Forum Discussion

Sensei

May 02, 2019

Driveless system auto-updated flash firmware

I have been playing around with a semi-functional RD5200 running OS6.9.5 (yes, a ReadyData configured as a ReadyNAS). The problem it has can make the drives not visible at boot. When that happened, I...

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

May 03, 2019

Sandshark wrote:

Do we need to start telling folks to pull the Ethernet cable before booting with no drives and then insert it after the NAS has had time to boot? .

JohnCM_S : I agree with Sandshark that we need to understand when the NAS will update it's flash while diskless, and how to prevent that.

Can you provide some guidance on this? Otherwise we'll need to tell folks to pull the ethernet cables and reinsert them after - which is annoying to say the least. Also if the NAS doesn't have an LCD panel, it will be hard to know when it's safe to reinsert the cable.

JohnCM_S

NETGEAR Employee Retired

May 03, 2019

Hi Sandshark, StephenB,

The system needs a volume to perform a firmware update so a diskless system updating itself is not normal. Also, the system will notify you if there is an update available but not just upgrade.

Regards,

StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
May 03, 2019
JohnCM_S wrote:

Hi Sandshark, StephenB

The system needs a volume to perform a firmware update so a diskless system updating itself is not normal. Also, the system will notify you if there is an update available but not just upgrade.

Any explanation for what Sandshark is seeing?
- JohnCM_S
  NETGEAR Employee Retired
  May 03, 2019
  Hi StephenB,
  
  I am not sure what caused his RD5200 to just update without any disks. I checked this with L3 and said that it is really not normal and they cannot really explain how that happened. They said that the RD5200 with an OS6 firmware is a hack and unsupported. They do not know if the hack allowed the system to "see" a volume and update the firmware without any drives installed.
  
  Regards,
  - Sandshark
    Sensei
    May 04, 2019
    It's definately not accessing any disk when it does this. But, there is a unused section of the USB that it might be doing something with. I cloned the 256M USB boot drive from a RN4200V2 to the 512MB one from the RD5200. But it still comes up not showing any drives when the problem occurs, which makes me think that's not it.