I've been solid on beta 3 (no lockups since February 3rd). Is there any compelling reason to update to a newer beta or should I just wait it out until a stable release is available?
How are things on the systems you are currently monitoring?
The reason i ask is cause my rn104 locks up like once a week nowadays and has been like that since beta 3 or so... no difference noticed since then... if i like upload with 1 ftp client everything goes fine... if i copy from nas to local pc like 1 action at a time.. like 1 dir... it goes ok. But if i try something, which worked like a charm on 6.1.9, like unpack 2 rar archives at a time it pretty much locks up at once giving the winrar applications a full lockup and i have to restart pc and nas to get everything backup and running. With 6.1.9 i could unpack as many rar archives at once as i pleased without any lockups.
Yes, what is status? 23. [Beta 5] Scheduler change to hopefully resolve random freezing on RN10x. 27. [Beta 6] More changes for RN104 hang. 30. [Beta 7] System timer tweaks for RN10x.
Have you actually found spesific issue(s) or bugs(s) regarding the 6.2.x firmvare and the RN10x-lockups, or are you still tweaking around in the code doing changes that 'may or not may' stabilize things? 🙂
Everyone here, please understand that I want the manufacturer to do something about this and I applaud all of you that have been trying resolve this, testing beta releases, posting statuses, and basically trying to do the right thing.
This is a huge problem, 18 pages of posts, over 10,000 views, and still no viable resolution.
My ReadyNAS104 ran fine for months without a single issue and one of my other 2 ReadyNAS machines is also a RN104 and has been in a production environment for almost a year without an issue (which is why I bought one for the house). The only difference is the F/W version. The one in production has not been updated to 6.2.x (thankfully). I updated the one at the house to 6.2.2 recently and based on what I've read, that's where we all went wrong.
Configuration: RN104 w/(4) 2TB drives Both NICs connected using CAT5e to a NETGEAR GS-108 (Gigabit switch) each with a static IP address No USB or eSATA connections recently set the drives to spin down after 30 minutes
Environment: My primary use (at home) is for media storage/streaming where the NAS is access by Roku boxes, Smart TVs, tablets (Surface RT Win8.1), a couple of PCs running Win7 Pro w/SP1 (64-bit), and Windows Home Server 2011 (aka Server 2008 R2 "lite").
My secondary use is for work where I have Server 2012R physical host running the Hyper-V role that uses the NAS as an iSCSI target for a single LUN (2TB allocated) of which only a single 1TB volume is actually in place to store a single VHD (100GB - fixed - not dynamic - note: do not put dynamic virtual disks on a NAS unless you want a new definition of slow and unreliable) for one VM that is also running Server 2012 R2.
Manifestation of the problem: While I wasn't watching the NAS at the exact time this problem started, I did notice that there was an entry in the event log on the Server that the iSCSI connection was not able to reconnect. I have had this problem before only when the physical host gets rebooted and for some reason or another the iSCSI initiator does not reconnect to the iSCSI target automatically if using CHAP. On the iSCSI initiator GUI it will indicate that it is "reconnecting" but it isn't so you have to select "disconnect" wait for it to go to "inactive" then establish the connection using the advanced properties, select CHAP, enter the credentials, click 'OK' a couple of times and the status is now "connected" and everything is right with the world. This time was different, the connection had already been established and was working but got dropped for some reason this time not on the initiator side (i.e. the physical host was not restarted).
Shortly after, I was on my Win7 workstation trying to upload some photos to the NAS (which is setup as a library location in Win7) and I noticed that Windows Explorer was taking forever to load the directory structure after the 3rd or 4th time I accessed it and then it just went to a tree structure showing a partial contents of the share...the NAS was hung.
Steps performed: I went to the server and disconnected the iSCSI initiator via the GUI an waited for it to go inactive so now the server was disconnected from the NAS. From the Win7 workstation I removed the drive mappings to the shares on the NAS and remove the pointer in the libraries i.e. Pictures, Videos, etc... so now the workstation was no longer connected to the NAS.
Once all the connections to the NAS were closed/disconnected, I attempted a graceful shutdown and it hung on "Shutting down". Waited for 5 hours (usually takes about a minute for it shutdown). Hard power down for a minute then powered it back up then it was on the "Rebooting..." hang for 12 hours. The only thing that had changed was the firmware, the static IP for each NIC from DHCP, and setting the drives to spin down after 30 minutes, I tried to reinstall the OS using the boot menu and that hung. I was able to boot to the Technical Support mode. And now I've got the unit sitting at "DebugMode[62304]"
The fact that I have another one of these that has been on 24x7 for about a year (and it still is) but it has a different version of the F/W tells me that the F/W is most likely the problem.
NETGEAR F/W development team and software quality assurance team, I hope you are working on a solution for this.
