Re: ReadyNAS NV+ Stuck at "Scheduled on" event after 4.1.10

jebr · ‎2012-10-01

Hello

I successfully upgraded my NV+ to 4.1.10 one week ago. I have the power timer set to shut down the NAS at night and boot it each morning.
On 4 mornings since the upgrade I have found the NAS stuck with very loud fan noises, no disk LEDs lit, and the power blinking blue, the text on the display read "scheduled on" (or something similar).

I have to remove the power cable, re-power it and press the on button to get the NAS to boot. Once boot did a FS check so took ages.

Any help would be gratefully received as I really don't want to leave the NAS on 24/7.

I have saved off the system logs if that would help anyone troubleshoot this.

Many thanks.

JEBR

vandermerwe · ‎2012-10-01

Try reinstalling the firmware

jebr · ‎2012-10-01

I tried re-installing 4.1.10 from a fresh download. It went ok up to the reboot.
Now the unit stuck at a blinking blue power button "Booting Please wait". I have left it 30 mins no luck, tried disconnecting power a few times - just gets to same stage.
There are no other lights and the NIC is not responding to an arp request.

Now I'm really in trouble - please can any Netgear person help me here. The unit is way out of HW warrantee so I doubt Netgear tech support will be able to do much for me.

Is there a way to re apply the firmware via TFTP or USB stick? I could revert to 4.1.8 that worked fine for me.

vandermerwe · ‎2012-10-02

Yes, look at the readynas wiki page, there are instructions there for USB an tftp boot

mdgm-ntgr · ‎2012-10-02

Don't do a TFTP Boot Recovery. That is highly unreliable. If anything do a USB Boot Recovery.

jebr · ‎2012-10-04

Just an update on this problem...

I Tried to re-install firmware by holding the reset button for 5 seconds during power on. The unit hung on "installing firmware".
After waiting an hour or so I gave up and pulled the power. The unit was as before stuck on boot up.

Following a strange resolution to a similar problem on this forum I did the following:
=>Unplugged NAS.
=>Pulled out disk 4 (just chose one at ramdom).
=>Re powered NAS - this time it booted and the reinstall firmware process was able to complete.
[Just to note for others - the reinstall firmware process (holding down the reset button for 5 secs during power up) retained all the NAS config (IP, name etc...)]
=>Re inserted disk 4 - this initialised and 6 hours later the RAID had finished syncing. Back to running stable state with no data lost - phew!!!

Why the reinstall firmware failed and got stuck at bootup is strange and the very random fix of pulling a disk is even more strange.

I have now disabled the power on/off timer as I'm still recovering for nervous exhaustion having thought I has lost all my data! If I feel brave later I will re-enable this and see if the original problem (what this thread was about) is still occurring.

--JEBR

koahnig · ‎2012-10-04

I am facing the same problem.
I have been updating for 4.1.9 a couple of month ago. Sept 23 I have updated to 4.1.10 which went smoothly as the previous update. The NAS has also a schedule to power down overnight. After updating it went a couple of nights without problem, but after around 5 nights it did not boot properly in the morning. The unit is stored away, I have noticed when some tools have reported access problems after more than a day.
The symtoms as described above. The vent runs on low noise, but louder than in standard operation.
The only solution was to pull the power. The manual boot went without an issue. However, every morning the same procedure. Several times I had to repeat until successful boot. It never did a sync of the RAID disks. Seem to operate normally. I have disabled the scheduling.

I am wondering, if I should downgrade to 4.1.9. Is that possible? Or do I have to expect other problems?

@jebr Certainly, I would appreciate to know, if the reinstall 4.1.10 would solve the problem. Let me know, when you recovered enough to give it a try.

jebr · ‎2012-10-04

Ok I have re-enabled the power timer.
I will report back if the unit is still hanging on boot-up.

