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Links to instructions for installing TrueNAS with front panel display capability on some ReadyNAS
For those looking to install an alternate OS on their RN42x, 52x, or 62x unit, here is a link to some very good instructions on installing TrueNAS Scale: https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/1o...
I'm the author of the panel driver. Sandshark, thanks for posting about it in the first place, and sorry it's taken me a while to turn up. I'm on the forum now, so I'm glad to answer things here as well as on GitHub.
Laserbait, I replied to your GitHub issue on the 26th, sorry for the wait. The short version:
The storage pool is the one you want, not the boot pool. A TrueNAS update creates a new boot environment, so anything sitting in the boot pool can get lost, and the installer wants a path under /mnt anyway.
It does survive updates. The files live on the pool, which an update doesn't touch, and the installer registers a POSTINIT script in the TrueNAS config DB, which an update keeps.
Sandshark is right about the 428. The config struct I pulled this out of is named "rn426_8" in the stock kernel, so NETGEAR treated the two models as one board. If you ever have the front bezel off, I'd love a photo of the small board's silkscreen. Mine reads "RN526&RN626X Front Board V20".
On fan control, there's a writeup and a script in the repo now, docs/fan-control.md and tools/it87-fancontrol.sh, so it needn't all be done by hand. portalman, if you've got yours working already I'd be interested in how you went about it. I've only the one machine to go on.
On other models, I agree the RN426 code won't port as it stands, though not quite for the reason you'd expect. The RN426 turns out to be the awkward one. Its panel GPIOs hang off the Denverton SoC through a driver NETGEAR wrote themselves, which never made it to mainline, and that's why my code pokes SoC registers directly.
Every other config I can find in that kernel uses gpio_ich instead. That's ordinary mainline Linux, still in the kernel today. So the other models are probably easier than mine, not harder. I've put the pin maps I extracted in docs/porting.md.
There's a quick test that would tell us whether that holds, if anyone fancies it. Any non-RN426 unit will do. OS6 is too old for gpiodetect, so it needs a live USB, and GRML works fine:
sudo modprobe lpc_ich gpio-ich
gpiodetect
If a chip labelled gpio_ich turns up, it's worth me writing the code. If nothing does, we've found that out in two minutes instead of after I've written a driver blind. No rush, and a negative result is just as useful. I've only got the one RN426, so I can't run it myself.
Hi, thanks for your work here. My main workhorses are RN516 (with upgraded RAM/CPU), but many of my testbeds are old legacy Pro6 (upgraded RAM/CPU) with OS6. So I've always been looking for a new OS solution that works with both Pro6 and RN516.
I've never found a front panel driver solution for the Pro6 outside of the Netgear flavour of the OS. I've spent time looking at source etc, and have not got anywhere in replicating a working solution. If the solution for the 516 and newer units works on those, great. Shame there's nothing I know of for the Pro6.
My work on fan control has been to install sensors, sensors-detect, fancontrol and pwmconfig. Detecting the sensors is easy enough, as is testing what's connected to what with pwmconfig - which finally gives you a base fancontrol profile that you can use and tweak. The issue I've found is that the hardware devices/device locations dont always persist between reboots, so what was hmon3/pwm1 can be hmon1/pwm1 on another boot. Annoying.
I've tested nearly every NAS type distro going, and mostly got them working on Pro6/RN516, with some compromises, but I've never found something which felt right, and complete. Booting from USB on an ongoing basis is poor, as is dedicating one or more drives to a boot pool. As is heath-robinson fancontrol for devices that 'move'.
I guess I've never got to the stage with an alternative OS where the compromises were 'better' overall than just sweating the ReadyNAS firmware as is. If the NAS is 'offline' and not internet connected/presenting open ports, and just sitting serving files, it's probably OK for a while yet.
Having said that, I'm very aware that there's plenty of life left in the hardware - and at some point we will simply have no sensible choice but to retire the Readynas OS6 software.
I continue to watch this thread with interest! And I shall be reviewing the testing! If there's a step by step guide, I'd be happy to test things on a Pro6 (even without the display support).
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