I am trying to decide whether to upgrade my Ultra 2 Plus to OS6. I realize this is not officially supported by netgear, but basically, OS4 is kind of dying with no more support either, 3rd party add ons are father and fewer between as well. So it seems like as long as OS6 works fully well on this hardware, it would be more supported then OS4, even though not "officially". Perhaps some version of OS6 will deprecate this hardware eventually... just wondering...
But how does everyone else feel about this?
What are some of the specific advantages to OS6 over OS4?
Is it true at all that OS6 is more likely to be able to install just about any standard deb package, as opposed to OS4 where you are often taking a risk to try to use apt-get or dpkg? Obviously front view looks nicer, but I'm interested in performance differences, and compability with standard linux packages. I heard it was upgraded to SMB3, which could improve things. what else is improved in terms of underlying services or linux standardization?
I also ready its been upgraded to a new file system, with snapshots, which would also be very nice to have.
Any and all thoughts and opinions on this matter will be welcome. Seems like quite a few people hve already made this upgrade and I don't hear much complaining, so it must be the way to go?
Standard Linux packages may store too much data on the root volume. Apps should store data on the data volume.
It is true that less work should be required to get packages running on OS6. We are using a newer kernel and a newer Debian distro (and hence newer versions of some packages which are dependencies for apps) than what comes in RAIDiator-x86 4.2.x
so that seems like its just a matter of taking a look at the deb before installing it and if it is going to put something outside of /c/ then go move it later. Even now I run into that sometimes when I build some src and do "make install". But I'm basically completely paranoid to run apt-get or to install a lib or something on OS4
I'm probably gonna do it, a couple quick prep questions..
I just updated the BIOS using the only BIOS updater bin that I could find..
BIOS_Update_Package_0.5-x86.bin
This updated the BIOS on my Ultra 2 Plus to version 1.8, dated, Nov 2011. But I have no idea if this is truly the latest BIOS that I should get to before making the leap to OS6. Anyone know how I can find out what is the latest and greatest BIOS for the Ultra2plus?
Secondly, I need to backup this /c drive before I do it. I have a volume with sufficient space on another OSX machine that I can use for this task, what method would some reccomend to backup my readynas over the network before attempting this? At the least, backup my /c/ drive anyway for the data that matters, though it would be better to fully backup the root drive too in case I decide to roll back to OS4, hopefully not though. What suggestions would some of you have for the best way to backup the data over the network that way? ftp? rsync? something else?
That add-on contains the latest BIOS for your system and you have installed that.
You could use Rsync for this, I guess. Or connect to the NAS using SMB/AFP from your Mac and copy the files using your Mac.
You could do a Config Backup that you could restore if you went back to OS4 (note you can't restore an OS4 config backup on OS6 or vice versa). This would backup the important NAS config.
I have an rsync job in progress, using -a option which will make sure perms and sym links, etc, get copied across also. Its not the fastest approach though, this will take quite a long time to complete. Large files transfer quickly. Directories full of many small files are transferring very very slowly. But its probably the closest thing to a real backup of everything, I am thinking. At the rate its going its going to take a few days though.
Anything else you want to warn me about before I attempt the OS upgrade?
I think I will pull one of the mirrored drives and try to install OS6 on a single drive first, I am hoping in a worst case i could take the pulled mirrored drive and put it back into the NAS and reboot the old way if I have to. Once I'm confident OS6 is working, I can put the pulled drive back in, and I hope it will consider it to be something that needs a format and sync.
I see there are two bins I need to run, one is like a prep bin that does some kind of prep work, then the other bin actually upgrades the firmware and reboots the device, and whala...OS6. do i have that right?
Once you're confident that OS6 is working fine for you, you could hook the old disk up to your PC and delete the partitions off it then add it to the NAS.
The prep bin is not strictly necessary but it avoids the need to do a manual factory default. It triggers a factory default at the appropriate time.
If you want to do a manual factory default then don't install the Prep bin and proceed to install the R4 to R6 image. At some point during the upgrade process the system will get stuck as OS6 will be installed over the top of OS4 leaving the system in a mess where it won't boot properly. At that point power down and do a factory default via the boot menu
Most people would find it easier to install the Prep bin file. If you install that and the install the R4 to R6 image the system will do the factory default automatically at the appropriate time.
Thanks for that explanation. I will just use the prep bin.
Which version of OS6 is considered the latest "stable" release for legacy hardware? I saw a post from you from 2 years ago with a bin to upgrade directly to OS6.5 beta, but I see that two years later 6.5 is still in beta2, which makes me nervous to use that first beta, or any beta really, unless everyone thinks these beta's are super stable.. Or where can I find the most approved upgrade version for the ultra 2 plus?
you're right I misread, the post was talking about direct to 6.3.5
Notwithstanding, what is the best version of OS6 to upgrade legacy hardware to? I prefer non-beta, as long as there are no known serious problems. Is it 6.4.1 that I need to find?
