Debian Squeeze/Wheezy on Ultra 2?

[mangrove]

norbolt wrote:
mangrove wrote: And then, just grub-install /dev/sdc ? Why aren't more people doing this? :?: GRUB on the USB stick? Or what?

Yes, running "real" systems on them. It looks easier than I thought it would be.

[fflash]

Hello,

I have a problem to load the installer once reaching "boot:". When I enter "install video=off console=ttyS0,9600n8" I have the error "Undefined video mode number: 314". I tried to remove the video=off, but same error occured.

When happening, it proposes me to display available mode. I tried the first one "0" and then the following error happened:

[    1.045676] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(2,0)
[    1.049523] Pid: 1, comm: swapper Not tainted 3.9-1-486 #1 Debian 3.9.8-1
[    1.049523] Call Trace:
[    1.049523]  [<c12b1573>] ? panic+0x6c/0x152
[    1.049523]  [<c1429d17>] ? mount_block_root+0x1e8/0x20a
[    1.049523]  [<c1002930>] ? do_alignment_check+0x15/0x73
[    1.049523]  [<c1429d77>] ? mount_root+0x3e/0x52
[    1.049523]  [<c1429e99>] ? prepare_namespace+0x10e/0x13e
[    1.049523]  [<c1429a88>] ? kernel_init_freeable+0x160/0x168
[    1.049523]  [<c12ae520>] ? kernel_init+0x5/0xb0
[    1.049523]  [<c12b8abb>] ? ret_from_kernel_thread+0x1b/0x30
[    1.049523]  [<c12ae51b>] ? rest_init+0x4f/0x4f

I also tried: linux text console=ttyS0,9600,n8 but same error occured.

I have a ReadyNas ultra2, I prepared my debian installer USB key under MacOs by doing the following:
sudo gunzip -c boot.img.gz > /dev/disk2

Then I copied the iso file debian-7.1.0-i386-netinst.iso to the usb key.

Thanks for your help.

[fflash]

I was wondering if the netgear X-RAID installation could lead to the problem ? The previous error seems to come from missing modules/fonctionality of the kernel.


Does someone have an idea about that ?

[repvik]

mangrove wrote:
norbolt wrote: mangrove wrote: And then, just grub-install /dev/sdc ? Why aren't more people doing this? :?: GRUB on the USB stick? Or what? Yes, running "real" systems on them. It looks easier than I thought it would be.

Because it's hard to find a step-by-step guide? 😛

I've been searching all over the place trying to find some good instructions, but have yet to find any.

[repvik]

mangrove wrote:
norbolt wrote: 5. profit And then, just grub-install /dev/sdc ? Why aren't more people doing this? :?:

I just tried doing this, and now I can no longer boot my Ultra 4. Grub is apparently installed on the usb stick, but it cannot find its files so it ends up in recovery mode (grub+kernels are stored on an ext2fs on the SMI stick).
It'd probably be a somewhat easy thing to fix - if USB booting still worked. But now, holding "backup" no longer boots external USB, not even if I remove all the drives.

Edit: I'm a moron, sorry. I wrote grub on the wrong usb stick somehow.

[mangrove]

So now it works? 🙂

[vertraeglich]

Hello, i'm a total newbie.
I bought a new RN516 and want to install clean wheezy but there are some problems for me to make it boot from my usb-Stick.
First - There is no Backup-Button on the RN516.
The Serial Port – can i connect it with the gipo pins from my raspberry pi? If its possible - which data should i send to the ReadyNas? (Send data to RXD)

What i tried before was – change the boot-order in bios. Did not work.

[mdgm-ntgr]

If you download the logs and extract the zip contents what is the BIOS version in bios_ver.log ?

[vertraeglich]

hello, thanks for your answer. My bios_version is 4.6.5 .

[mdgm-ntgr]

Oops what is the date of your BIOS.

[vertraeglich]

my bios date is 06/06/2013 ReadyNAS-516 V1.0! is there a update for my bios?

[IcyK]

mdgm wrote:
If you wipe the Internal flash you would need to make use of USB Boot Recovery to restore it but the EEPROM data would be lost. Without the EEPROM data RAIDiator x86 4.2.x won't work.

Is there a way to restore the EEPROM data from another (same) model?
I have an Ultra 2 which is 'untouched' (meaning running RAIDiator 4.2.21) and an Ultra 2 which is heavily touched (first tried Readynas OS6 on that one but did not have faith in btrfs, later on ran Debian Wheezy on it).
Somewhere in the process, I think the EEPROM data on the last one got lost, after a OS reinstall and a factore reset I only get the Readynas template on the admin page (so no model is shown). Also in RAIDar no model is shown, but (which seems strange to me) during the factory reset "ReadyNas Ultra 2" was shown.
Re-installing from usb (4.2.24) dit not help...

I'd like to know whether I can extract the EEPROM data from the existing untouched Readynas Ultra 2 to fix the 'Wheezy Ultra 2'. If it can't be done, no problem, I plan on keep running Wheezy on it. But I'm just curious whether it can be done.
Maybe something like dd if=/location/of/eeprom of=/eeprom/backup and vice versa?

Thanks in advance, and a happy and healthy 2014 to all!

