frequency in their stock firmware for this model.
Setting the frequency to a fixed 500000 (500 MHz) instead of 716 MHz also prevented the crashes, but had slightly slower performance. Other than the small contribution to Climate Change, I see no real risk to pegging to 716 MHz, as long as Linksys thinks it's OK, which apparently they do.
Much appreciated tip, however I noticed my EA/MRs ran noticeably cooler with OpenWrt, I guess now explained by variable CPU frequency. Just be aware that your unit likely runs warmer and depending on environment temp, a lot warmer.
If it takes (a lot) longer, I'll try the snapshot.