pcWRT firmware v1.25 Release Notes

[support]

Changes included in this update:

• Add logging parental control. To see the logs, go to the parental control page, click “View Logs”.
• Add pausing for profiles. Click the pause icon on the profile title bar to pause a profile.
• Add calendar time extension. Calendar time can now be extended one-time only. Time restrictions are automatically restored after the extended time expires.
• Allow multiple MAC addresses to map to one host name. You can now give the same name to a device’s wired and wireless connection, or when a device is connected through a WiFi extender. You can then use a single name for the device in parental controls settings (while previously you have to assign a different name for each connection interface the device may have).
• Add disable SSID broadcast option to Wireless Settings.
• For TORONTO-AC, fixed a bug that limited MAC address filtering to 6 MAC addresses.

To upgrade to this version, click the “Check for Updates” button in the System Settings page. After successful upgrade, create a new router settings backup file from the System Settings page and save it in a safe place.

Important Note: System settings archive is not compatible with previous versions. It is strongly advised that you create a system backup before installing this update. If you ever downgrade to a previous version, you need to restore the previous backup.

• This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by pcwrt. Reason: Add downgrade note

[stringer]

Is pcWRT susceptible to the KRACK vulnerability? If so, what is the plan for patching this at the router layer? Thanks!

[support]

@stringer KRACK is mainly targeted at clients. But we are investigating this issue to see if there’s any impact.

[Email4him]

Great update, I love the Log feature, however can you add a clear button to clear the log when needed. Thanks

[akarchm01]

Received the following message when updating firmware:

Unable to establish ubus connection
stack traceback:
[C]: in function ‘?’
?: in function ‘ubus’
?: in function ‘?’
?: in function ‘?’
?: in function ‘dispatch’
?: in function <?:296>

Do I need to be concerned?

[support]

@akarchm01 Can you send a screenshot to [email protected]?

[akarchm01]

Not any more, because once I got that screenshot, I power cycled the router and the update seemed to work. But in case you’re interested, that error message was the only text on the webpage.

[support]

@akarchm01 Help us understand it though. You click the upgrade button, then the progress dialog comes up… you wait for the upgrade… the router reboots… then your PC reconnects and you see the error screen. Is that right?

[akarchm01]

Ah..here’s what happened: Downloaded the firmware, started the update process. Update process runs and then the browser refreshes and I get that error message on the browser. I no longer can access the router or any webpage through a browser. I then power cycle the router and all is well. HTH

[rthome]

I’ve installed this firmware, and have a few issues. I’ve tried Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Same behavior in all browsers.

– I can’t figure out how to edit the calendars any longer.
– I see no way to know for how long I have extended or shrunk a calendar window without counting the number of clicks.
– Pausing the internet for everyone or a specific profile is nice, but I commonly don’t need to do that. More commonly, I want to pause parental controls. I can’t see how this works, unless the calendar is already enabling access (it appears you can extend the time the calendar is in effect, but you cannot enable the calendar if it is not already in effect. Let me explain the use case, as I may be missing how this works.

I have a calendar called internet on, with a blank site list, that is in force all day. I have another calendar called media time, that is a black list of sites where the kids may spend free time (youtube, facebook, espn, etc) only during specified hours. The media time calendar is enabled from 6pm-9pm, for example. Frequently, due to some event taking place during media time, we want to let the kids access those sites at a different time, say 4pm-5pm. Up to now, I’ve had to disable parental controls to allow this–and I always forget to turn them back on. I’d like to either pause parental controls, or somehow enable my media time calendar in an ad hoq temporary basis. If the media time window is not already active, I don’t see how to do this.

[support]

@rthome

– I can’t figure out how to edit the calendars any longer.

The way you edit calendars remains the same. Are you seeing anything different?

– I see no way to know for how long I have extended or shrunk a calendar window without counting the number of clicks.

Are you not seeing the time increment/decrement when you click the +/- buttons?

For your example of the media calendar limiting access only to 6pm-9pm, the sites listed in the calendar will only be available during that time range. Now suppose you want to open up 4:00pm-5:00pm. You can log in anytime after 4:00pm, extend the calendar for the amount of time you want. If you extend the calendar by one hour, then the calendar restrictions will be removed for the next hour and will be restored after the 1 hour expires. If you log in at 4:00pm, extend the calendar by 1 hour, then the media sites will be available 4:00pm-5:00pm.

[rthome]

My problem is the “view/edit calendars” buttons disappear. Once those buttons disappear, the +/- popup does not display or work properly. I’ve recreated this problem after resetting to factory defaults. After connecting to a factory reset configuration, I enable parental controls, disable parental controls in the default profile, then create a new profile. No need to create a calendar or even add a device to the profile, the behavior is the same. After saving the profile, I click on status, then apps, then parental controls, and the view/edit calendars buttons (as well as buttons to edit any calendar you do create) are gone. Sometimes I need to reboot the router to see the behavior, but usually navigating away is sufficient. If I delete the profile and recreate it, it the view/edit reappears, until I leave the screen and return.

[rthome]

I think I’ve found a workaround. The problem only occurs if I turn off parental controls for my default profile. I’m restricting only my kids devices, so everything else is in default, and I disabled parent controls for this profile. If I turn on parent controls for the default profile, everything appears to work properly on the kids profiles. Turning on parental controls with no entries for default appears to behave the same as disabling parental controls for default, and the calendars now show up in the other profiles and +/- buttons work as intended. So, I appear to have a work around for my issue, but there’s definitely a bug lurking out there. I’m running the 100Mb router.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by rthome.

[support]

@rthome Thanks for your feedback. Yes, looks like the Calendar buttons are hidden when parental control is not enabled for the Default profile. We’ll fix this and push out a firmware update soon.

[support]

@stringer There’s one KRACK attack against an AP: CVE-2017-13082 – Accepting a retransmitted Fast BSS Transition (FT) Reassociation Request and reinstalling the pairwise encryption key (PTK-TK) while processing it. Since our router only supports AP mode and does not support IEEE 802.11r, it’s safe to say that we are not affected. That said, we are looking into ways to mitigate some of the risks for unpatched clients when they are connecting to our router.

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