I had an email an hour ago from my very old ReadyNAS Pro 6 about a failed drive. Fine, no problem. But when I went to use the web interface to see which drive, I get nothing but "connection refused" and can't access it.
My network shares are still functional and data's all there, and the front control panel says "volume C degraded" with an "X" through the #6 drive.
However, I'm confused why I can't get to the web interface anymore? Is something corrupted? Is there a fix? Should I no longer trust this thing?
However, I'm confused why I can't get to the web interface anymore?
The web interface runs at a lower priority than other processes, so it is likely that the it isn't getting enough resources to run - particularly if the failing disk is generating a lot of errors.
Yeah, I'm seeing just 5 serial numbers. Querying the sixth drive just shows:
smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-2.6.37.6.RNx86_64.2.4] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
Short INQUIRY response, skip product id
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
Querying the seventh non-existent drive shows:
Smartctl open device: /dev/sdg failed: No such device or address
And it's actually configured for dual redundancy.
Okay... poking around a while this afternoon, it looks like Apache is completely missing. No such file or directory. Following the apache-ssl symlinks, the /usr/lib/apache2/mpm-prefork directory is empty.
Last month I had attempted to install the TLS 1.2 plugin, and it... well, just didn't seem to work/do anything, so I left it, but now I'm wondering if it wiped out the existing Apache install?
Is there any way to get it back? I am NOT a *nix kinda guy, and what limited experience I have is like 15+ years old now. I did try one thing but it didn't work:
apt-get --reinstall install apache2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Note, selecting apache2-mpm-prefork instead of apache2
Package apache2-mpm-prefork is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package apache2-mpm-prefork has no installation candidate
Netgear has made some mods, so you shouldn't attempt to install apache2 on your own.
Probably best to back up all your data, and then try an OS reinstall. If that fails, then do a factory default (or take the opportunity to upgrade to OS 6).
Okay, all my data is safely off the NAS and onto another. I'm now looking to go right to OS6 (after upgrading the memory). But... I'm not sure this is possible without the web UI. Do I need to repair/reinstall OS4 before putting OS6 on, or is there another way of doing that?
Also going to change ALL the drives. These are old 3TB models where the hour meter has literally rolled over, and in addition to 1 drive outright failing, 2 others are showing some bad sectors (not growing, but then again the drive that just failed was fine until it simply stopped working altogether).
Um, okay. So I went ahead and did the boot menu OS Reinstall. It worked, because the password changed. But still no web interface. I got into SSH, and again... no sign of Apache anywhere.
Since I've got my data - and incidentally after all that we're up to 2 drives failed now - and assuming the web UI ain't coming back... is there any way to get a clean OS back onto this?
Since I've got my data - and incidentally after all that we're up to 2 drives failed now - and assuming the web UI ain't coming back... is there any way to get a clean OS back onto this?
The safest way is to do a factory default, reconfigure the NAS, and restore data from the backup.
Mildly interesting statistics on these 3TB drives.
Both drives that just outright failed were Seagate Constellation CS SED with 2014 date codes. The only ones of that exact model I'm using.
The drive still working but with bad sectors is a Barracuda recertified, 2013 build date, 2016 certification date (I think this was a warranty replacement).
The 3 drives still working are 2x Barracuda XTs with 2011 dates, and a Constellation ES.3 with a 2015 date (think a replacement I got for a failed drive).
All of these drives have been running 24x7 since purchase, with those Barracuda XT's running since January 2012 when I bought the NAS.
I pulled the old array entirely, installed 3 working drives just for it to have something to use that isn't going to die, did a factory reset on it, used RAIDar to set it up, and now I have the web interface back and functional.
Since that's working, I'm next going to upgrade the memory, then perform the steps to upgrade to OS6.
Think my oldest "in use" drive is the 500gb system drive that came with my HP Mediasmart way back in 2009. Not my first NAS, but the first "good" one.
Anyhow, success! Upgraded the stock 1gb to 4gb memory, and now it's running 6.10.8 and I'm just busy reconfiguring everything through - finally - a modern web browser. Got my bonded link going, proper email alerts... nice to have way more modern features on it. Funnily enough, the web UI is also a lot more responsive than it was.
Any settings I should look for? It's been SO LONG since I set up the original unit I can't even remember what I did.
And last but not least, yet another drive failure. It wasn't new - I just stuck in 3x 8tb drives that recently came out of another NAS. One was suspect but working last time it was powered up... and after about 5 minutes, it proved to be fully suspect. Man, I'm just having the greatest luck with old drives this month!
Snapshots are a feature you should be intentional about.
Don't enable them on shares with a lot of "churn" (live databases or torrents).
I do have them enabled on most shares. But I don't recommend the "Smart" snapshots. The monthly snapshots are retained indefinitely, which eventually will lead to too much disk storage. Instead use "custom" snapshots with limited retention. I set the option to only take snapshots when changes occur in the main share as well.
Thanks! I actually saw that being enabled by default and turned it off on almost everything. That could seriously bloat disk usage considering this is primarily for media storage.
First time I logged in I had a red “system fan is not working” on the overview, but when I went to check the details page, it was fine and the warning disappeared.
Since I’ve also replaced the PSU a couple years ago, I suspect this should keep working for a while to come.