I think your only real option is 6.4.2. Not sure why mdgm includes all the old names, since I think all the downloads ( https://www.readynas.com/contributed/mdgm/r4tor6/ ) are in fact soft-linked to 6.4.2.
well I did just happen to find that list and I tried 6.4.2.bin, but when the readynas started up it was running 6.5 beta2...so it appears he has everything sym linked to the beta at this time...unless I accidentally installed the wrong one...but I don't think so. Everything I am reading says it is NOT ok to downgrade OS6, so it sounds like I am stuck with 6.5beta2 at this point.
6.5.0 Beta has some important fixes in it (e.g. for the anti-virus issue), is a good beta release and running OS6 on legacy you are going to use the community for any help anyway so I linked all the images to the beta.
You could downgrade to e.g. 6.4.2 and then do a factory reset to get a clean setup on 6.4.2 if you really want to. You would use the standard 6.4.2 image to do this since you are already running OS6.
In some places old images have been linked to (e.g. the 6.1.4 one). I certainly don't want users putting such old firmware as that on their units. By symlinking to the newer firmware any user that downloads that now will get the latest release.
roger that. Ok, 6.5 beta is up and running. if I understand you correctly, its ok to downgrade, AS LONG AS i do so with a factory reset. I will try to run with 6.5 for a while though. So far its working fine enough.
I do have a couple of questions though...
I ran apt-get update and attempted to get a couple things using apt-get download to check out what it would find. It came back with amd64 binaries, and when I did the apt-get update, I notice that it correlated me with a bunch of amd repositories. Is this a mistake or something I need to tweak manually in my config to correct? My Ultra 2 Plus is Intel. I don't need to download much this way, mainly I want gcc build tools and usually I will download source myself and try to build it rather then blindly install with apt-get. But want to make sure everything is configured right in terms of this and the fact that it decided to download amd64 stuff makes me nervous about the configuration in a more global sense. ?? Or am I just misunderstanding the meaning of amd64 in the deb file names?
when I enabled SSH through the webgui, there is an option to get the key, so I clicked that button and it downloaded a txt file with a key inside. However, I notice that at the end of that text is the following user@host info: root@nas-C1-93-A0. The hostname shown there is not the one that I changed the hostname to via the web ui earlier, its the generic one originally shown when I first started up the new NAS. This makes me think, again, that globally somewhere the hostname has not been completely updated in the system by the webui and needs some manual configuration to complete it. Any comment about that?
OS6 has quite a few shares it creates by default, such as Documents, Videos, Music and Pictures. Is it required for me me to leave those present or can I safely delete them without screwing up any behavior of the NAS?
You could downgrade to e.g. 6.4.2 and then do a factory reset to get a clean setup on 6.4.2 if you really want to. You would use the standard 6.4.2 image to do this since you are already running OS6.
The release notes warn people not to do that.
Devices updated with 6.5.0 BETA firmware should not be downgraded to earlier firmware versions.
I saw that note in the release notes also. My take on it is that its not ok to downgrade without the factory reset. when we upgrade, they allow us to keep our boot partition and data partition without wiping them, and the firmware upgrades certain things both in the firmware as well as the boot partition...hopefully without a hitch.
When you downgrade the firmware without wiping the boot partition; who knows what you end up with on the boot partition, though the firmware should be good. the boot partition might work, might not. But I guess when we do a factory reset the boot partition (and data partition) get wiped clean and the firmware reinstalls linux onto it, so should be fine.. PRESUMING the machine can still boot up after downgrading, long enough to do the factory reset. 😉
I ran apt-get update and attempted to get a couple things using apt-get download to check out what it would find. It came back with amd64 binaries, and when I did the apt-get update, I notice that it correlated me with a bunch of amd repositories. Is this a mistake or something I need to tweak manually in my config to correct? My Ultra 2 Plus is Intel. I don't need to download much this way, mainly I want gcc build tools and usually I will download source myself and try to build it rather then blindly install with apt-get. But want to make sure everything is configured right in terms of this and the fact that it decided to download amd64 stuff makes me nervous about the configuration in a more global sense. ?? Or am I just misunderstanding the meaning of amd64 in the deb file names?
Never mind this question, I figured out the answer...
no argument. The good news is that 6.5 beta seems to be working pretty ok except for a few little things which might be configuration related, I'm not sure.
After doing this upgrade I am no longer able to copy and past folders or multi select files and copy and paste them from a mac over AFP. It worked before great, now I get an error message -50 that it can't copy and paste the files. On SMB it works fine. I'm not sure what changed, maybe there is some little configuration I need to make but I can say that I consider AFP broken right now compared to 4.x.
After doing this upgrade I am no longer able to copy and past folders or multi select files and copy and paste them from a mac over AFP. It worked before great, now I get an error message -50 that it can't copy and paste the files. On SMB it works fine. I'm not sure what changed, maybe there is some little configuration I need to make but I can say that I consider AFP broken right now compared to 4.x.
If you aren't running T338 (beta 2), then upgrade to it. If it still fails, then report this problem on a separate thread in the beta forum.
