Poeweshift-ReadyNAS Tech Support Nightmare #190 448 88
Sirs, i REALLY hate to pick on tech support, but something seriously went downhill fast with Netgear's tech support. I am a Powershift partner and sell and support many Netgear products, Routers, switches, WAPS and readyNAS. In one project i sold over 20 ReadyNAS 3100s for use in a single customers many homes. Id say Im pretty well versed to their capabilities. They are good products.
Today i had the absolute worst nighmare with tech support in my carreer. I have many spent 3+ contiuous days stints with Microsoft, hairy issues with Cisco, and a handful of tiems with Netgear, which normally has been sort of OK. But nothing prepared me for today witht he most inept tech support dept ever devised. The advanced L2 or L3 support would not even get on the phoen, but only randomly logged into my machine remotely wothout warning, after over 7 hours of back and fourth, guessign this guessing that, the problem is still the same and unresolved. The client wants me to take this trash Netgear ReadyNAS out of his house. I lost all face today.
The problem is this. Client has a MAC computer that he uses the ReadyNAS ultra6 configured with 6x3TB (12 TB total, about 9 TB usable) as his data store and Time machine backup location. Recently the client's RAID controller on his MAC died and he needed to do a restore after the unit was repaired. Since that time, the MAC could not reconnect to the Tiem machine allocation, showing that it had 2.17 TB avail and needed 2.83 TB. It dint matter what we did to resolve this, the MAC would only see that 2.17TB was avaialbe. Calling Tech support was futile in that we tried to delete the files but there was still somethng holding ont to this size. Below i wil paste the notes from today. i am just at my limit to keep trying to describe this again. After 12 hours of dealing with this and no hop in sight.
I need some help in deciding to continue recomending this product to clients or come up a solution to this.
And for the people at the inept tech support office in the Philippines, you should find another profession.This is not anything abainst Philippine tech centers, bu whoever runs this place should find another carreer, the do nothing to resolve issues. ID # are included if youre interested:
RMA replacement was received Friday. 7/23/2012 10:30 AM Replace old unit with new unit, replaced drives in original locations. 1. Bootup, change IP 2. Perform update 4.2.15 to 4.2.20, then Update to 4.2.21 3. Attempt 4. 7/23/2012 11:53 AM Netgear Support 877-292-3155 Case no 189 679 45 5. 56015 Ben 6. 12:08 PM Call back, bad connection 7. New Case no 190 448 88 8. Time machine image reset a. Ben attempted to have me locate and remove the image file for Time Machine but could not tell me how to access it. b. We tried from both PC and MAC and he could not tell me how to access it. c. I requested to be escalated to L3 support. d. He requested me chaning my Firewall Telnet settings, I said I was uncomfortable with giving non-password access to this network. That I prefer Team Viewer or Logmein access or some similar remote access software. e. He sent an email requiring a variety of 9. 1:20 PM Escalated to L3 support - Hang up phone wait for L3 Support to call back. 10. 1:51 PM 8209 Atanas - Called back after no return call - asked why they have not called back yet and what status is. He will follow up on status and return my call 2:03 PM 11. 2:20 PM after no call back, I called back again. after a 10 min wait time, the girl on the line could not hear my call and hung up the line. 12. 2:31 PM Called back again Finally answered at 2:43 PM - they again could not hear me and hung up the line. 13. 2:45 PM Called back again 8209 and got some tech on the line. a. Went through a series of remote commands to delete the timemachine file (Below) Rebooted both the ReadyNAS and MAC. Still does not work.
