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Recovering a bricked RNDX4000 (NVX)
So I was messing around with an old NVX and decided to experiment with upgrading it to OS6. I didn't realize OS6 was 64 bit until after I bricked the NVX. (oops!) Anyway, based on reading up on...
Muah ha haa! UNBRICKED.
I did it in a crazy sort of way by using TWO USB sticks.
1) 240MB stick (yes megabytes! lol, it was the only other stick I had)
2) 4 GB stick
They both had the usb recovery added on them.
The 240MB stick was plugged in front. It booted but always failed to continue. I was curious so I went into and modified the syslinux.cfg line that said 'default Normal' to 'default OSReinstall'. I did the same to the 4GB stick.I tried both the 240MB and 4GB stick individually at first in the front. The 240MB always booted but failed. The 4GB one didn't do much even though they both had the exact same recovery on them. (not sure why)
Then I tried the boot up process again with the 240MB stick. I held the backup button and powered up the unit. I watched the output from my serial connection and when I saw, "initializing....."
I immediately plugged in the second 4GB stick IN THE BACK USB port. My thinking was.. well, if it can't find the front USB stick, then maybe when it searches it will find the one in the back.
And whoala! The trick effin' worked! And it reloaded the OS, and did the power down thing.
I'm back in business!Kinda nice that since I set the recovery to do an OSReinstall, instead of a factory default, all my settings stayed intact.
I'm glad you were able to bring the NVX back to life.
dtarin wrote:
StephenB.. VPD?
virtual private database?
very picky database?
voracious pizza daemon?
Vendor Product Data file.
This is an encrypted and signed file in the boot flash that contains the model information and serial number of the NAS. So it can't be re-created by anyone other than Netgear. It is used by the OS in configuring your unit, and likely also was intended to prevent people from running ReadyNas firmware on other (non-ReadyNAS) platforms.
We have seen some cases where this file gets corrupted during failed OS-6 conversions - the good news is that this didn't happen with your NVX.
StephenB side question on the VPD. What's the process to back that up and restore if needed?
I'm going to be monkeying with the NVX some more so that sounds like something worth having a restore plan for!
dtarin wrote:
StephenB side question on the VPD. What's the process to back that up and restore if needed?
I'm going to be monkeying with the NVX some more so that sounds like something worth having a restore plan for!
Sandshark posted the procedure here:
His procedure works for both OS 4.2.x and OS-6.
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