Chromecast "Smart TV" Causing GS-AX3000 to Reboot?

[dpwhite]

Had I not seen this happen more than once, I would have thought it mere coincidence. But after seeing it happen a few times, I am convinced it is NOT...

I have a GS-AX3000 that has a Vizio, Chromecast Smart TV connected to it via ethernet. Normally it seems to work fine. But there are times when some of my Chromecasting attempts fail or hang or otherwise force me to reboot the TV. I have noticed now that several times as the reboot is happening, I notice the big LEDs on the front of the router (located on a shelf below the TV) going on. Normally, I have these configured to be off. It seems that regardless of my configuration choices, these LEDs go on for a while during router reboots. That's OK with me and it has actually alerted me to the router having been rebooted.

Right after I noticed the router reboot like this last night, I checked the router's admin pages for the log. I did see a bunch of entries labeled "crashlog" - see partial extract below. And I noticed that the uptime showing was a mere couple minutes and the crashlog entries were dated May 4, 2022 - likely a value used before NTP can have run. So I knew the router had certainly rebooted.

May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: LOG
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: klogd started: BusyBox v1.24.1 (2021-07-16 19:17:53 CST)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <4>Broadcom GBPM v0.1 initialized
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>Switched to clocksource arch_sys_counter
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>NET: Registered protocol family 2
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>default registered
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>default registered
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: Linux version 4.1.52 (gitserv_asus@tpbuildsvrvu01) (gcc version 5.5.0 (Buildroot 2017.11.1) ) #2 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 16 20:29:08 CST 2021
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>MPTCP: Stable release v0.91
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>TCP established hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>TCP bind hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 4096)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>UDP hash table entries: 256 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>UDP-Lite hash table entries: 256 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: Kernel command line: isolcpus=2 root=/dev/ubiblock0_0 ubi.mtd=0 ubi.block=0,0 rootfstype=squashfs console=ttyAMA0 earlyprintk debug irqaffinity=0 pci=pcie_bus_safe
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>NET: Registered protocol family 1
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: Virtual kernel memory layout:
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <7>PCI: CLS 0 bytes, default 64
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: vector : 0xffff0000 - 0xffff1000 ( 4 kB)
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: fixmap : 0xffc00000 - 0xfff00000 (3072 kB)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>squashfs: version 4.0 (2009/01/31) Phillip Lougher
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: vmalloc : 0xe0800000 - 0xff000000 ( 488 MB)
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: lowmem : 0xc0000000 - 0xe0000000 ( 512 MB)
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: pkmap : 0xbfe00000 - 0xc0000000 ( 2 MB)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>jffs2: version 2.2. (NAND) © 2001-2006 Red Hat, Inc.
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: modules : 0xbf000000 - 0xbfe00000 ( 14 MB)
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: .text : 0xc0018000 - 0xc05958c8 (5623 kB)
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: .init : 0xc0596000 - 0xc05ca000 ( 208 kB)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>fuse init (API version 7.23)
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: .data : 0xc05ca000 - 0xc05faca0 ( 196 kB)
May 4 22:05:03 kernel: .bss : 0xc05faca0 - 0xc0660f74 ( 409 kB)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>io scheduler noop registered (default)
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>brd: module loaded
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>loop: module loaded
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>nand: device found, Manufacturer ID: 0xc2, Chip ID: 0xda
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>nand: Macronix MX30LF2G189C
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>nand: 256 MiB, SLC, erase size: 128 KiB, page size: 2048, OOB size: 64
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>bcm63xx_nand ff801800.nand: Adjust timing_1 to 0x6532845b timing_2 to 0x00091e94
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>bcm63xx_nand ff801800.nand: detected 256MiB total, 128KiB blocks, 2KiB pages, 16B OOB, 8-bit, BCH-4
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>Bad block table found at page 131008, version 0x01
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>Bad block table found at page 130944, version 0x01
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>nand_read_bbt: bad block at 0x000000fe0000
May 4 22:05:03 crashlog: <6>nand_read_bbt: bad block at 0x00000c9a0000

There is much more... at least 100 lines total. But I am not sure what I might be looking for in there which might be a clue to what is/has happened.

It seems strange to me that something could happen during the TV reboot th
at causes the router to reboot like this. I cannot say that I noticed this when using my old, Netgear router. I am not saying it didn't happen, just that I never noticed it.

Any ideas/suggestions?

Thanks

[jzchen]

So I have a question to ask. This smart TV has Chromecast built-in? The reason I ask is we have a Chromecast and I'm pretty confident it is WiFi only. So is the TV connected both with Ethernet and WiFi at the same time? The next question is does it stop if you disconnect one or the other....

[dpwhite]

jzchen wrote:
So I have a question to ask. This smart TV has Chromecast built-in? The reason I ask is we have a Chromecast and I'm pretty confident it is WiFi only. So is the TV connected both with Ethernet and WiFi at the same time? The next question is does it stop if you disconnect one or the other....

Hi and thanks for the response... Yes, the Vizio "smart" platform I have is built on Chromecast - so it is built-in. And it does use ethernet OR wifi - I use the former since the TV is right above the router. It has generally worked fine since I got the TV. There have been times when things do seem mucked-up and I have learned to just reboot the damn thing when this happens. That seems to fix it. And it was at just such a time that I noticed (several times now - but sadly not via a controlled re-creation) my newish Asus router reboot at the same time.

I am not 100% sure but this MAY have something to do with Paramount+ streaming (or trying to) to the Chromecast. It is the most recent element added to my setup. And it most definitely does NOT always work right. And recently it is just stopped working at all. All my other streaming sources (PBS, Amazon, Xfinity, etc) all seem to work fine. Only P+ has the problem. I don't know why this might be making the router crash/reboot.

BTW - I have had both generation 1 Chromecast and Chromecast audio. They both are capable to running on ethernet rather than wifi using a USB ethernet adapter and a special cable. Indeed, I have my audio Chromecast connected this way right now (and always have) as it too is right next to the router. And Google even sells such a thing itself.

Cheers

[jzchen]

Nice! Thank you for sharing that. I'm definitely falling behind in the times...