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Advice before I break something


Froberg

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Hi all. 

 

Been running an AsRock C2750D4I system since.. 2015 or so, and sadly the heatwave seems to have killed it. It was working fine, serving multiple plex streams over Xpenology when suddenly it just died in spectacular fashion. IPMI showed nothing wrong, but couldn't get the server to halt, either. Forced a reboot and nothing. Checked IPMI again and CPU was reporting temp at negative 123C. I figure it's safe to say it's fairly fried. My SSD cache died 1-2 weeks ago, so I guess I should have been more wary of the heat. Live and learn. 

 

Quietly wept. 

 

Dug out an older workstation and proceeded to migrate the drives to it, just to see if the system itself was intact. Put in USB, all drives and booted up. It's stuck on "Booting the Kernel" and I can't find it with syno assistant at a new IP address, nor can I see it in my router table. 

I figure it's probably missing some drivers or something to boot up properly, maybe? 


Or maybe the data's just gone. 

 

Anyone got some ideas? I've thrown it in an old gaming rig with a ROG motherboard and a quad core2something or other. Was just trying to limp on until I could re-assess really. I hope someone might have some insight, as I haven't had this happen before. 

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sounds like this hardware problem (i have a asrock C2550D4I)

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11110/semi-critical-intel-atom-c2000-flaw-discovered

 

afair asrock at least extended the warranty to 3 years, so if you bought it 2015 you might give asrock support a call and get a free replacement

 

 

https://www.auvik.com/media/blog/vendors-clock-signal-flaw-intel-atom-c2000/

in December 2016, user ScHAmPi posted this response from ASRock support in a forum thread:

“Thank you for reaching out to us with your concern! Your Server board is using Intel Avoton CPU which is also listed in Intel’s errata announcement. … We provide 3-year manufacture warranty; if you ever experienced a sudden No POST with your board, please contact us. We can run a simple test to find the telltale sign. If the issue is confirmed that it may be related to the CPU, we will help you replace the board under our warranty policy.”

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/freenas/comments/4x1kh1/asrock_c2550d4i_sudden_death/

 

Edited by IG-88
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15 hours ago, Froberg said:

Dug out an older workstation and proceeded to migrate the drives to it, just to see if the system itself was intact. Put in USB, all drives and booted up. It's stuck on "Booting the Kernel" and I can't find it with syno assistant at a new IP address, nor can I see it in my router table. 

I figure it's probably missing some drivers or something to boot up properly, maybe? 

 

3615 image might boot up on any 64bit intel cpu (amd can be a problem), if its driver problem you can try the driver extension (extra.lzma)

if you are more specific we could tell you more, so its just crystal ball gazing and maybe some occlumency

 

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/9508-driver-extension-jun-102bdsm61x-for-3615xs-3617xs-916/

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For now, I've submitted a case to ASRock technical support. I can't get anything out of it except IPMI, and that runs on its own chip AFAIK. Interestingly all sensors have now gone dark, and there's literally zero information to be found about the board details anywhere. 

 

I booted up the Asus computer again to see if I could clean anything more specific than Striker Extreme and Republic of Gamers, but sadly not. I can't find any readily identifiable markers other than that. It's this motherboard though: $_86.JPG 

 

Socket 775 running a Q6600 quad core. 

So an older gentleman, in essence. 

 

Would it work if I chose "re-install" from the startup menu? Just trying to salvage the point-of-failure data that wasn't synced yet. (pending folder, databases etc.)

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Striker Extreme was the info we need so its this one:

https://www.asus.com/us/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/Striker_Extreme/

 

NVIDIA nForce 680i chipset -> nvidia driver for network -> forthdeth.ko -> only with additional extra.lzma (see my link above)

NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI, not AHCI, MCP55 -> sata_nv.ko -> not usable for DSM 6.1

Silicon Image 3132 SATA controller -> sata_sil24.ko -> not usable with dsm 6.1

 

so you could get the nic working but can't user any of the onboard sata ports

if you have ahci compatible controllers or a lsi sas controller .... there are plenty of pcie ports

 

edit:

if you have nothing else the this and want access to your date then take a empty disk, install open media vault to it ant after this connect your dsm disks

omv should be able to detect the raid of the data partitions and will leave the dsm system partitions untouched, its still just mdadm and lvm and that can be handled by any modern linux, omv is  nice and easy to handle and can do nas easily

thats my fallback scenario i tested with dsm 6.1

 

