ReadyNAS RN628X stuck booting after confirming reboot to install firmware 6.10.0

Hi ronaldvr2132,

You can connect a console cable to the NAS so you can see what it says. You may provide to me the console logs via PM so we can check it as well and provide on how to fix it.

If you still have support warranty on the NAS, you can also contact NETGEAR support so they can fix it as well.

Regards,

How does that work a console cable and how can I get info out of it?

The RN628X is from the end of January 2017 and I am not sure if I still am entitlted to support. As this is celearly caused by the firmware upgrade process as the RN628X was working fine I guess it should be covered by support but for me the most important is that I get my RN628X back on line as soon as possible. Hope I can get these logs out of the RN628X with a console cable but please let me know what such a cable is and how I can get then the logs out of the RN628X. And thank you for your assistance JohnCM_S which is very much appreciated.

Hi ronaldvr2132,

There is a micro USB console connector (marked as UART) at the back panel of the chassis. You can connect a PC to that port using a micro USB cable. In case you need the driver, you can download it here.

Once the PC is connected, open a terminal emulation program (e.g. PuTTY) to the COM port assigned by your PC to the ReadyNAS console. You can use these following settings:

Speed: 115200 baud

Data bits: 8

Stop bits: 1

Parity: None

Flow control: None

Once you have done that, you can start the connection then power up the NAS then let it boot.

Regards,

Hi JohnCM_S at the place with the descirption UART there is a solit black square. It is not someting where I can put a Micro USB cable in. Am I looking at the right place on the chassis? 

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ronaldvr2132 wrote:

Hi JohnCM_S at the place with the descirption UART there is a solid black square. It is not someting where I can put a Micro USB cable in. Am I looking at the right place on the chassis? 

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It is the right place.  You pull off the black square.

I have connected the console cable and installed the Windows 7 driver(s) on my Windows 7 computer and was not able to get any data from the ReadyNAS via Putty or free serial monitor. After this I switched to a Windows 10 computer on which I installed the Windows 10 driver (as there was only one universal driver for Windows 10) and connected the cable. The same as in Windows 7 in device manager you can see the port and everything seems to be working but there is not data coming from the RN628X. In free serial monitor it automatically selects the right com port but it says that it did not receive any bytes. How frustrating this is!

Is there any news with regards to my booting issue?

Hi ronaldvr2132,

Have you tried rebooting the NAS while the serial connection is open? You will need to reboot the NAS so you can get data from the console while the NAS is booting.

Regards,

Hi JohnCM_S yes I did this and it seems that no data is being transmitted by the RN628X. As far as I can tell the connection with the PC is OK.

Hi ronaldvr2132,

What do you see on the console output? Is it just a blank page?

You may also try using a different USB cable.

Can you also provide a screenshot of your device manager (showing the COM port) and your Putty settings as well?

Regards,

Hi JohnCM_S I will give it a try but can you give some more guidance on how this works with Putty? I have put in the correct settings, the device manager shows the com port as being active, in the com port settings and in Putty I have put in the correct settings (115200,8,1,no,no) and when I press open nothings happens. Not sure if this is something I did wrong so therefore the question how should I use Putty and set-up the USB to Serial connection etc. When I connect the USB cable I do get an additonal COM port in device manager which is going away when I disconnect the USB cable so I guess it works, but I don't get anything into Putty nor does the other tool I installed provide any output. This is really annoying as this should not have happened and it has taken me already a lot of time and negative energy!

Hi ronaldvr2132,

You can try these steps:

1. After opening Putty, click the Serial radio button.

2. Type the COM address (e.g. COM1, COM2) to which the NAS is attached to on the Serial Line box.

3. On the Speed box, type the baud rate of 115200.

4. Open the connection then boot up the NAS.

Regards,

Hi JohnCM_S step 4: "Open the connection then boot up the NAS" does not work. When I have the correct settings for the serial communication and have the Com port that shows up in the device manager and press open nothing happens. I guess another screen should pup up or is this not the expected behaviour? Again nothing hapens when I press open in Putty.

Hi ronaldvr2132,

Okay. Thanks for that feedback. Can you tell me what happened when you tried the USB boot recovery before? Does it have the same status of 'Booting...'?

Also, have you tried a different USB drive as well?

Regards,

Yes the status remains Booting... Pressing the reset button at the back does not help to come into the boot menu and the USB recovery method does not seem to work as well. Even when the USB disk is not working I would expect some kind of change on the display to the message Booting..., but nothing happens! As to the instruction of the USB recovery method: this is not very clear by the way for the RN620 series. It says in the provided link to the document:

"3. Press and hold the Backup button, then power on the ReadyNAS system and continue to hold the Backup button for up to 15 seconds, depending on your ReadyNAS model.
- If your ReadyNAS system is an RN420, RN520, or RN620 series:
After powering on the ReadyNAS system, wait for the backlight on the navigational buttons to turn off.
Instead of the Backup button, press and hold the OK button (the center of the navigational buttons) for up to 30 seconds, until the LCD confirms that the ReadyNAS is attempting to boot from the USB drive."

For me this seems sequential: first press and hold the non existing Backup button when powering on and then after powering on wait for the backlight to go off.... So I gues only the last items should be followed and that is what I did. I switched on the RN628X waited untill the backlight was off and then pressed the middle dot for a very long time while and this all with the USB recovery key inserted in the front USB port. Again nothing happened and the RN628X is only showing Booting...

One thing I did not mention is that there seems to be some activity on the hard disks (also still after 24 hours), but not a lot though.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I have the same problem. My model is 524X. In my case it rebooted once but did not show the upgrade, then  I tried to reboot again, and I got to the perpetual booting... display. So rereading the previous posts, my situation sounds identical.

ronaldvr2132

We are further checking the issue on your NAS. I will provide you an update once I get feedback from L3.

zeke561

Can you access the boot menu? If you are able to access it, please try doing an OS reinstall and see what happens.

If you are not able to access the boot menu, have you tried doing the USB boot recovery?

Regards,

I have not had time to try these things. I will try to get to it today. RIght now I am trying to make sure I have a backup of my backups.

ronaldvr2132

For the console output, can you confirm if you are using the Silabs driver? 

Yes I do. I have tried two PC's one Windows 7 and tried both Windows 7 drivers (no guidance was given which one to use) and I also installed the Windows 10 drivers on a Windows 10 PC and then connected the RN628X.

Any new on how I can get my RN628X back online after the Netgear firmware upgrade process has putten it into a mode where it can't be used any longer?

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ronaldvr2132 wrote:

Any new on how I can get my RN628X back online after the Netgear firmware upgrade process has putten it into a mode where it can't be used any longer?

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It might go faster if you use paid support (my.netgear.com) - though of course it would cost.

I am not willing to pay for a fault that Netgear has made. A firmware update should not result in a NAS that is not working any longer!  I am a long time customer of Netgear gear and have the last two years experienced more issues caused by firmware updates then in the 10+ years before. I hope Netgear will get back to the quality level I am used to and for this issue I hope we can resolve it quickly!

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ronaldvr2132 wrote:

I am not willing to pay for a fault that Netgear has made. 

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I'm a customer too, and I totally get that.  But depending on the mods here will slow the process down.  So if the situation becomes truly urgent it is something to consider (although annoying).

Another (also painful) path is to do a factory reset and rebuild the NAS.  If you decide to do that, I suggest powering down and inserting a scratch disk.  Make sure you get a clean factory install with 6.10.0.  Then do the real reset with your existing disks.

BTW, what apps do you have installed?  It's possible that an app is getting in the way of the update.

Just to jump in here, I have experienced the same problem, and I have no apps beyond whatever is installed by default.