NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
Unable to Boot or Factory Reset ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer (RNDX400E)
Hi everyone,
I ran into this forum thread while searching for answers to a very similar if not exactly the same problem. I have a Readynas NVX Pioneer edition and would really appreciate your advice. I've had nothing back from netgear support in response to an email I sent them yesterday morning.
The device boots into the boot menu, and no errors are found in the hard drive test or the ram test (I have replaced the previous chips which did give errors). The normal startup procedure gets to "Booting", then the "Checking FS" flashes up for less than a second, then it just hangs on "booting". I've previously left it overnight in this state to no avail.
I can initiate a factory reset from the boot menu, upon which it finds the raidar software running on my pc and I can tell it what fs to set up, but then during the process the LCD will show "ERR: Could not p" which I assume to be a print and subsequent overwriting of "Could not properly extract" like in the thread in my link.
My next thoughts are to connect to the serial pins on the back of the unit to try and get some messages from the boot process, though I could do with a key as to which pin is which if anyone has that?
If you could help I'd be very grateful, though I understand this link is from a good few years ago. I did try PM'ing the saviour in the other thread, though PMs are now disabled for that account (@mgdm-ntgr).
Thanks in advance.
If it is "could not properly extract..." that would suggest corrupt firmware on the internal flash as a possibility. This problem generally isn't observed until a factory reset is done so it seems likely. USB Boot Recovery might fix it but that can lead to the EEPROM getting corrupted.
Don't need to use the serial console to troubleshoot that, though it is an option.
As the NVX is 32-bit care has to be taken to ensure the 32-bit kernel is in the right place if manually extracting a copy of the firmware onto the internal flash, I think. If you go down the manual route you can either put a copy of the firmware image (don't put a zip file on, put the image) on a USB key or copy the firmware on some other way e.g. download it from a http (not https) website.
47 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
frankie0p wrote:
If you could help I'd be very grateful, though I understand this link is from a good few years ago. I did try PM'ing the saviour in the other thread, though PMs are now disabled for that account (@mgdm-ntgr).
He's no longer with Netgear. You can PM him via mdgm instead. Maybe try the current mods ( Marc_V and JeraldM ) first.
This sounds like corrupted flash.
Thanks, I'll give them a message in the meantime.
Morning all, Happy Tuesday.
I connected to the NAS over the serial connection with some success.
I can read the serial debugging but cant send any keystrokes - not sure if that's normal.
Output from Serial:
SYSLINUX 3.31 Tue Mar 3 14:19:16 PST 2009
Copyright (C) 1994-2005 H. Peter Anvin
Debug Serial Port Enabled
Normal
FactoryDefault
OSReinstall
TechSupport
SkipVolCheck
MemoryTest
TestDisks
Loading
18
1B
To Be Filled By O.E.M.
To Be Filled By O.E.M.
11/17/2008 ReadyNAS-NVX V1.3
To Be Filled By O.E.M.
kernel..................................................
Loading initrd.gz.............................Ready.
[Hardware Error]: No human readable MCE decoding support on this CPU type.
[Hardware Error]: Run the message through 'mcelog --ascii' to decode.
▒ahci 0000:03:00.0: masking port_map 0x7 -> 0x3Starting the boot process...
Loading kernel modules...sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
done
Bringing up RAID arrays...done
Bringing up network...eth0.done
Switching root to RAID device.INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
Running ReadyNAS Universal Startup Script...
/etc/rc2.d/S01re
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 nas-A9-AB-4C ttyS0nas-A9-AB-4C login:
If it is "could not properly extract..." that would suggest corrupt firmware on the internal flash as a possibility. This problem generally isn't observed until a factory reset is done so it seems likely. USB Boot Recovery might fix it but that can lead to the EEPROM getting corrupted.
Don't need to use the serial console to troubleshoot that, though it is an option.
As the NVX is 32-bit care has to be taken to ensure the 32-bit kernel is in the right place if manually extracting a copy of the firmware onto the internal flash, I think. If you go down the manual route you can either put a copy of the firmware image (don't put a zip file on, put the image) on a USB key or copy the firmware on some other way e.g. download it from a http (not https) website.
Hi mdgm , thanks for the advice. I have a few followup questions.
- Is the USB recovery/EEPROM failure recoverable if it does go wrong? Or is it kill or cure?
- In a manual firmware update, where would I be copying the firmware to from the USB? When I look at the unzipped firmware folder I only see one file with no extension and a release notes html.
- Till this point I did not realise that the OS for the NAS was in the hard drives and not in flash, though that makes a lot of sense now I think about it. Do I have that correct?
I should clarify that the device was bought second hand and has not been in a working state while I have had it, so I do not know what might be on the hard drives, OS or data.
I have the kit to mount the drives on my computer if that can provide any useful info? Thanks again.
frankie0p wrote:I should clarify that the device was bought second hand and has not been in a working state while I have had it, so I do not know what might be on the hard drives, OS or data.
Hmmm. It's possible that the previous owner tried installing OS6, which is incompatible with the 32-bit platforms like the NVX. But I'm not sure how to verify that. There have been others who tried and a USB recovery fixed it, but I believe some have also been totally bricked (by the conversion, not trying a USB recovery).
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