2EE107RS0012A login: root Password: # start_raid.sh mdadm: /dev/md/0 has been started with 6 drives. mdadm: /dev/md/1 has been started with 6 drives. mdadm: /dev/md/2 has been started with 6 drives. # mount /dev/md0 /sysroot # mount /proc/ /sysroot/proc # mount /dev/ /sysroot/dev # /sysroot/usr/sbin/chroot /sysroot sh-3.1# sh-3.1# sh-3.1# vgchange -ay 1 logical volume(s) in volume group "c" now active sh-3.1# mount -t ext4 /dev/c/c /c sh-3.1# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/md0 4.0G 551M 3.3G 15% / sysfs 4.0G 551M 3.3G 15% /sys /dev/c/c 9.1T 5.8T 3.3T 65% /c sh-3.1# cd /c sh-3.1# cd .timemachine/ sh-3.1# ls Erik Cleage???s Mac Pro.sparsebundle Network Trash Folder Temporary Items sh-3.1# ldu * -sh sh: ldu: command not found sh-3.1# du * -sh 2.0T Erik Cleageâs Mac Pro.sparsebundle 12K Network Trash Folder 12K Temporary Items sh-3.1# # #This is angelo from L3 support. I like to get your confirmation on de sh-3.1# #YE#s sh-3.1# #thanks sh-3.1# rm Erik\ Cleageâs\ Mac\ Pro.sparsebundle/ rm: cannot remove `Erik Cleage\342\200\231s Mac Pro.sparsebundle/': Is a directo sh-3.1# rm -rf Erik\ Cleageâs\ Mac\ Pro.sparsebundle/ A sh-3.1# ls -al total 44 drwxr-xr-x 7 ReadyNAS root 4096 Jul 23 15:56 . drwxrwxrwx 10 root root 4096 Aug 29 2011 .. drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 23 15:21 .AppleDB drwxr-xr-x 2 ReadyNAS nogroup 4096 Nov 5 2010 .AppleDesktop drwxr-xr-x 2 ReadyNAS nogroup 4096 Jan 18 2012 .AppleDouble -rw------- 1 ReadyNAS nogroup 12292 Jul 23 15:10 .DS_Store -rw-r--r-- 1 ReadyNAS root 0 Jul 28 2010 .com.apple.timemachine.supported drwxr-xr-x 3 ReadyNAS nogroup 4096 Nov 5 2010 Network Trash Folder drwxr-xr-x 3 ReadyNAS nogroup 4096 Nov 5 2010 Temporary Items sh-3.1# du * -sh 12K Network Trash Folder 12K Temporary Items sh-3.1# #, and waiting sh-3.1# sh-3.1# sh-3.1# sh-3.1# sh-3.1# sh-3.1# sh-3.1# ucd / sh: ucd: command not found sh-3.1# umount /c umount: /c: device is busy umount: /c: device is busy sh-3.1# cd /c sh-3.1# cd / sh-3.1# umount /c sh-3.1# vgchange -ay 1 logical volume(s) in volume group "c" now active sh-3.1# vgchange -an 0 logical volume(s) in volume group "c" now active sh-3.1# umount /proc sh-3.1# umount /dev sh-3.1# exit exit # cd / # umount /sysroot/ # mdadm -S /dev/md[0-5] mdadm: stopped /dev/md0 mdadm: stopped /dev/md1 mdadm: stopped /dev/md2 # reboot -f
14. 4:05 Called back to Netgear Support. 8209 Atanas a. Atanas helped me with the support of a L2 support tech that refused to get on the phone and talk with me about this problem. b. He logged in remotely ant tried a variety if things, none which worked.
15. 7/23/2012 5:40 PM I left the clients home to have dinner with the tech support tech still working on the problem. BTW, ATANAS ID 8209 decided to tell me they do not suport residential clients so he is actually doing me a favor. I cannot believe the unprofessional attitude these guys have. 16. 7/23/2012 6:13 PM Reveivved an email from Netgear support with the following instructions: On Jul 23, 2012 6:13 PM, "NETGEAR Support" <do-not-reply@netgear-support.com> wrote: Please do the following as your MAC is caching capacity information about the NAS time capsule instead of updating correctly.
On the readynas. Turn off the timemachine service. Restart the NAS and then enable time machine but change the size from 4000 to 4002 or 3998 instead. Increase/decrease capacity by a few GB.
Remove the time machine preferences. Turn off time machine To delete the Time Machine preferences file. This file is called "com.apple.TimeMachine.plist" and is located in the /Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/ folder. Delete this file and reboot and then turn time machine back on.
Select your NAS again for time machine and it should start to sync again.
