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Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot (oh, and "hi", BTW)

Jeff_P
Aspirant

RN104 freezes now will not boot (oh, and "hi", BTW)

So I'm new to this community and my first post would seem to be only an echo of many before me.

 

My 10 month old RN104 started freezing a couple of weeks ago.  Frustrating at first, but the frequency of freezes progressively increased, until last week it was doing it roughly every 24 hours.  Like everyone else here, digging about the log files presented nothing of interest and no clues as to why this was happening.

 

I took (in retrospect) a blinding good move and copied all the data off it onto a free standing USB disk one night, and ordered another RN104 (thinking that, well, maybe there *might* be a hardware issue) which I was plannig to do soon anyway.  New RN104 arrives and I dig out 4 x 500 GByte WD disks and get it going. All fairly straight forward.  I start to copy the data from the old RN104 to the new RN104, and get less than 10% copied before the old RN freezes again.  This time the it simply does not start, and freezes with a "booting..." display.  Lucky I did that other backup just in time.

 

Out of interest I have tried moving the 4 x 2TB disks from the old RN into the new RN and it then also fails to boot in the same fashion as the original, so I feel happy that there isn't a hardware issue.  The new RN is currently having the backup from the free standing USB disk slowly copied onto it with its disks, and all is going fine (just about getting to 95% complete now).

 

So, to me this sounds ilke some sort of resource availability issue, probably filesystem based, on the four disks beloging to my original RN.  So how do I look into this?  I can't plug a keyboard and screen into the RN, and turning it on as it stands presents no network access at all.  It is now truely a "black box" in all senses of the phrase Smiley Frustrated

 

My current thinking is to individually (and then all at once if necessary) mount the 2 TB disks into a USB chassis and use my PC the access them directly (running linux FC22 on the computer) and see what I can see.  What will I see? Can I examine whats going on and perhaps clear out some space (or something?) and get the box booting again?

 

Any thoughts?

 

I guess I can "fix" the who problem by zapping the partion tables on the disks (with a hand full of zero blocks) and getting the RN to "Factory Install" itself again, but I would rather get to the bottom of the problem and work out how to fix or avoid it if possible.

 

Now doing this all backwards, I'll introduce myself a little.  I have a long history of working in IT (30 years in entirely Unix or similar systems with various storage systems), until a couple of years ago when I "got off" that career.  I now play with the kit at home for pure hobby and enjoyment, mostly.  I have two RN104s (now) one with 4 x 2TB WD disks and the other with 4 x 500GB WD disks.  I *really* like these units and am a little frustrated that one seems to have let me down.  They're both set up with most services turned off, no apps running, and the files accessed using NFS.  It may not be ideal, but it suits me.

 

Regards,

Jeff

Message 1 of 19

Accepted Solutions
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Message 16 of 19

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mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot (oh, and "hi", BTW)

Which firmware were you running on the old unit?


Even though you saw nothing of interest in the log files can you send in the logs zip file anyway (see the Sending Logs link in my sig)?

Message 2 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot (oh, and "hi", BTW)

Hi 'mdggm',

 

As the unit no longer boots to a point where I can access it from the network interface its a little tricky sending in the log files Smiley Sad

 

I have linked the disks to my PC and (despite a small hiccup) have access to the root file system on the disks.  There doesn't seem to be anything obviously out of sorts at a MD or file system level.  If you tell me whcih files you would like a copy of I can extract and send them to you this way.

 

I'll keep snooping about though, out of interest.

 

Regards, Jeff.

Message 3 of 19
JennC
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot (oh, and "hi", BTW)

Hello Jeff_P,

 

You will be able to download logs using RAIDar 6.0.

 

Regards,

Message 4 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Hi Jenn,

 

So I put three of the four disks back into the RN104 (don't ask why), and to my surprise this time is got past the "Booting.." message and now simply says "data ; DEGRADED".  However, nothing I can do from the network elicits any response.  "nmap" gives the following output from the RN's IP address:

 

[jeff@nook ~]$ nmap cloud

Starting Nmap 6.47 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2015-11-25 19:08 GMT
Nmap scan report for cloud (192.168.1.160)
Host is up (0.80s latency).
Not shown: 992 closed ports
PORT      STATE SERVICE
80/tcp    open  http
111/tcp   open  rpcbind
139/tcp   open  netbios-ssn
443/tcp   open  https
445/tcp   open  microsoft-ds
2049/tcp  open  nfs
3260/tcp  open  iscsi
10000/tcp open  snet-sensor-mgmt

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 1.15 seconds

However, trying to acces it via either its local IP address or through "readycloud.netgear.com" doesn't give any results.  My new RN works fine (via both mechanisms), so I'm happy that I'm not being too silly.

