Ultra 6 on OS6 hangs every few days, now refuses to boot
I have an Ultra 6 Plus upgraded to 4gb of RAM and a Core2Duo E7500. It's been running for years on OS4, zero hiccups in stability. I recently and upgraded it to OS6.9 and stability has gone way down. Every few days the NAS hangs: I can't get into the web UI, the power button is unresponsive for a safe shutdown, and the only thing I can do to get back in is hold the power button in, force it off, and turn it back on. But that's not the worst part.
I've been doing this for a few weeks as I try to figure out what's wrong with the unit now. Recently, though, it turned off and wouldn't boot up properly again. It comes up in safe mode and says that "ReadyNAS failed to boot successfully" and "ReadyNAS detected that the installed disks contain an existing ReadyNAS installation that failed to start properly"
This is what I've tried
Rebooting, so far no dice no matter how often it comes back up
I've tried an OS reinstall from the boot menu and that hasn't helped.
I tried to recover from USB, but have been unsuccessful. The ReadyNAS was on 6.10.0 and the firmware I'm trying to load from USB is 6.10.1, so I can tell that it hasn't actually applied. I don't know if there's a different method for the Ultra 6, but the regular instructions are not working for me.
There's no read-only boot option in my boot menu.
What else can I do here? I've love to get it back up and running, or at the very least get it to read only so I can recover some photography work that didn't get backed up yet. Thank you for your time!
Model: RNDP600U|ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Chassis only
Re: Ultra 6 on OS6 hangs every few days, now refuses to boot
Hi @secundo, I do not have experiences with Ultra 6 on OS6, but if you like I could give you my 2 cents how I would tackle this situation:
1) Shutdown the nas and remove the disks keeping in mind, which disk belongs to which bay
2) Insert a spare disk into bay1 (could be any bay; size probably does not matter as long it is sata; not too big; lets say 1 or 2 TB; the disk needs to be blanked before inserting; no partition on it - nothing)
3) Do a MickeyMouse-installation to get the latest OS 6.10.1 installed completely to nas and spare disk.
4) Shutdown the nas, remove the spare disk and reinsert your production disks into the bays they came from.
5) Reboot the nas. As it now cannot fall back behind 6.10.1 you will see, what it will do to the crippled installation on the production disks and hopefully it will do good. As you know, OS6 is not officially supported on your nas. So in the worst of all possible worlds don't be too disappointed, if the result is not as you hoped.
What else can I do here? I've love to get it back up and running, or at the very least get it to read only so I can recover some photography work that didn't get backed up yet. Thank you for your time!
I suggest connecting one of the disks to a Windows PC, and see if ReclaiMe can see the files you need (don't purchase it just yet - it's expensive).
If it can see the files, then you could of course go ahead and purchase it. You could also boot up the PC under Linux (with a "live" boot disk), and attempt to mount the data volume from the Linux CLI.
Re: Ultra 6 on OS6 hangs every few days, now refuses to boot
@Retired_Member Thanks for your reply! I tried your trick but it didn't get me anywhere. I was able to update the NAS to 6.10.1 and then do an OS Reinstall, but it's still booting in safe mode. The web UI now shows 6.10.1, so at least that part worked!
@StephenB Thanks for your reply! Here's what I see in the Boot Menu
Normal
Factory Default
OS Reinstall
Tech Support
Skip Vol Check
Memory Test
Test Disks
If I'm using XRAID2 with double parity with 6 disks, would plugging in only one disk give me any results?
Interesting. I'd always assumed that the conversion process would replace "skip volume check" with "volume read only". Still it might be worth trying that option.
If I'm using XRAID2 with double parity with 6 disks, would plugging in only one disk give me any results?
I somehow got mixed up on your RAID mode. You'd need to connect at least 4 disks to the PC to recover data there.
FWIW, XRAID branding has shifted a bit over time. XRAID2 was the OS 4.2.x version (and the "2" didn't mean double parity - it meant "version 2 of XRAID"). OS 6 just called it XRAID again. By default it has single parity, though you can set it up as RAID-6 (switching to flexraid, destroying the data volume, creating a new data volume as RAID-6, and then switching back to XRAID).
Interesting. I'd always assumed that the conversion process would replace "skip volume check" with "volume read only". Still it might be worth trying that option.
No, though I had thought so for a while.
You can modify /etc/fstab on the root volume, or do certain modifications to syslinux.cfg on the internal flash but that’s more risky.
In any case the error message in safe mode would suggest a problem with the 4GB root volume more so than the data volume. Volume read-only wouldn’t help if the problem is on the 4GB root volume.