Your NAS is ok but your time machine on MAC is not updating its setting regarding free space on the remote capsule. 17. Followed the above procedures, the problem still exists whereas the MAC see only 2.17 TB avail on a 4 TB space allocation. a. NOTE: pointing the MAC to another HDD for backup ALWAYS reads the correct space allocation. This symptom only exists when pointing it to the ReadyNAS
18. 7/23/2012 10:15 PM This problem is still unresolved. However after a 6+ hr stint with inept tech support staff, we may just succumb that Netgear does not know how to support TiemeMachine and MAC. I would rather they not market this to customers, so I would stop selling them as a viable solution. Either get it together or stop selling this crap.
Hi thanks for the speedy reply and taking care of my accidental repost.
Sorry I dont have another MAC to use in this scenereo, however the client does have two other USB single HDDs to temporarilly use for his time machine BUs. They always read the correct data allocation size and it works flalessly on them.
I did a series of reboots, and even had the whole system, minus the actual HDDs replaced.
We did a "tech suport Telnet" session today and had the NEtgear engineers manually delete the parsefile (as indicated above). Subsequently they went in and "deleted other file parts that we cannto describe to you" said from the tech support guys.
What command line access are you talkng about? I can go into the unit via VPN and try some things, but the client has been completely exhausted and does not want to spend any more time being Netgears RnD dept. He is a somewhat high profile client and figured that Netgear would provide a system that was properly tested, vetted, and working before going to market. This is not a fist generation unit.
If there are not REAL solutions, other than transfering all his data off his drives, reformatting the whole lot and starting over, Im not sure he has much more patience for this. Frankly, if he has to go that route, he will select another product MFG. This is a problem that has been plaguing him for many months, with a very poor experience today. I have personally not seen this issue before but I tell you its one that makes me want to explore other NAS drive manufacturers if they cannot just make this work out of the box and be dependable. This is supposed to be a reliable backup solution, not part of the problem. Those are his words, BTW.
So you did do a reboot with the quota check option checked? I'm wondering whether thre could be a problem with the quotas e.g. for the ReadyNAS (Time Machine) user
I'm concerned by the mention of 4.2.15. Were the 3TB disks installed prior to the firmware update from 4.2.15? 3TB disks should not be added till after updating to 4.2.16 or later.
By commandline access I mean e.g. SSH or tech support still having access to tech support mode.
Edit: it sounds like from what you posted above that when you moved the disks across to the new NAS, the firmware may have been somehow downgraded to 4.2.15 (presumably 4.2.15 was in the flash of the replacement unit). Not sure how this is possible. This is going to cause problems. On 4.2.15 the limit for the Time Machine quota is 2TB. This downgrade may well have caused the quotas to be messed up. Hopefully forcing a reboot with quota check would repair this. Can you download your logs (Status > Logs > Download all logs) if you haven't already. What does the initrd.log look like? This should confirm whether or not my suspicion is correct as initrd.log shows a firmware update history.
If a reboot with quota check doesn't fix it, perhaps change the quota for Time Machine (under Backup > Time Machine in Frontview) to 2TB and do another reboot with a quota check. Then change the quota back and see if the problem is fixed. If you still have issues try an OS Re-install via the boot menu to see if that helps.
The 2.17TB is odd. 2.17TB is the maximum size a MBR partition on a disk can be. With the update to 4.2.16+ the partitions on the disks are converted from MBR to GPT (this is a one way conversion and irreversible) as GPT partitioning is needed to support 3TB drives. Perhaps 2.17TB was the actual maximum quota supported by the utilities used in 4.2.15?
Downgrading from 4.2.16+ to 4.2.15 is not supported and any attempt to downgrade intentional or otherwise is going to lead to problems. The 4.2.15 OS, utilities etc. are not designed to work with internal GPT partitioned drives or a quota of the size you set. I recommend when moving disks to a new unit that you first get a spare disk (not from your array) and place that in the new unit (if the disk is used you might need to wipe it via a factory default via the boot menu) and confirm that the firmware is at least as up to date as what was on the old unit. If it's not update the firmware and verify that the firmware update was successful. Then power down, remove the spare disk and follow the migration procedure: http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how_do_i_migrate_disks_over_from_an_existing_readynas_to_another
Re: Poeweshift-ReadyNAS Tech Support Nightmare #190 448 88
Oops I misread the release notes for 4.2.16. 4.2.11 added the option for TM quotas up to 4TB. It's from 4.2.16+ that a quota greater than 4TB can be set.