 

I simply don't see how I can get the log files off in the manner which you suggest.

 

Regards,

Jeff.

Message 5 of 19
StephenB
Guru

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Did you try RAIDar?

Message 6 of 19
BrianL2
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Hi Jeff_P

 

On the new RAIDar 6.0, there's a button that you can click to download the logs of your ReadyNAS. Once it's downloaded, give us a copy of it so we can check what's wrong.

 

 

Kind regards,

 

BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team

Message 7 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Only version4.3.8 for Linux available ... so tried this.  I am pleasantly surprised that this finds both RN104s, and when I click "Setup" it pops up an Epiphany window and connects to the local IP address admin page, and it works!  The box looks like it is running (ish) at the moment.  The flashing "DEGRADED" message is flashing on the fornt display, unlike yesterday where this seemed to happen for only a short period before staying on and the box freezing again.  I had *just* turned the box on as I started the RAIDar program, so I've probably caught it at the right moment Smiley Happy

 

Have sent in an email as requested.

 

Ahh, it's frozen again now, it seems to have been running for just a few minutes.  This is better than previous times.

 

Regards,

Jeff.

Message 8 of 19
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Have you tried powering down the NAS, removing your disks (label order) and testing your disks e.g. test WD disks using WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics?

Message 9 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

I had all the disks out to check the file systems directly and the SMART data values.  All the disks were fine, recording no errors I could see and worked faultlessly, baring the one I accidentally killed off (trouble with getting older and eye sight not being so good on that really, *really* tiny writing).

 

The three remaining disks went back into the RN (as I said before) and it fired up OK.  Indeed, the loss of a disk seemed to make life "easier" for it and it worked for longer before freezing again.

 

I have subsequently got a new disk in, wiped the partition table clear (zero blocks) and dropped that into the array (shortly after turning the array on).  It spotted the new disks and started rebuilding the data.  It ran like this for several hours before locking up again.  Once again, this is better that it was doing before I started this thread.  However, it did lock up again.  Interestingly, the freeze seemed to happen in slow motion.  Initially the front display on the RN stopped responding, as did the power button, BUT, the web interface carried on working along with the disk rebuild.  Eventually the web interface stopped (the ports on the network remained "open" but unresponsive) however the disks continued being busy until shortly afterwards when they too stopped.

 

Rather odd.  Still, to me, feels like a resource issue.

 

Jeff

Message 10 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

I saw the other say that version 6.4.1 of the firmware became publicly available, so have successfully applied this to the "failing" RN104.  While I cannot say that the unit has been "in active use" what I can say is that it has been running for around 48 hours without any issues.  The various outstanding data resynchronisation activities completed successfully and all the data that was on the array before the unreliability took hold is still there (though now redundant).

 

Have also updated the other RN104 on the grounds that what's good for one ought to be good for the other.

 

Thank you to the support people for thier work in making this happen.  I hope my small contribution added some value.

 

Regards to all,

Jeff Penfold

Message 11 of 19
BrianL2
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Hi Jeff_P,

 

Thanks for sharing your feedback on the latest R6 Firmware. Just update this thread if anything happens.

 

 

Kind regards,

 

BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team

Message 12 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Original RN104 has started freezing up again.  Symptons seem to be the same as before (so far) .. system stops responding to NFS while under what might be considered heavy load.  Done this twice now.  The Web interface seems to still be running .. but while it accepts the connection it does't send any data back to the web client (Firefox).  I'll try to extract some data as before.

 

Regards,

Jeff.

Message 13 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Log files submitted.

 

Jeff

Message 14 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Periods between freezing reducing, now down to about 12 hours.  Again, pretty much as before.

 

Jeff

Message 15 of 19
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Message 16 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Thank you for the link.  The file "ReadyNASOS-6.4.2-T59-arm.img" has been installed.  I'll put it through it's paces and see what happens.

 

Regards,

Jeff.

Message 17 of 19
Jeff_P
Aspirant

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

So far, so good.

 

The data has resynchronised successfully, and a subsequent backup of my other RN104 succeeded (~840 GBytes).

 

I'll set things up as I had intended and see what happens.  Thanks for the pointer to the Beta release.

 

Regards,

Jeff.

Message 18 of 19
BrianL2
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 freezes now will not boot

Hi Jeff_P,

 

Thanks for the feedback and we're glad that the beta Firmware helped you with your problem. You may now tag this post as resolved by clicking the "Accept as Solution" button in one of the responses that you received.

 

 

Kind regards,

 

BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team

Message 19 of 19
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