"download all log files" killed pre-netgear NV

OS reinstall is the thing to try first. Likely the OS partition is now full (it probably was close to the edge before, and zipping up the log files took it over the cliff). The OS reinstall will reset your admin password back to the factory default, and also reset your network connection to DHCP. Other settings and data will be preserved.

Do you have ssh access? That might be another way - though of course you can't install that add-on now.

Instructions for various ReadyNAS are here: http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how ... _boot_menu
The "Duo / NV / NV+ / X6/600" section is probably for you.

Thanks for the quick reply Stephen! Based on what I was reading in the other posts, I think that yeah, the OS partition is full and/or the log files are huge.
I never did set up ssh access - I didn't want something else to tinker with. :-)

I'll try the OS reinstall; thanks for the link.

-Peter

That did it.

I had to experiment with it a bit to figure out the correct amount of time to hold down the reset button - the wording in the instructions at http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how_do_i_use_the_boot_menu was a little unclear to me.
To do an OS reinstall, it says to hold the reset button down for 5 seconds, and that I'll see one LED flash. Here's how it works out in practice:
(NOTE: APPLIES TO Duo / NV / NV+ / X6/600)
- Find a paperclip. Straighten one end of it.
- Turn unit off.
- Find the reset button.
- Using the paperclip, press it down. With the unit off, it doesn't matter how long you hold the reset button down, or how many times you press it.
- While keeping the reset button pressed, press and release the power button to turn the unit on.
- Continue to hold the reset button down.
- The power button will blink as the unit powers up.
- Watch for all four (the number might depend on how many HDDs you have installed) drive LEDs to blink, all together.
- Release the reset button after seeing the drive lights blink once.
- Go get a drink - this'll take awhile.
- Use RAIDar to keep tabs on the process and to tell you what the new IP address is when the unit is done restoring the OS.
- Log in to Frontview using the credentials admin/netgear1 (or admin/infrant1, if the unit's firmware is old enough).
- You'll see that all of your volume, user, backup settings, etc... will have been preserved (yay!).
- Change the IP address and the admin password back to what they were before the OS reinstall.
- Clear all log files.
- DON'T try to download logs again, even after clearing them - you'll just have to go through this process again.

Which leads me to my next question: how can I clear up space for the OS so that I could download the logs? I'd like to see what my block size is. I'd also just like to clear up space so that a simple task doesn't take down my file server. Where does the OS allocate space? On the X-RAID disk(s)? On its own internal space? If I enable ssh, could I log in an clean out a temp directory or anything?

-Peter

I think you could submit a support request (support.netgear.com).

You could enable ssh, and poke around and see where the space is going. You could also copy the existing logs onto the C volume for archival, and then delete them.

BTW, if you have ReadyDLNA running, its database is in the OS partition, and it can get pretty large.

Yeah, installed the ssh addon and am now poking around looking at things.

Instead of gathering all of the log files in order to see the block size, I can just run dumpe2fs on the main device:

# dumpe2fs /dev/c/c
dumpe2fs 1.40.11 (17-June-2008)
Filesystem volume name: c
...
Block size: 4096
...

And there it is: 4k block size. Seems like I need to do a factory reset anyway to pick up the new block size, so I'm not going to worry about the size of the OS partition. I have a recent data backup (the evening before the disastrous log download attempt) and have a shiny new config backup, so that wont be too painful.

Now that I'm poking around via SSH, I'm a bit puzzled about why I had a problem in the first place. The root partition is pretty free:
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc1 1.9G 894M 1.0G 46% /
tmpfs 16k 0 16k 0% /USB
/dev/c/c 681G 664G 17G 98% /c

There's a gig of free space in there....

/var/log _is_ 278MB:

# du -sh /var/log/
278M /var/log

But, still, even though "download all log files" doesn't just download static log files - system.log appears to be dynamically generated at least - a gig of free space should be enough.

Whatever - time to restore that "new NAS" smell to this tired old NV. Factory reset tonight! :-)

-Peter

EDIT: dropped the size of /var/log to 65MB by deleting the backup logs in Frontview. Apparently "clear all logs" in Status > Logs doesn't delete those. Once I get a fresh data backup, I'll try to download all logs again and see what happens now.

Sometimes if the backup job logs are large that can be an issue for downloading the logs. Or it could be that stuff that the OS Re-install resolved whatever the issue was.

Download all logs was successful since I deleted all backup logs. The zip file is 3.1MB, 29.7MB uncompressed.

Seems like clearing all backup logs prior to downloading all log files is a good idea.

-Peter

It depends if you want to take a look at the logs for your backup jobs or not.

hahaha, troo dat.

But one can view the (at least latest) backup logs in the backup screen of Frontview, and they can be emailed, too.

Anyway, I wish I had thought to do that before downloading the logs just to get the block size.

Had this happen to me as well. Went to download all logs and the NAS crashed and wouldn't boot backup. Luckily I had ssh installed and after searching the problem on Google figured out to delete the log files. Took me awhile to find the specific ones to remove. I also had to do this in the time the NAS was in "quota check", as that allowed me to ssh in, after it was done it would hang in "booting" and kick me out. In case anyone else runs across this.

I went into: /var/log/frontview/backup/ and removed backup_001, 002, 003, 004 for me.