At the very least you should provide a mechanism for us to revert to a stable version of the F/W without having to lose our data (5 days to format mine and reload from original source) and I'll still lose hundreds of hours of encoding time not to mention my confidence in your products and support. I have now spent the last 7 hours dealing with your less than helpful support staff, posting my product review on Amazon, and my experience on Facebook. I would love to retract/update my posts with a positive resolution from a company whose products I have believed in for many years. At the very least get involved with the group that was responsible for releasing this "Alpha" F/W version as production ready.
03/01/2015 - 05:35AM EST Update: Good news for those of you that may want to save your data... I was able to boot to "volume read only mode" and all the drive lights came on, the web access is back up, all the shares and data are there 🙂 However, the failed attempt at trying to reinstall the OS appears to have changed the admin password and NIC settings back to the default but that was easy to change. Note: the first thing I did (after changing the admin p/w) was to uncheck the disk spin down option under power settings (this was mentioned in another thread on this forum). I am currently moving all my data off this thing (great data transfer rates).
The bad news... NETGEAR, you have done a horrible thing here. I'm not sure if this was an engineered fault to generate revenue from all those that had expired warranties and actually paid for a tech support call but the way that you as a company have known about this issue for months and done nothing to correct it (like disabling the 6.2.x updates from being downloaded until the problem is resolved, being upfront and stating that it is a known issue) is inexcusable. Having your tech support people tell users to do a factory reset as a default answer is just wrong. One thing I didn't mention in my "welcome to the forum" post is that I am the key decision maker responsible for purchasing IT equipment for my company and several of my business partners that are sysadmins, CIOs, CISSPs, and other IT professionals respect my opinion when it comes to vendor selection for IT related requisitions. Until my faith in your product and support quality is re-established (if it can be): - The requisitions on my desk waiting for my signature will not be signed for any NETGEAR product (including 3 of your new rackmount ReadyNAS devices) - Beginning Monday morning, I will be submitting requisitions to replace every NETGEAR switch, hub, access point, and NAS device that are currently in two of my office locations where I also support 4 development teams and 3 test labs. - Beginning tomorrow, I will be replacing the NETGEAR switch, hub, and NAS that are in my home and contacting friends/family/neighbors that I have installed NETGEAR equipment in their homes and offer to replace it free of charge with something people can trust. - I will continue to spread the word of caution that NETGEAR is no longer the provider of quality goods at reasonable prices. Shame on you NETGEAR! I get involved in every aspect of my business to make sure the customer's expectations are exceeded. You should do the same.
We stand behind our products and we are determined to resolve the remaining lockup problems reported here as soon as possible. I can assure you that every possible effort is being made to do this. The feedback we have been getting on our beta firmware indicates some good progress with most affected users problems resolved by our beta firmware, though some are still having issues.
We have been working very closely with some of the users who have posted in this thread to identify and resolve the issues they have been having.
I can understand many reading this thread may find this hard to believe, but the feedback we have been getting in general indicates the majority of our users have found 6.2.x to be very reliable, the best ReadyNAS OS 6 firmware yet with new features such as bit-rot protection and personal time machine, improvements to ReadyCloud, bug fixes and other improvements.
The upgrade to 6.2 has some one way upgrades e.g. to snapshots, ReadyCloud etc. You cannot downgrade back to 6.1.x after upgrading to 6.2.x which is something we have always mentioned in the 6.2.x release notes. Even if downgrading were possible a factory reset (wipes all data, settings, everything) would be required. Considering all of this the best way forward is to address issues in our next firmware release.
We have a strong focus on 6.2.3 with addressing issues that have come up, for example there is a known issue with disk spindown with 4-bay units that can cause the system to hang. This issue is fixed in 6.2.3 beta: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=154&t=78866
A range of issues have been addressed in the beta firmware. I would suggest you try it. If you can't upgrade to it with the NAS in its current state I can help you with that update.
My RN102 had similar problem on 6.2.2. (freeze every one-two days) Since installation of 6.2.3-T1696 it works stable, today uptime is 3 weeks without any lock up.
After finding 6.2.3-T1721 unstable i tried 6.2.3-T1742, but upon reboot after uploading the firmware file through the UI, it just said 'Booting... Installing/updating FW' and stayed there for hours untill i pulled the plug. Everytime i tried powering it on it said the same thing and never went on. So... i tried without luck, OS reinstall, which didn't work either, just waited and nothing happened. So... i labeled and removed all hd's and inserted a blank spare HD and chose factory reset. After the 10 minute waiting period it just says 'Installing FW x-raid2 Mode' and nothing happens.. It shows up in raidar when in the 10 minute waiting period, but disappears from raidar as soon as it tries to install fw.
Anyone had similar problems? Any recommendations ?