Edited by IG-88
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Just now, IG-88 said:

Striker Extreme was the info we need so its this one:

https://www.asus.com/us/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/Striker_Extreme/

 

NVIDIA nForce 680i chipset -> nvidia driver for network -> forthdeth.ko -> only with additional extra.lzma (see my link above)

NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI, not AHCI, MCP55 -> sata_nv.ko -> not usable for DSM 6.1

Silicon Image 3132 SATA controller -> sata_sil24.ko -> not usable with dsm 6.1

 

so you could get the nic working but can't user any of the onboard sata ports

if you have ahci compatible controllers or a lsi sas controller .... there are plenty of pcie ports

 

I don't, sadly. Considering what I'm seeing with the hardware, it certainly sems to confirm that the issue here is the mainboard. I'll just have to see what ASRock has to say about it. Think I may just bite the bullet, stop my tinkering, and get a real synology. If they do replace it, which would be wild considering the original purchase date was feb 15 and I got it RMA'ed once already it would serve fine as a secondary backup-unit or something. I just don't trust the hardware any more at this point.

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3 minutes ago, Froberg said:

d I got it RMA'ed once already it would serve fine as a secondary backup-unit or something. I just don't trust the hardware any more at this point. 

 

it the same with the original synology units containing the a Atom C2xxx, intel is to blame and they dont even care about customers to replace the part they messed up

(one of the reasons i switch to the latest ryzen in spring for my new main computer)

any unit can fail, synology does not offer 10-12 disk units to a affordable price, x86 and 10G ethernet option

for the most people updates going wrong with xpenology is the grater risk

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1 minute ago, IG-88 said:

 

it the same with the original synology units containing the a Atom C2xxx, intel is to blame and they dont even care about customers to replace the part they messed up

(one of the reasons i switch to the latest ryzen in spring for my new main computer)

any unit can fail, synology does not offer 10-12 disk units to a affordable price, x86 and 10G ethernet option

for the most people updates going wrong with xpenology is the grater risk

 

You have a point. My little box has just become such a focal point in my life by now, basically serving the home, that I am looking for the least-amount of *******-uppery to occur. Hence why I moved from Ubuntu, to FreeNAS, to OMV and finally to xpenology. DS918+ looks like it should be of adequate function, and can be expanded with external drivebays if need be. I'll certainly be avoiding the larger DS1517+ entirely, since I really need procesing power for transcoding. 

I've grown accustomed to Xpenology/Synology, but maybe Synology just suffers from poor choice of CPU over all. It's not like they're transcoding beasts, and this is a busy home with many streams. 

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1 minute ago, Froberg said:

I've grown accustomed to Xpenology/Synology, but maybe Synology just suffers from poor choice of CPU over all. It's not like they're transcoding beasts, and this is a busy home with many streams.  

 

i wont argue against it, xpenology can be the 1st step to a commercial synology unit and a lot of people have at least one synology beside the xpenology unit (so do i), my old unit had a solid build quality and it the actual units build this way you will toss it you not because of hardware error more like missing speed after >5 years or maybe missing updates

i depends on what you need, i could easily switch to omv as i dont need most of the synology extras and hardware related things are a lot easier with omv as its just a normal linux with all the source available (not like synology, holding back the kernel source) and no proprietary stuff and backports

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18 minutes ago, IG-88 said:

 

i wont argue against it, xpenology can be the 1st step to a commercial synology unit and a lot of people have at least one synology beside the xpenology unit (so do i), my old unit had a solid build quality and it the actual units build this way you will toss it you not because of hardware error more like missing speed after >5 years or maybe missing updates

i depends on what you need, i could easily switch to omv as i dont need most of the synology extras and hardware related things are a lot easier with omv as its just a normal linux with all the source available (not like synology, holding back the kernel source) and no proprietary stuff and backports

 

I didn't have great experiences with my trial with OMV. It dropped my raid array like... four times in a day. Tentative to go back to that. 

Ubuntu Server was even more of a letdown, it was around the time they changed bootup procedure calls to start services and I had to do a lot of retconning. Besides, I don't operate linux enough to keep up-to-snuff on securing it properly. 

