NAS not reacting at all

[jmparisot]

Hello,

A few days ago, my Lacie 5Big Network2 stopped working yet again. Long story short: I recovered all my data from the disks (structured as RAID5) and erased all 5 disks using the storage manager in Windows (Deleted all partitions, all space is now unallocated on the disks).

First I tried to reset the NAS as indicated in the user guide (remove all disks, wait for NAS to boot to steady blue, then blue red blinking, when steady blue again insert the 5 disks and press the front button for 5 seconds). That did not work. When pushing the button for 5 seconds it did not react. I did notice though if I insert the 5 drives and did wait around 1-2 minutes without performing any action, it went to blue-red blinking and never stops in that state.

I now downloaded fvdw. Tried "standalone kernel, load and start", "external kernel, load and start", "install fvdw-sl firmware" and using "kirkwood uimage-3142-nwsp2cl-14".

I see that it connects to 192.168.178.252 and uploads apparently the firmware. After the telnet starts, it cannot connect, the connection is not established.

In my router I however see the NAS showing up with 192.168.178.252. Performing a ping to that address fails however. I also noted that my old name is used from the NAS (named it "espressonet") which is strange as it should not have any of this information stored?

I tried the above steps in fvdw-sl without disk and with a disk in the first slot only.

Any idea what I am doing wrong or what I am missing out on?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance...getting realy frustrated with my Lacie. Since I have it (around 4 years) they exchanged it already twice, replaced all 5 HDDs already once and had to recover all data twice...not a very reliable NAS after all.... :evil:

[fvdw]

Hi, sorry to hear that you have so much trouble with the 5big2. I use it (with our firmware for more then 3 years now without issue. The issue with lacie is the instability of their firmware (hardware is ok) causing corruption of the boot process

Anyhow, it seems you used the wrong kernel, the one you loaded (kirkwood uimage-3142-nwsp2cl-14) is not the standalone kernel but the kernel running the firmware.
So try again and use the correct standalone kernel (UIMAGE-3142-KIRKWOOD-150-standalone)

For the record. Most common reasons why telnet client cannot connect when using standalone kernel option:
- using a wireless connection between pc and router, use a wired connection. A wireless connection may pick up interference messing up the data transfer.
- the standalone kernel is not uploaded, you should see the progress when it is actually being uploaded and after loading the uboot window should show starting kernel.. If you don't see that than the kernel is not uloaded. This can happen if you have more than 1 network acard active on your PC. Disable all but one. The one to be kept enabled should be the one with wired connection to your router. If you have only one network card and still kernel is not uploaded than you firewall may block LAN access for the programs used by the fvdw-sl console. Disable temporarily the firewall our grant access for the programs (clunc and tftpd32);
- using the wrong standalone kernel. Use the kernel with standalone in its name and platform name. For a 5big2 you need to select the kirkwood "standalone" kernel (UIMAGE-3142-KIRKWOOD-150-standalone)

[jmparisot]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your input. I just tried again and it was indeed the wrong standalone kernel I used.

I am currently in the process of installing fvdw firmware onto it as we speak.

For quite a moment I see the screen "GPT Partitioning scheme deleted on /dev/sda" and being stuck at 80%. Does it normally take a while? I have inserted the 1st disk only (had no partitions on it, just unallocated space)?

The logfile at the moment:

fvdw-sl-installer log
tftpd ip address 192.168.178.22
getting required programs from tftp server 192.168.178.22
Dialog installed
xterm installed
mke2fs-ext3 present
gdisk present
Start fvdw-sl firmware installer version 3.0.0

selected nas type xbig2 platform kirkwood
selected disk /dev/sda
gpt support bootloader selected yes
selected partion table type gpt
Deleting old gpt partiton table
partitions found before GPTdeleting partition table = \n
del = w\nY\n\n
partitions found after delete GPT partition table = \n
deleting GPT partition succeeded, trying to delete protective ms-dos table\n
fdisk: device has more than 2^32 sectors, can't use all of them

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 266305.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): Selected partition 1

Command (m for help): The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table

Thanks a lot

[fvdw]

For quite a moment I see the screen "GPT Partitioning scheme deleted on /dev/sda" and being stuck at 80%. Does it normally take a while? I have inserted the 1st disk only (had no partitions on it, just unallocated space)?

No thats not normal it should only take a few seconds to delete the partition table.
From the log it seems there were partitions present. I would suggest to run the fvdw-sl program to install firmware again.

If again the script hangs there is something wrong with this disk. Then you could try to run gdisk and fdisk from the command line in the telnet window and try to check if a partition table is present and see what happens when deleting it.
For gdisk

Code: Select all

gdisk /dev/sda

When gdisk is running press m and enter to possible commands. The command "l" should list the partition table if it is present.
When you find a partition table and succeeded to delete don't forget to use the write command before exiting gdisk.
After finishing with gdisk do the same with fdisk.

[jmparisot]

Hello,

I tried again a few times last night. It "froze" at different steps. I think that it loses the telnet connection in between for whatever reason.

I will try today to setup a separate own network where I will just connect the laptop and the NAS. That should cause less interference on the network at least.

I do not think it is the hard drive as I tried with 3 different drives and they all showed the same behavior.

I will keep you updated.

[fvdw]

Telnet cannot be lost if you use wired connection unless your LAN is unstable...

[jmparisot]

So tried again. Even tried with console 5.5, same result.

Tried with 2 different PCs and 2 different routers...no luck.

It seems that the telnet connection brakes off randomly...sometimes it happens already after I put the password to login. If I open a new window it then works. But will freeze somewhere along the way. It just seems the telnet connection is dead.

I checked with gdisk and fdisk. I was able to delete all partitions in gdisk with success.

Also tried with 3 different hard drives...the same result.

It is strange to me that it always happens at a different step along the installation process :fists

Any thoughts?

P.S. I disabled all other network connections on the PC (except the ethernet connection), disabled windows firewall, all antivirus scanners and so forth. Thought maybe something is blocking the telnet connection along the way...

[fvdw]

Weird, never have seen this problem, only when using wireless :scratch

Which ethernet connection do you use on the 5big2.
There are two, you should use lan1.

Maybe you have a bad utp cable or conector :dontknow

If you don't run the script do you also loose connection after a while. ?

[jmparisot]

Very strange indeed.

I also tried several different cables to connect both the pc and the nas to the router.

I checked that I use the Lan1 on the nas.

It also happens sometimes when I do not run the script but for example do some operations with gdisk.

Maybe the nas does not like the kernel installed? Is there maybe another/older version I could boot?

[fvdw]

very unlike, this kernel runs fine on my 5big2, you can try this one
This one will be used in the next release of the console

If that also fails I am beginning to suspect that you have a hardware problem on this 5big2