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HP Gen7 N40L - Jun's DSM 6.1 - Suddenly Stopped Working


norcalm

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Hello,

 

We are using Jun's DSM 6.1 Baremetal on an HP Gen7 N40L microserver and the internet router glitched - we had no internet access for a day until I came home and reset the router and reloaded configuration.

 

When I looked for find.synology.com after the router reset, I couldn't find it.  I rebooted the N40L and I get to the loading screen:

 

image.thumb.png.7f2af0662d431bc55a412ef132ae6e2d.png

 

and then nothing.  There's no evidence the router sees the box, no DHCP assignment, no ping.  It's like the internal NIC no longer works.

 

As far as I know, there's no serial port on this box for the typical console/debug.  How can I debug with a console, is there a GRUB configuration parameter I can manually enter? 

 

Or, should I purchase a USB-to-serial-port (and would that even work?) 

 

 

 

 

Edited by norcalm
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Thanks, @Dfds yes I downloaded Synology Assistant and it does not find it either.  I don't see it in my router's web admin page under "connected devices" and cannot ping it's static DHCP address.

 

It's been a great XPenology server for many years, but with Jun's 6.1 I cannot get a local console so it's hard to debug something like this.  Is there a way to manually enter a GRUB command line setting so I could see what's going on at the console?

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3 hours ago, norcalm said:

Is there a way to manually enter a GRUB command line setting so I could see what's going on at the console?

 

no the output from the synology kernel goes to the serial port

are you sure it did not update to 6.2.2?

to check the hardware you can disconnct the disks and try a different usb with a fresh 6.1 loader (as long as you dont want to install with that loader you even dont have to change vid/pid jost booting up to network is fine that way), then check if you can find it in network

you might check bios settings to (C1E can block booting)

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1 hour ago, IG-88 said:

 

are you sure it did not update to 6.2.2?

 

Honestly I'm not the greatest Synology admin - I just let it do its thing, read the monthly disk report card, and don't normally get involved.  Before updates would require me to use the control panel to invoke an update... if somehow it can now auto-update then it may have definitely updated to 6.2+.  Otherwise, there's no way.

 

Now ... if it did auto-update - is it as simple as purchasing an NC364T, installing the hardware, and restarting the machine?

 

Quote

you might check bios settings to (C1E can block booting)

 

Yes, I did try that first, and C1E was still disabled.

 

Quote

to check the hardware you can disconnct the disks and try a different usb with a fresh 6.1 loader (as long as you dont want to install with that loader you even dont have to change vid/pid jost booting up to network is fine that way), then check if you can find it in network

 

Thanks, this is something I can try this weekend.

 

Quote

no the output from the synology kernel goes to the serial port

 

As the N40L doesn't have a serial port... is that something I could view with a USB to serial converter?  I will also try and see if there's some sort of UART/serial port header on the motherboard.

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16 minutes ago, norcalm said:

Otherwise, there's no way.

if it somehow did then on updating it writes to the usb drive, you can check it with your usb drive from the system, an the first partition there should be "GRUB_VER" and in that you would find what dsm version is installed

25 minutes ago, norcalm said:

As the N40L doesn't have a serial port... is that something I could view with a USB to serial converter? 

no, it need a uart chip, the usb is often mentioned for using with the system receiving the serial data

 

26 minutes ago, norcalm said:

  I will also try and see if there's some sort of UART/serial port header on the motherboard.

does not look like it on the pictures i've found, iLO might have a virtual com port but N40L seems not to have iLO (Gen8 does)

 

i guess checking the GRUB_VER from the usb and checking the hardware be using a recovery linux will hopefully tell you enough

you can also try to boot up from usb (?) with open media vault or if there is a free sata port boot a disk with OMV to have access to you data on the datavolume of your dsm disks (that's my fallback plan when dsm is failing and i need access over network to my data)

 

 

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@IG-88No, the closest thing I can find to iLO is a proprietary MicroServer "remote access card" which has its own UART but is supposedly buggy.  I also considered a PCIe Serial Port card but two people on the Internet said they wouldn't load up at GRUB time (presumably they need to be recognized by the BIOS) so that won't work either.

 

I'll have to check GRUB_VER and hardware for next steps.  It's a shame as this solution worked so well for many years.  

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I'm embarrassed to say that while I was editing grub.cfg to get rid of the serial console, I just realized that the NIC light on the far end of my server to the switch went out (I was only looking at the server end).  Plugged the far end into another port, lights went on, and it works.  

 

Sigh.

 

Thanks for all your help.  I can see that without LAN access the Gen7 are really hard to debug, since there's no console, but there's no excuse for user error on my part...

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