I'm having an issue with my Nas, I hopped into the browser yesterday to check on it and it wanted an update, i clicked for the update and reboot and woke up to "mount_block_root +248" on the lcd.
researched and saw it was a firmware installation issue so i tried the recovery tool with the latest firmware but it says boot from usb and then boot failed. and another issue is I can't remember what version it was and what it was updating to. should i try and older version?
Hopefully someone knows how i could fix this alternatively if i could remove my drives, reset the Nas and turn on X-Raid , reinstall the drives and it be ok?
Thanks for your help.
AJ
Model: RN10400|ReadyNAS 100 Series 4- Bay (Diskless)
i tried the recovery tool with the latest firmware but it says boot from usb and then boot failed.
Two things here -
you need to run the recovery tool software as administrator.
After you run the tool there is a second step you should do.
That second step is at the end of the recovery article- the relevant bit is
If your ReadyNAS system is an RN102, RN104, or RN2120, copy initrd-recovery.gz and NTGR_USBBOOT_INFO.txt files from the Arm directory onto the USB drive. Then copy to the USB drive the uImage-recovery file from the Arm/[MODEL] directory, where [MODEL] is ... rn104
It's possible that the recovery tool will do this for you, but you should check it.
One other point is that in general smaller/older USB drives tend to work out better for USB recovery. You might need to make more than one recovery drive, before you find one that works.
I can't remember what version it was and what it was updating to.
Was your firmware reasonably up to date before? The current firmware is 6.10.7. 6.10.6 was released in November 2021, so about 4 months ago.
If your firmware version was very old (last updated in 2015), then there are some intermediate upgrade steps you would need to take. That seems unlikely if your normal practice is to take firmware updates whenever prompted.
I wouldn't. The error isn't because of something in the firmware itself - it suggests something didn't get written properly to the NAS flash memory. Attempting to downgrade isn't likely to help, and could create other issues if you go back too far.
Hopefully someone knows how i could fix this alternatively if i could remove my drives, reset the Nas and turn on X-Raid , reinstall the drives and it be ok?
You can't reset the NAS (or turn on X-RAID) without the drives installed. What the reset does is format the drives and do a fresh factory install onto the drives from the NAS flash memory. The OS and ReadyNAS application is on the drives, and the system normally boots from the drives.
If the flash can't be fixed with USB recovery, the alternatives are
find another OS-6 ReadyNAS with 4 or more bays, and migrate your disks to it. You can even migrate to x86 NAS (RN314, RN424, RN514, RN524, RN624) - though if you are running apps, the apps will no longer work (and would need to be reinstalled). The issue here is that new ReadyNAS are in very short supply, so you likely would need to get a used one.
Connect the disks to a PC, and use appropriate software to offload the data. If you are familiar with linux, you could boot the PC with linux, and manually mount the data volume. If you use Windows, there are two beta-level open source packages you could use instead.
Ran as administrator, and copied the files, still fails to boot from usb (also I cannot turn it on or off with the power button, it starts up as soon as i plug it in)
One other point is that in general smaller/older USB drives tend to work out better for USB recovery. You might need to make more than one recovery drive, before you find one that works.
tried 2 older drives, 1 8gb and 1 1gb.. should i buy as couple of new ones and try more?
Was your firmware reasonably up to date before? The current firmware is 6.10.7. 6.10.6 was released in November 2021, so about 4 months ago.
If your firmware version was very old (last updated in 2015), then there are some intermediate upgrade steps you would need to take. That seems unlikely if your normal practice is to take firmware updates whenever prompted.
pretty confident it was update in the last couple of years..
You can't reset the NAS (or turn on X-RAID) without the drives installed. What the reset does is format the drives and do a fresh factory install onto the drives from the NAS flash memory. The OS and ReadyNAS application is on the drives, and the system normally boots from the drives.
If the flash can't be fixed with USB recovery, the alternatives are
find another OS-6 ReadyNAS with 4 or more bays, and migrate your disks to it. You can even migrate to x86 NAS (RN314, RN424, RN514, RN524, RN624) - though if you are running apps, the apps will no longer work (and would need to be reinstalled). The issue here is that new ReadyNAS are in very short supply, so you likely would need to get a used one.
Connect the disks to a PC, and use appropriate software to offload the data. If you are familiar with linux, you could boot the PC with linux, and manually mount the data volume. If you use Windows, there are two beta-level open source packages you could use instead.
So I picked up and old pc for a couple hundred bucks, was planning to install a spare drive into the nas and keep trying to flash it with different usb's otherwise install linux and mount the drives in the cheap pc and setup as a nas/media server/homeassistant pc.. if i can mount the drives with linux will they keep operating the same as an x-raid or raid 5 or will I need to copy all the data off them and reconfigure a raid? otherwise would need to purchase at least an 8tb drive to backup all the data onto and reconfigure the raid 5 in the new nas pc. unless you have any other advice?
if i can mount the drives with linux will they keep operating the same as an x-raid or raid 5 or will I need to copy all the data off them and reconfigure a raid?
XRAID is built on top of mdadm (a standard linux software RAID package). It just automates expansion, to keep the RAID administration simple.
So a linux PC with mdadm and btrfs installed can mount the volume. Of course you won't get the ReadyNAS application software, so you'd be on your own as far as that goes.
Tried flashing the nas with 10 different drives with no luck, my mum has the same nas, would it be safe to put her drives in my nas or my drives in her nas to try and repair the firmware install?
Also have installed ubuntu linux on an old pc, have everything i need to connect the drives up but is there a tutorial, instructional video on how to mount them without losing everything?
Tried flashing the nas with 10 different drives with no luck, my mum has the same nas, would it be safe to put her drives in my nas or my drives in her nas to try and repair the firmware install?
To be clear - your issue is with the flash memory on the NAS having gotten corrupted during the install. That is not allowing the NAS to boot. It's not the install itself.
You could put your drives in her NAS - which would let you offload data. If her NAS is running older firmware, then the process would update her firmware. So I'd first update her firmware (if she hasn't done that already).
Putting her drives into your NAS wouldn't accomplish anything, and I don't recommend trying that.
If you do move the drives, make sure you do that with the NAS powered down. Label them as you remove them, so you can put everything back in the proper slot.
Also have installed ubuntu linux on an old pc, have everything i need to connect the drives up but is there a tutorial, instructional video on how to mount them without losing everything?
No video I am aware of. You'd need to start by installing both mdadm and btrfs.
After that, you should be able to run
mdadm --assemble --scan (finds and connects the RAID arrays as /dev/md0, /dev/md1, /dev/md127)
cat /proc/mdstat (shows the connected arrays and their properties - shows if the above command worked)
mount -t btrfs -o ro /dev/md127 /mnt (mounts the data volume at /mnt and allows access)
Note this assumes that /mnt exists in the root file system. The -o ro mounts the volume read-only - you can omit that if you want write access.
If I mount them in the linux machine and make them read write and setup a network share will they stay like that indefinately or would i need to remount them everytime i started the machine? Either that or mount them, copy off of them to another drive, reset the raid back on a windows pc and copy it all back over?
@AJP1 wrote: If I mount them in the linux machine and make them read write and setup a network share will they stay like that indefinately or would i need to remount them everytime i started the machine?
Those commands would need to be reexecuted every time you restart the linux machine. But it is possible to automate that.
Let's first make sure the array is intact and can be mounted. Then figure out what comes next.
FWIW, I think you should put a backup plan in place for your data in either scenario.
