billat29

I guess that you attempted the upgrade without updating the USB stick first. How did you attempt the upgrade? Or rather how do we know that the version that was being installed was 6.0.3?

Great. Thanks for the feedback and good to hear that it's working.

The answer is the same for both: 6.2.3 Update 2 with juns DS3615xs loader v1.03b in legacy BIOS only. UNLESS you are successfully using disk hibernation on the Gen 8 in which case, disk hibernation may not work on 6.2.3. In that case, you want to try 6.1.7 (juns 1.02b loader). C1 needs to be disabled in BIOS for the N54L and if you previously had version 5 installed on the box, then you need to find and delete the hidden /.xpenoboot directory before the upgrade to 6.2.3. The linked post is about upgrading a Gen 8 with a crashed drive, but the posts about the upgrade are relevant.

OK. That's even better. I would go for option 1 in that case. Pull everything out of the box. Two new drives and new USB and full install. Nice clean system;.

OK. My option 1 was to say that you had copied all your files onto another computer somewhere. In that case you could afford to wipe everything clean and start again. When you had finished you can copy those files off the other computer. That doesn't seem to be what you are able to do here as all your files are on volume2. While there other options, I think that they add a whole new level of complexity. So. After my testing, what I would do is this: Insert volume2 and the two new disks in the box and boot. It should come up with a system with volume2 and two uninitialised disks. Go to storage manager and create your new RAID group (repeat after me: RAID is not a backup) and create a new volume on that RAID. Mine came up as... volume1. Create a new shared folder (or series of folders) on Volume1 and copy everything across. Now shutdown and pull volume2 and keep it somewhere safe. Reboot just to check that you have a working (ish- all the packages are broken) system and all the data is there. Yow will now need to ssh into the box (probably using putty from windows) with a user that has admin rights and do. cd / sudo rm -r .xpenoboot Now shutdown and pull the USB stick. Put it in the safe place with volume2. You asked why you should remove volume2 and the answer is that if the next steps go wrong, you can always go back to your running 6.0.2 system and start again / try something else. Now you can insert your newly created v1.03b USB stick and boot the system. Now you should be able to connect to the box via synology assistant or find.synology.com and run a manual upgrade specifying the 6.2.3 file you downloaded onto your computer. Assuming that it all works then you may need to repair your broken packages and go through all your config. What to do with volume2? Well, you could have left it in the box as you said and kept it as part of the upgrade but taking it out does give you a fall back position. And it is an old disk and given that its partner has failed, so maybe it is not long for this world. If you keep it, then it is a backup of your files at this point.

Not quite. Let me go away for a bit. I have a test VM for DSM. I will clone it and try to set up your two options to make sure I am not sending you down the wrong path...

Thanks. You have a number of options. If you have backed everything up from volume 2 (after salvaging what you can from volume 1) then you can do a fresh install on your new drives. I have a question about the version of DSM you have chosen (later). Then you can restore data, install packages and start configuring. If you haven't, then you could put your new drives into the NAS, with volume 2 and then boot. You could then create a new RAID group on the two disks and copy your files over. You can then remove volume2 and boot your new machine, You can then do an upgrade. (Note in case you are unaware, the system gets copied to all disks and so can boot from any available disks.). If you do go for the upgrade then you need to delete the hidden directory ./xpenoboot which will be there from when you were on version 5.2 before you run the upgrade. My next question is: Why have you chosen to go with 6.2.2 rather than 6.2.3? At the moment, 6.2.3 is the recommended version (see below) and it seems to be supported on HP Gen 8 The only negative is that disk hibernation may not work on this release. For the releases in between 6.1.7 and 6.2.3, Synology changed the driver support. And then they put it back the way it was for for 6.2.3. To get 6.2.2 to work, you are going to have to either buy and install an intel based network card or mess around with loading a driver set into the image on your USB stick. and So I would strongly recommend going to 6.2.3 or if disk hibernation is an issue, then I would go for 6.1.7 Finally (phew!) If you must use the same USB stick, then you can use the same VID/PID. That bit worries me. I would just like to keep a known working configuration around for a bit.

Just one quick question. I'm a bit confused. How is your storage configured? When you said JBOD, I assumed that you had both drives in one storage pool with two volumes configured on it. And then you said that volume2 / disk 2 was fine. Does that mean two separate storage pools, one per drive?

