Having problems with my Netgear R7800 running OpenWRT 18.06.5 and would appreciate some advice please. I set it up a year or two ago, it connects to my ISP modem and provides wifi and wired connections to the house. I haven't touched it for some time and it's been working fine.
Yesterday something went wrong, 5GHz Wifi (wlan0) stopped working completely, 2GHz wifi (wlan1) is barely working, but wired connections are working ok. On the R7800 front panel the wifi leds are off and the WWW led (the one next to the power led) is rapidly blinking.
Connections to the 2GHz Wifi (wlan1) are variable:
My Linux laptop will not connect at all.
My Win10 laptop will connect but cannot access the Lan or the Internet.
My Android phone will connect and can access the Lan and the Internet.
My Wifes iPad will connect and can access the Internet.
On the 'Network>Wireless>Wireless Overview' page under the 5GHz SSID I see 'Wireless is not associated'. The 2GHz Overview does not show this.
In the system log I see:
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan0: INTERFACE-ENABLED
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan0: INTERFACE-DISABLED
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.err hostapd: nl80211: Could not configure driver mode
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: nl80211: deinit ifname=wlan0 disabled_11b_rates=0
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.err hostapd: nl80211 driver initialization failed.
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan0: interface state UNINITIALIZED->DISABLED
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan0: AP-DISABLED
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.err hostapd: hostapd_free_hapd_data: Interface wlan0 wasn't started
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.notice netifd: radio0 (18577): WARNING (wireless_add_process): executable path /usr/sbin/wpad does not match process 14195 path ()
Sun Sep 13 10:31:14 2020 daemon.notice netifd: radio0 (18577): Device setup failed: HOSTAPD_START_FAILED
I'm struggling to understand the above and would appreciate some advice please. Key questions for me are ?
1/ Does the system log WARNING (penultimate line) suggest some file corruption ?
2/ Could this have arisen from some form of malicious attack ?
3/ What does the rapidly blining WWW led actually indicate ?
4/ What do the other status leds actually indicate ?
5/ What else should I be checking ?
It feels like reinstalling OpenWRT might resolve the situation, but I'd like to understand what has gone wrong first to avoid it happening again.
Thanks.