[IcyK]

Just to be complete: thanks to great 'external' help my problem was fixed within half a day.
For anyone who likes to try: backup the internal flash first (not just the partition but the whole flash). dd if=/dev/<flashdev> of=/c/flash_backup.img and copy it to a safe location (outside your nas, on a usb stick or something like that) before you start.
And just to be sure: also backup the VPD file that resides on the internal flash (also to a loaction outside your nas).

I ended up installing Wheezy on a separate harddisk while maintaining the integrity of RAIDiator.

I added a new item the the boot menu

label WheezyNas
kernel vmlinuz.64
append initrd=initrd64.img root=/dev/sda1 console=ttyS0

and copied the Wheezy kernel and initrd to the internal flash (renamed them to get an 8.3 filename, don't know whether that's necessary or not).

Then, by using the boot menu, I selected the new label which to my surprise was supported by the bios with it's own LED combo (both drive LEDs were used for the new label) and booted into Wheezy.
After confirming all worked, I changed the default bootlabel to 'WheezyNas'.

I now have a semi-dualboot system that boots Wheezy by default but when I want RAIDiator back, I can change the disks and just boot into RAIDiator (and change the default boot label back to 'Normal' if I want to keep RAIDiator).

The only thing missing in Wheezy is the drive activity LEDs.

/edit
^^^ which make me wonder whether there is any documentation 'somewhere' regarding the way the drive LEDs are controlled by RAIDiator or ReadynasOS... :roll:

[chirpa]

IcyK wrote:
The only thing missing in Wheezy is the drive activity LEDs. /edit ^^^ which make me wonder whether there is any documentation 'somewhere' regarding the way the drive LEDs are controlled by RAIDiator or ReadynasOS... :roll:

Maybe try contacting http://natisbad.org/, he has done a lot of work on getting Linux upstream support for the ReadyNAS hardware, to get away from NETGEAR proprietary drivers.

[dkager]

Hi,
Following this discussion I have some quick questions about the Ultra 2 BIOS that I'm hoping someone can answer.
I know the BIOS first tries to boot from the internal 128MB stick. Failing that, will it proceed to try any of the internal hard drives? And if so, can it boot from GPT disks?

I'm asking because I currently have to have the USB drive mounted in order to update the kernel or tweak the initramfs. I would like to boot from /boot on (one of) the drives, or failing that I'd like to bootstrap and then pull an evil smile on that internal stick. But the logical first thing to try is to have the bootloader outside of the USB drive, hence my questions.
Thanks!

[IcyK]

As far as I know (which is a substantial disclaimer 😉 ) the BIOS cannot 'by itself' boot from a harddrive. Booting off of the internal flash is hard wired in the BIOS.

[dkager]

Thanks, I think I confirmed this by toggling the internal stick's bootable flag and running into a brick wall.
I also toyed with bootstrapping / chain booting, but no luck so far. I don't know if the Ultra 2 has a thing to show BIOS output, but even if it did I wouldn't have the hardware to connect it up. I did an installation over SSH and set everything up. The only thing I haven't managed yet is to chain boot BIOS --> USB drive --> hadr drive. Oh, and obviously LED control would be nice (for STEALTH MODE, all true tinkerers need this!). Anyone managed a chain boot who can share their syslinux.cfg? At this point I feel like I want to mindlessly copy-paste. 😉

For the record: my Ultra 2 is running quietly, noticeably faster than on RAIDiator, and with more features I need and fewer features I never used. I bought my ReadyNAS in 2012 so I got the 1.5 GHz Atom. Good to see that a modern x64 OS does so much good! "She" is running Arch Linux (bit of a Debian-fobia I'm afraid) and I really don't want to go back anytime soon. Now all that remains is to get the thing to chain boot... 😄

[chirpa]

There is a serial port on it, would need to get a cable to connect to it. There are forum posts on the subject for wiring and such.

You could install /boot onto the internal flash, and /, etc on the disks. That should let you boot GRUB/etc from the flash through the BIOS and get into your OS. You would be wiping the flash, just DD a copy of it for backup if you need to restore it one day (its only like 6 files on FAT partition).

[dkager]

chirpa,
Thanks for the info! Is the serial connection purely text-based? I'm afraid my eye-sight is too limited to use something like the VGA out found on the bigger NAS systems (which is also one reason why I installed through SSH). I can do plain text, not text that's rendered and then sent over.

I'm currently doing exactly what you suggested: have Syslinux on the 128MB vfat drive and the rest on the hard drives. My motivation for switching to /boot on my primary partition is mostly cosmetic: I want to wrestle all the USB1.1/USB2.0 modules out of my running kernel. The USB1.1 ports are internal, the USB2.0 ports are on the back of the unit. I'm not very likely to ever use either.

I kept Netgear's partitions around, that being a 4GB rootfs, 512MB swap and ~2.7TB data. My two disks are in RAID1, which probably complicates my chain booting. All partitions minus swap are ext4, no LVM or other tricks. I could write a script to mount the internal flash drive only when updating the kernel, something like this (except not for EFI but for the internal flash):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFISTUB#Using_systemd
But that would not be as "clean" as booting directly from /boot on the rootfs. When Googling I ran into someone flaming about CHAIN BOOTING A SECOND SYSLINUX ON A SOFTWARE RAID1 IS UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE OH NO, but I haven't managed to find a definite "yes" or "no" to this question.

Apart from this one thing the system is running very well, has been for over a week. And I get Samba version 4, much like RAIDiator 6.x! 😉