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Ultra 2+ Powers On - No ethernet activity - Corrupt Firmware ? - USB Boot Recovery NOT Working
Any help or suggestions appreciated.
Helping a friend recover the use of his older ReadyNAS Ultra-2+ which does not boot into the NAS's system management webserver or even attempt to send ethernet ...
Does the activity LED on the NAS ever come on, even if briefly during boot? If not, you may have a bad NIC or bad internal power regulator, neither of which is repairable.
Thank you for the reply.
With a single hard drive in the NAS, (which spins up but I suspect has a damaged OS on it), immediately after the power button is pressed all the 4 small green LEDs blink ON dimly for a split second, then go OFF. One second later only the activity LED in the front panel of the Ultra2+ turns ON with fan at full speed. Activity LED stays ON solid for approx 15 seconds, (fan speed slows midway)... goes out with a few quick blinks, saying OFF for maybe 4 seconds, then ON again for 1/2 second ... OFF for another 4 secs, then ON for 1/2 sec, OFF another 4 secs, then ON for last time as before for only 1/2 sec or so. From this point forward no front panel LED activity is seen.
Summary - At power up, activity LED is ON solid for about 15 seconds, fan speed slows after approx 8 seconds, then activity LED blinks briefly ON 4 more times with a 4(?) sec pause OFF in between each brief blink ON. After that no front panel activity is seen again and the ethernet ports in back though attached to known good ethernet cables and switch ports show no LED activity. RAIDar v6 from my MacBook-Pro has never seen the Ultra2+ though it can see my old ReadyNAS NV+ v1 on the same LAN using the same ethernet cable attached to the same switch port (moving the cable between the two NAS to make sure the path is good). Wasn't sure if RAIDar v6 could discover an old Ultra2+, however since it sees my even older NV+ I think the answer is yes.
The situation is different with no hard drives installed at power on.
When power button pushed and released all 4 tiny green front panel LEDs flicker ON together for a split second then OFF. Fan changes speed, slowing down after approx 5 seconds. No front panel green LEDs ever turn ON except the blue power button LED staying ON.
USB Boot Recovery Procedure (backup button pushed and held for 15 secs min)
With no hard drives installed and a USB memory stick plugged in the front USB3 port, created sometimes using Netgear usbrecovery.exe under WinXP or sometimes created using 3rd party USB boot utilities that install SYSlinux MBR ..etc, the LED activity is exactly the same as listed under "no hard drives installed at power on": when power button pushed and released (backup button still pushed and held) all 4 tiny green front panel LEDs flicker ON together for a split second then OFF. Fan changes speed, slowing down after approx 5 seconds. No front panel green LEDs ever turn ON except the blue power button LED staying ON. The USB stick activity light flickers quickly maybe 6 times in a 2 second window, then OFF for approx 5 seconds, then once again flickers quickly 6 times in a 2 second window ... then nothing .... nothing. Leaving the Ultra2-plus running for well over an hour leaves it in the same state: fan speed low, no ethernet activity, no LED activity, only the blue power LED is ON.
I have tried not less than 7 older USB memory sticks all under 4 gigs in size , used the Netgear usbrecovery.exe program to create the USB sticks, used RUFUS once, used a syslinux v6.03 command directly, used what seems to be a pretty good 3rd party USB boot creation utility under WinXP: RMPrepUSB_Full_v2.1.740.exe that has options (selected) to create a syslinux bootable USB stick and even a reduced CHS geometry .... etc.
By the way, the only USB boot creation program that did NOT install "ldlinux.sys" on the USB stick was the Netgear "usbrecovery.exe" (v4.2 56 KB). No program modified the "syslinux.cfg" file (creation date = 3/3/09) supplied by the "RAIDiator 4.2 USB Flash Recovery.zip" archive at all. The "initrd.gz" and "kernel" files date from 2011, the syslinux.exe and syslinux.cfg from 2009.
So how does the "RAIDiator-x86-4.2.31" 57 meg image file which is also on the USB boot drive get recognized/copied into internal flash memory by the ReadyNAS Ultra2+ if it is not referenced in the syslinux.cfg file ? In all my attempts to boot a kernel from the syslinux USB stick I have never seen enough USB stick activity, or NAS front panel LED activity to convince me the Ultra2+ is actually successfully booting from it. In the experience of others what DOES a successful USB boot recovery actually look like on v4.2 NAS's, how long is the USB stick actively transfering files ... ???
Your help is appreciated. Thank you.
OK, I wasn't specific enough. I was referring to the Ethernet activity LED at the connector.
Posts on this forum suggest for testing/troubleshooting purposes owners of ReadyNAS NV series systems can boot off a USB memory stick containing the expanded Linux OS firmware files, probably a modified version of the firmware image stored on the internal flash memory. Running the ReadyNAS OS from the USB stick would be pretty slow, but it might tell me if my ULTRA-2+ ethernet hardware is healthy and the issue is finding some alternate method of placing the firmware image on the internal flash memory.
My friend who owns the Ultra-2+ confirmed again for me that his ReadyNAS became a brick immediately after it finished updating the firmware. Power was on continuously, he did not interfere in any way with the update process. His is NOT the only report of this sad result. A number of other ReadyNAS users in the Ultra2 era with more experience than my friend have also reported their ReadyNAS's were "bricked" by a regular firmware update. I would like to provide a possible path forward for prior owners or even future ReadyNAS customers who's units suffer flash firmware corruption .... if that is the issue with this unit.
I have been designing embedded electronic systems for industrial machinery and writing in assembler since 1976. Of course things break, solder joints fail, components drift out of tolerance with age. A few symptoms with this ReadyNAS are consistent with hardware failure, but others point to firmware corruption and a NAS that does not have a reliable method to correct it.
If anyone can point me to an OS image I can expand and install on a USB stick and try booting the ReadyNAS Ultra-2+ from that instead of just the unexpanded firmware image "usbrecovery.exe" wants to provide, I would be very grateful. Earlier Netgear NAS models had that recovery option available when internal flash firmware corruption was suspected.
Thank-you.
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