Cisco RV042 & RV042G routers locking up

[NedPrime]

Is anyone else having all their Cisco RV042 & RV042 locking up weekly.  Almost every router I have sold to my clients are locking up weekly. They all have the newest firmware. Is there a DOS attach going on? This just started about a month ago and I'm still receiving phone calls daily.  I put a call in to Cisco tech support, but I don't think they are interested in looking into it, since they are reaching end of life in 2025.

[balaji.bandi]

not that we are aware. what is firmware running?  any one captured the logs ?

[NedPrime]

Firmware Version v4.2.3.14

I'm going to look start logging them now.

Thanks,


Nathan A. Poole
Owner
[cid:image001.jpg@01D82EF8.A553A880]
[cid:image002.jpg@01D82EF8.A553A880]

[balaji.bandi]

yes log  is very important here.,.what causing the issue

[marce1000]

 - Capture logs by using syslog-server for both devices, follow-up  during production times too, sometimes then logs may appear which can lead to understand why the devices lock up in the end

 M.

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

what do you mean exactly by 'devices are locking up' ?

Do the devices have the internal firewall (including DDOS protection) enabled ? Check the link below for the settings, and compare those to what your customer routers have configured:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/smb/routers/cisco-rv-series-small-business-routers/smb5074-configure-general-firewall-settings-on-the-rv016-rv042-rv042.html

[NedPrime]

All of those are enabled, but I did have "Block Wan Request" disable when diagnosing ISP issue. But, I enabling it now on all the units.



Nathan

[LawrenceH]

Tried to communicate with them about the same issue with dozens of clients of mine.....went great... discussion below. "Modern Tasks"? You mean the exact same thing they have been doing for years untouched?

In my own troubleshooting, I think it's the routers being attacked as someone else mentioned in here.

I see a lot of VPN attempted connections from weird IP addresses on one of my clients. Perhaps blocking those, or blocks of IPs may work. 

Too ticked off to try, just going to get away from Cisco. You would think after making these routers for 10+years they would be more helpful until "support" no longer offered. 

===PLEASE HIT REPLY ALL WHEN REPLYING TO THIS EMAIL===

Hello Lawrence,

It seems like the RV042G is unable to optimize its CPU usage for modern tasks. Unfortunately there would be no new firmware release for this as this device is EOL/EOS.

I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Thank you and have a good day,

Darl Hora

Technical Consulting Engineer

Global CX Centers - Small Business Support

Business Hours:  12:30PM – 09:30 PM (EST) / Sunday - Thursday

Email: dahora@cisco.com

Phone: +1 480 877 3660

Manager:  Greg Fischer
Manager Contact info:   

Email: grefisch@cisco.com

Desk: +1 480-877-3647

Most of our Product documentation and Solutions to commonly asked questions can be found at http://www.cisco.com/go/smallbizsupport

Cisco Small Business Support Contacts: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/web/tsd-cisco-small-business-support-center-contacts.html

From: Lawrence 
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2022 7:21 AM
To: Darl Hora -X (dahora) <dahora@cisco.com>
Cc: Attach@cisco.com
Subject: RE: SR 693585203 RV042G-K9-NA // Firmware upgrade

Good morning,

I actually have been looking for some sort of explanation for this happening to dozens of my clients I have sold RV042 and RV042G routers to and DID look on the Cisco community site for help, since my clients aren’t too impressed they were going to have to replace their routers since I couldn’t find an answer.

Recently this has come up in the forums, many people reporting this issue.

https://community.cisco.com/t5/small-business-routers/cisco-rv042-amp-rv042g-routers-locking-up/td-p/4563248

Specifically on page two:

Mar 29 12:31:46 2022	Kernel	Out of memory: Killed process 28893 (sleep).
Mar 29 12:31:46 2022	Kernel	Out of Memory: Kill process 28893 (sleep) score 112 and children.
Mar 29 12:31:43 2022	Kernel	Out of memory: Killed process 28885 (sleep).
Mar 29 12:31:43 2022	Kernel	Out of Memory: Kill process 28885 (sleep) score 112 and children.
Mar 29 12:31:38 2022	Kernel	Out of memory: Killed process 28879 (sleep).
Mar 29 12:31:38 2022	Kernel	Out of Memory: Kill process 28879 (sleep) score 112 and children.
Mar 29 12:31:36 2022	Kernel	Out of memory: Killed process 28887 (.rvOxx_rep0rt).
Mar 29 12:31:36 2022	Kernel	Out of Memory: Kill process 28886 (sh) score 153 and children.
Mar 29 12:30:35 2022	Kernel	Out of memory: Killed process 28876 (sleep).
Mar 29 12:30:35 2022	Kernel	Out of Memory: Kill process 28876 (sleep) score 112 and children.
Mar 29 12:30:31 2022	Kernel	Out of memory: Killed process 28858 (sleep).
Mar 29 12:30:31 2022	Kernel	Out of Memory: Kill process 28858 (sleep) score 112 and children.

And the routers lock up with various symptoms in the forum as well as with my clients. VPN unable to connect client to gateway, VPN wont connect gateway to gateway, DHCP stops working, whole router stops working, etc.

Lawrence

Lawrence

From: Darl Hora -X (dahora) <dahora@cisco.com>
Sent: May 16, 2022 2:29 PM
To: Lawrence 
Cc: Attach@cisco.com
Subject: SR 693585203 RV042G-K9-NA // Firmware upgrade

===PLEASE HIT REPLY ALL WHEN REPLYING TO THIS EMAIL===

Hello Lawrence,

This is Darl with Cisco Small Business and I’ve taken ownership of your case. My availability can be seen in my email signature.