What he said... except that speaking from experience, if you fail to delete the hidden .xpenoboot directory, then what happens is that you can connect to the upgraded server but all the services terminate (crash) leaving you in a difficult situation.

In a previous life I used to run software businesses and after that I used to try to rescue others from the ashes. One time licence fee, even backed up with a monthly maintenance charge does not work in the medium to long term. This is why <everyone> has gone to some kind of subscription based service. If they haven't yet, they will. You can pay annually if you hate monthly 😀

Please let us know how you get on.

Yes, I agree. I'm sure there was a survey some time ago. Synology will have to do something sometime. The model of premium hardware and "free" bundled software generally ran its course some time ago. I expect that they think a push into the enterprise space will boost margins but it won't last long. I quite like the concept of an image and a set of cloudy services for a subscription. It works for us and it works more generally for them as they can move to a more sustainable subscription model generally.

😀

Ah! C1E needs to be disabled in the BIOS. Which may, or may not be the problem. I found my notes for v1.02b and they also say 1) Make sure c1 is disabled in bios. 2) Select force install (install pat) 3) one reboot select top option (dont select amd) 4) give it time 5-10 mins to come up (mine took around 10 mins first time)

You'll need v1.02b

Good point for a backup machine.

I guess so. Let us know how you get on.

If when you boot v1.03b it finds an existing system on your drives, then it will try to do an upgrade. You should specify a manual installation as you have said. I can't see anything special about 6.1.7 vs 6.2.3 in terms of an upgrade. If any release is required in terms of a stepping stone from 5 to 6, then it would be one of the earlier releases of version 6. The bit that I am missing is what you need to keep from your v5 system given that you have copied all your data and settings to the new real Synology. If the upgrade from v5 failed, I would probably clear all the partitions from the disks and just create a fresh 6.2.3 system (and I know that works!). Bear in mind that many of the packages will want to update themselves when you move.

Hi Schmill, Did you resolve? The first thing to do would be to pull all the drives, reboot and see if you can find it on the network.

1. The N54L will run 6.2.3 with the onboard nic. I have one at that version with standard BIOS. No extra files required. 2. I am using the v1.03b DS3615xs loader 3. Tricky. I know I had it on version 5 and before I upgraded to 6.2.3, I was on 6.1.7 for a long while. I think I was on an earlier version of 6 before that. I have no recollection of whether any of the intermediate steps are mandatory. If you are upgrading from 5 you need to delete the hidden .xpenoboot directory before the upgrade to 6.2.3. However, as you say you have cleaned all the drives on this box, why don't you just do it as a "new" install 4. See 1. The versions between 6.1.7 and 6.2.3 were difficult as Synology had changed the driver model - but they have seem to have put it back to where it was for 6.2.3. So you can safely ignore discussions of installing intel nics and extra files. It just works(TM) in 6.2.3

It did. Synology changed the drivers for 6.2.1 and 6.2.2 so you needed the extra files for those releases and then put it back the way it was on 6.1.7 for 6.2.3.

Sorry. I misunderstood. What I was trying to say was that the extra file was not needed at any stage on upgrading a stock N54L (G7 microserver) directly from 6.1.7 to 6.2.3.

I didn't use an extra file. I have a standard N54L with onboard nic. I had upgraded it over the years to reach 6.1.7 and stopped there for a while. When 6.2.3 was released, I created a new v1.03b USB with vid and pid set correctly and any other changes I had made to v1.02b (disable_mtrr_trim comes to mind) copied over.

What he said. If it helps, then I stayed on 6.1.7 for a long time because of the driver issues and was researching alternatives. But then 6.2.3 came along and it "just worked". But check for and delete the hidden .xpenoboot directory if it exists before you run the upgrade.

It is a bit hard when people ask a question and it goes unanswered, but that's not something specific to this forum. I can think of others where if you ask a very open and basic question, you get your head bitten off. And Xpenology isn't really a "project". Open media vault is. Oh wait! The guy who was doing all the ARM stuff had a big bust up with one of the other guys and left the room. Since I have come back to visit the forum, I have been thinking of any contribution I can make. But I can't match the gurus here.