Gargoyle Forum

I upgraded my TL-1043ND (v1.8) to 1.4.4 from 1.4.2 (which worked reasonably well except for wireless issues). Now the wireless seems ok, but I have one issue that has come up.

For some reason, it is rebooting every 4 hours literally to the minute.

I did notice it reboot occasionally with the new firmware (not so much with the old one), but when I looked at my connection log I realized it was at exactly 4 hour intervals.

The configuration is basically stock using PPPoE, WPA and I have one time based internet restriction by MAC address.

I checked the logs but since it is a hard reboot there is no indication about why it had rebooted (just the normal reboot kernel messages and PPPoE etc).

I plan on examining the cron configuration to see if there is something at 4h intervals tonight, but has anyone else noticed this?

try to setup a syslog server and set gargoyle up to send the logdata to your computer (wired if possible), then it will be more easy for you to check what has happened: http://www.gargoyle-router.com/phpbb/vi ... f=7&t=1736

Ok, I will setup a syslog server (I have a laptop which will work).

I just rebooted 4 hours after that last reboot. Very consistent!

I am going to try a "find /etc -name xxx" and see what happens.

Also I will look for cron entries executing at that time(after double checking time setting on it).

bjb wrote:Ok, I will setup a syslog server (I have a laptop which will work).

I just rebooted 4 hours after that last reboot. Very consistent!

I am going to try a "find /etc -name xxx" and see what happens.

Also I will look for cron entries executing at that time(after double checking time setting on it).

Good luck finding the problem...
I can recommend setting up the free kiwi syslog server - http://www.solarwinds.com/products/free ... og_server/ - it is very simple and userfriendly.

What hardware version is your router?
I have not tried 1.4.4 myself, but 1.5.1 is running perfectly here on my 1043NDv8 (both of them).

Ok, I have found the problem.

I logged into the router to check the cron entries in /etc, and checked the current date/time on the router.

It was Dec 31/1969, late in the day (I think it was around 22:30)

It just so happens that it would hit the end of the day exactly 4 hours after the unit was booted. So it was crashing and rebooting when it switched to Jan 1, 1970.

I manually set the date and then manually rebooted it, and it kept the date for the next boot.

Its been up now for over 14 hours!

I checked the NTP settings and they seemed correct. It was set to Every Hour, Custom, and 0.pool.ntp.org - 2.pool.ntp.org

So there are two mysteries here - why does it reboot at the transition to Jan 1, 1970 and why was NTP not working.

I am going to be upgrading another unit (from factory) soon, so I will see if I get the same results.

This might be the cause of instability for people that don't notice the date issue. (And perhaps with other hardware as well).

A suggestion might be to put a date check in the startup scripts and if the date is below a threshold (perhaps < the release year of the firmware) set it to a somewhat sane date (=release year of the firmware)??

bjb wrote:Ok, I have found the problem.

I logged into the router to check the cron entries in /etc, and checked the current date/time on the router.

It was Dec 31/1969, late in the day (I think it was around 22:30)

It just so happens that it would hit the end of the day exactly 4 hours after the unit was booted. So it was crashing and rebooting when it switched to Jan 1, 1970.

I manually set the date and then manually rebooted it, and it kept the date for the next boot.

Its been up now for over 14 hours!

I checked the NTP settings and they seemed correct. It was set to Every Hour, Custom, and 0.pool.ntp.org - 2.pool.ntp.org

So there are two mysteries here - why does it reboot at the transition to Jan 1, 1970 and why was NTP not working.
...

In the unix world the date system starts at Jan 1, 1970... So it is very logically that the system would not be able to handle the change from Dec 31, 1969 to Jan 1, 1970.

I do not know why the NTP client did not work for you, but I know that some NTP clients are not able to change the time/date, if it is too far away form localtime.

But very nice that you have found the problem

I think the reason it is in 1969 has to do with the timezone correction (IE GMT starts at Jan 1,1970) but since I am in a negative timezone, it appears to be 1969 for 4 hours.

I am using gargoyle 1.4.7 with 1043ND router. I never got the ntp working. It always shows 1 January 2001.

After reading http://martybugs.net/wireless/openwrt/timesync.cgi I successfully got ntp working. I edit /etc/init.d/ntpclient and replace one line from: into I am in Asia, so I use the nearest Asia ntp server.

I am sure there are more elegant solution to this. I only know that it works for me

I hope it can help fellow 1043ND router owners.