I wanted to let you know that the RV042G has reached its EOL/EOS status and I could only provide limited support.

EOL notice: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/routers/small-business-rv-series-routers/eos-eol-notice-c51-743070.html

The last date of support is for hardware issues only.

I highly recommend utilizing the community forums and the adminstration guide for your configuration/troubleshooting needs.

Cisco Forums: https://community.cisco.com/t5/small-business-support-community/ct-p/5541-small-business-support

Administration guide: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/routers/csbr/rv0xx/administration/guide/rv0xx_AG_78-19576.pdf

As for the firmware upgrade, the last firmware version for this device is 4.2.3.14.

https://software.cisco.com/download/home/284170426/type/282465789/release/4.2.3.14?i=!pp

You can follow the steps on how to upgrade the firmware here:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/smb/routers/cisco-rv-series-small-business-routers/smb541-firmware-upgrade-on-rv016-rv042-rv042g-and-rv082-vpn-routers.html

This is all the support I could provide and will now proceed to mark this case as resolved – not entitled.

Thank you and have a good day,

Darl Hora

Technical Consulting Engineer

Global CX Centers - Small Business Support

Business Hours:  12:30PM – 09:30 PM (EST) / Sunday - Thursday

Email: dahora@cisco.com

Phone: +1 480 877 3660

Manager:  Greg Fischer
Manager Contact info:   

Email: grefisch@cisco.com

Desk: +1 480-877-3647

Most of our Product documentation and Solutions to commonly asked questions can be found at http://www.cisco.com/go/smallbizsupport

Cisco Small Business Support Contacts: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/web/tsd-cisco-small-business-support-center-contacts.html

[Ron Pollard]

Wow!  Thanks for posting that, Lawrence as I now feel several times better about bailing for a competing brand's router.  Best of luck with your clients - In my experience most won't really understand that it's not your fault somehow... 

[Adrian Wint]

I have a problem which is either the same or very similar.

Approx every 5-10 days the RV042G will stop giving out IP addresses. I'm running a hybrid network with some pseudo static (ie. the RV042G gives out a pre-defined IP address based on the MAC address) & true DHCP. When the problem happens some devices (and not always the same ones) will not get an IP address from the RV042G (and hence windows will assign the default of 169.254.1.1 and the device is unable to access any resources). Other devices will be fine & have normal access to the network.

The only way out of this is to power cycle the RV042G. Things will then be fine for around 5-7 days when the same thing will happen with different devices.

The RV042G is running the latest firmware 4.2.4.14 from June 2020. This problem started in the last few months - the only thing that has changed recently is increased use of VPNs.

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

are there IP addresses available in the DHCP pool/scope when this occurs ? Which client (e.g. AnyConnect) are your remote clients using, and which OS (e.g. Windows 11) ?

[Ron Pollard]

Adrian,

You described exactly the same frustrating situation that I find myself in with the exception that I don't use any VPN's as this is just my personal home network router.  Did you happen to find a solution to this issue?

[Adrian Wint]

Hello Ron,

This is still on ongoing issue. The router is locking up every 5 days or so, as yet I haven't worked out why.

The last time it did this, I forced (the correct) static IP address onto a machine which was not being given its rightful IP address. This machine was then able to access the network. From this I conclude that it is the IP assigning process within the router that is hanging, but I havent yet been able to work out why.

Incidentally, when this happens the HMI also falls over & the router itself will not respond on its IP address & will not privide its logon screen. The only way out of this is to pwer cycle it.

[Ron Pollard]

So very frustrating.  Mine started doing this sometime in January, and I have a setup that sounds very much like yours - I have a handful of static IP's that are outside the DHCP assignment range and everything else is served as-needed with a max of about 20 devices at any given time.  This thing has been rock-solid for nearly 10 years, and I'm not fond of the idea of buying something else to replace it.  I'd blame it on a firmware upgrade, but I hadn't done one since 2015 or so.  After a few weeks of this problem, I found the Release Notes for the latest firmware and thought it sounded somewhat promising, so I did upgrade in February with no change in this behavior.

What does HMI stand for?  But yes, that's kind of how I've been verifying that the router has "done it again" instead of devices just misbehaving - I try to log in to the router, and if I see the "502 Bad Gateway The CGI was not CGI/1.1 compliant" message, I know it's time to reboot again.

I found this old thread here (https://community.cisco.com/t5/small-business-routers/rv042-502-bad-gateway-the-cgi-was-not-cgi-1-1-compliant/td-p/2161078), but unfortunately, it looks like rebooting the router occasionally was the winning answer....

[Adrian Wint]

Georg,

Thanks for your response. 

Yes, there are IP addresses available in the pool when the problem happens (both true DHCP & MAC based assignment). There are only approx 30 devices on the network.

IP addresses are on a 24 hr lease. Not all devices are on the network 24/7 - some are but most come & go. It seems like its the IP assigning process which stops - if a device has an IP it will keep working until the lease expires, however, re-joining devices dont get issued with an IP.

The OS is Win10 plus a few android based devices (mobile phones). There are no remote VPN clients - I'm referring to the use of outgoing VPN (eg. NordVPN) on some of the PCs.

Thanks for your help.