 

What kind of build are you running Xpenology on? I am severely on the fence right now. Looking at all the possible options for a consumer-NAS and even a few professional offerings, they all seem to come short on CPU grunt. 

This Avoton has served me well, despite everyone saying it would suck for plex, I've found it to be very serviceable. I've even included a few family members as invitees and I've never had unrealiable service from it. 

Any current recommendations if I were to invest in new hardware? While keeping in mind it should be able to fit in to my Lian-Li http://www.lian-li.com/pc-q25/ ideally. Unless ASRock does replace my mainboard in which case I might be tempted to just keep on chuggin'. 

 

Actually, never mind. I'm also willing to ditch the darn case although I adore it to bits. If I am interested in a home-server that can sip power when not used and roar like a fire engine when it needs to, do you have any good recommendations? It's a damn jungle out there.

Edited by Froberg
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if asrock replaces your board it will have the hardware fix on the board, same as the synology units after q1/2017 (i dont think there will be new processor version, but thats also possible), so it might run for 5 years from now (or longer)

 

when it comes to a mini-itx board there are a lot of choices, if you need 8 or more sata ports and want 10G nic (at least as option) then it quickly gets thinner

the A2SDi-H-TF looked good but its not cheap (kind of the same as my ASRock C2550D4I but more advanced, 8 cores, 12 sata ports, passive cooling, ecc ram, 10G nic onboard, and more expansive)

 

as my case can handle microATX too my latest "research" came up with the Gigabyte B360M DS3H, 10G nic and 8 port lsi as PCIe card and good choice of cpu depending of whats working with dsm and how much power is needed (i'm still on the fence too in case my board dies, that can happen every day so having a plan is good)

my backup unit has a 10G nic and lsi controller i could rip out ... so its just board, cpu and ram if i run into trouble with my atom c2xxxx, if it holds one more year there will be much more choices as 10G network will be more often be seen as onboard nic so one pcie 8x slot will be enough for 12 sata ports (4+8)

 

Edited by IG-88
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The gigabyte looks to be consumer grade, but I'll admit it nice looking. As it happens, I am flush with some DDR4 memory, HYNIX HMA82GR7MFR4N-UH 16GB (1X16GB) 2400NHZ PC4-19200 CL17 ECC REGISTERED SINGLE RANK DD4 SDRAM 288-PIN DIMM. 

Could pay off to look at something that could utilize those. 

Looking at a local site, it looks like the Gigabyte should be able to use them, even if not in ECC mode. 

Maybe toss something like the Intel Xeon E3-1220V6 in it? I can get a fairly decent price on that, it seems. With those two, I'd just have to find a new case and I'd come in at around half the cost of a Synology with less punch. Maybe I should read up on those xeons a bit. 

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I found something that looks interesting: https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-a2sdi-16c-hln4f-16-core-intel-atom-c3955-mitx-motherboard-review/

 

Seems like a direct upgrade for the current board AND it supports the registered ECC memory sticks I have. 

That's effectively double my current cores - and I can run it with my existing power supply. Already bought a small fan for cooling the current system, so I can just use that for the new one. (Upgraded case fans, too.) 

Edited by Froberg
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even more expansive and no 10G nic, but the 4x pcie slot can be used for 10G nic so still good for later upgrade of network

also a plus over C2550/C2750 is VT-d

 

i usually use www.geizhals.de to narrow down the boards that might be useful by setting up some basics and have a look over the boards that come up, you need to know whats important for you

dont plan to far, if your asrock is replaced you dont need anything new and will be able to wait what other version jun might bring up for dsm 6.2 and decide about new hardware after this

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21 hours ago, IG-88 said:

even more expansive and no 10G nic, but the 4x pcie slot can be used for 10G nic so still good for later upgrade of network

also a plus over C2550/C2750 is VT-d

 

i usually use www.geizhals.de to narrow down the boards that might be useful by setting up some basics and have a look over the boards that come up, you need to know whats important for you

dont plan to far, if your asrock is replaced you dont need anything new and will be able to wait what other version jun might bring up for dsm 6.2 and decide about new hardware after this

 

Yeah, I'm just doing my due diligence. Had word back from ASRock who wanted me to reset BIOS and take a screenshot of the IPMI, so I got that going for me.. 

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