--JEBR

P.S. On a brighter note I raised a TAC case with Netgear when I though I had totally knackered the unit. Even though my NAS was purchased in 2006 so out of warrantee they still responded promptly and suggested if my data was lost they would involve a 3rd line engineer to help. Also being from the UK I appreciated a Irish engineer with good English skills! So - thank you Netgear. I was considering a new Synology NAS to replace this one but now I'm thinking of sticking with Netgear due to their good customer service.

vandermerwe · ‎2012-10-04

These problems are probably not related to the firmware.
I would suggest jebr, that you test disk 4 with vendor tools:
koahnig, you could try to reinstall firmware, I would not remove any disks just yet.
If you want help, I would suggest posting details of your setup.

jebr · ‎2012-10-04

I really don't think Disk 4 has got anything to do with the issue at all. I chose that disk at random as a desperate attempt to get the unit to boot up as for some reason the unit would not boot to complete the re-installation of the firmware.
I'm very torn as to my new NAS on one hand you get good customer service from Netgear and great help on this forum but on the other hand the firmware seems to have frequent bugs - I had to downgrade from 4.1.9 as this had a file permission but when using AFP...

vandermerwe · ‎2012-10-04

My point is that there are a very large number of people who will have upgraded firmware, and very few problems reported. Just by coincidence users may experience other problems at or around the time of a firmware upgrade. One should not automatically attribute all of these problems to a problem with the firmware.
There were certainly problems with 4.1.9, plenty of evidence of this on the forum.
You may be right of course, but I would keep an open mind, you had problems before the unit failed to reinstall 4.1.10; this may be indicative of a different problem.

koahnig · ‎2012-10-05

Thanks guys for feedback.
As being a SW engineer doing my own SW I certainly know that it might be a coincidence. However, it started shortly after upgrading. I have no experience with this forum, but I also expected to see more "noise" for a general problem with the release. On the other hand it would be interesting to know how many people are bothering to use scheduling.
Not thinking of the environment is helps in my case. At least the NAS stays happy so far.
There was everything alreight before upgrading. The only issues I had before were a disk reporting repeatably bad sectors. So I have replaced it. The other problem was when trying an add-on which killed the running installation. I ended up to do a factory reset. Luckily I was able to copy all stuff off the disk before.
I will follow your recommendation and reinstall.

jebr · ‎2012-10-05

Bad news - the first scheduled power-on after a successful scheduled power-off failed.
The unit was again stuck at "Schedule on" with the blue power light flashing and no activity or disk LEDs lit.
I don't know wether to downgrade to 4.1.8??

--JEBR

koahnig · ‎2012-10-06

:shock: You have my sympathy. Even so, it will not help much.
I will switch back to 4.1.9 then. However, I am stuck with the backup. Suddenly one notices a disadvantage of large disks.

mdgm-ntgr · ‎2012-10-06

4.1.9 has the ownership problem. I wouldn't recommend that firmware. You could try downgrading to 4.1.8 if you want.

PapaBear1 · ‎2012-10-06

Jebr and Koahnig - I do not note any mention of a current and complete backup of your units. Since both of you have experienced problems I would have thought that would be one of the first things you would do. With an current and complete backup you would then have the luxury of doing a factory default wiping the disks completely and reinstalling the firmware from scratch.

koahnig · ‎2012-10-16

PapaBear wrote:
Jebr and Koahnig - I do not note any mention of a current and complete backup of your units. Since both of you have experienced problems I would have thought that would be one of the first things you would do. With an current and complete backup you would then have the luxury of doing a factory default wiping the disks completely and reinstalling the firmware from scratch.

I was in the process of doing a backup. The downgrade to 4.1.9 did not help. After a couple of successful automatic boots in the morning I am back to square one. It failed this morning again. So, it is not simply a question of the version.
I am contemplating about doing a factory reset. The only advantage I see would be reset of any memory and settings not changed with new versions. Is this worth to do?
Are there some maintenance tools around for checking the HW?

B52hbuff · ‎2012-10-31

I would like to report a similar issue. I am running 4.1.10 in an Infrant NV, which has been running for quite a while. In my application, my NV wakes up at midnight to be the target of a ReadyNAS Pro (6) backup. I see this error from the Pro, since it reports a communications error when the NV doesn't wake up.

When I inspect the NV, it is stuck on a flashing blue light.

Let me know if there is some way to help get information to the folks who can fix it.