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Working DSM 6.1 and 6.3 on HP Microserver Gen7 N40L


dumbtechie

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Had great difficulties with getting the hang of the process, but I persevered, and am thankful to the helpful peeps on this forum.

 

Originally wanted 6.3 but the initial attempts were unsuccessful with the infamous ”Failed to install the file. The file is probably corrupted. (13)"

Once I realised that this could be a number of reasons, I double-double checked my boot file (it was correct) tried other USB sticks, and eventually worked out that I had simply chosen the wrong pat file.  (There are lots to choose from & a large % of the ones I tried clearly just don't work).

 

After a lot of testing with 3615 & 1.04b I gave up & found a recipe for 1.02b and 6.1x

 

- Outcome of the installation/update: SUCCESSFUL
- DSM version : DSM 6.1.3-15152
- Loader version and model: JUN'S LOADER v1.02b - DS3615xs
- Installation type: BAREMETAL - HP Microserver GEN 7 N40L 8GB ram

 

[note that this is version 6.1.3 cos all the 6.1.7 versions in the recipe book failed for me - ymmv].

[note 2 - only 4 of the 5 drives were visible to DSM, (not so for Ubuntu or Unraid), so I updated the BIOS to the adjusted version of 041 with Southbridge options to disable IDE mode and force AHCI mode for disk 5 & then all were visible.]

 

That's a great start & a beautiful use for my spare N40L, so thanks to all.

However - (there's always one of those) - I needed to test a particular feature, "deactivate a HDD from a Raid-1 storage pool" - which isn't in 6.1.3 (cue someone pointing and saying "Ha Ha"). Pure comedy gold.

 

No matter, I now know more than I did before & so it's worth a retry.

LOTS more reading, and eventually compiled a bunch of notes, 1.03b bootloader, a new USB stick, and after half a dozen failed attempts, used the LATEST version - bingo!

 

- Outcome of the installation/update: SUCCESSFUL
- DSM version : DSM 6.3-25426  (that's currently the LATEST release, and some suggest the LAST release of 6.x)
- Loader version and model: JUN'S LOADER v1.03b - DS3617xs
- Installation type: BAREMETAL - HP Microserver GEN 7 N40L 8GB ram

 

No sign of any dreaded hidden directories in the root which needed deleting, data migrated fine, all good.

Looks just like my pair of DS412+ units - nice one.

Thanks to ALL who helped by posting their suggestions to others in the past & those who posted their recipes.

TTFN

I think I might do the same to the 2 other HP gen7 microservers I have under the stairs!

 

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I have only just joined the forum, so I didn't get any warnings about 6.3-25426 being unreliable!

I suspect this post may be deleted as a result. ;-(

 

Please read the WARNING entry from Polanskiman before following my recipe.

 

I appear to have got away with it so far, but it's a scratch unit, no really important data, I don't care if it dies unexpectedly while scrubbing everything!

 

I'm always being told off for telling people to back up their data, so I'm prepared to be told off here too.

Backup your data!!!!

I used to support very large 19" winchester disks as a vendor techie, (yes it was a long time ago) and got very sad every time a customer told me theirs had died, and could we scrape the data off, because their last backup was 6 months ago.

 

Good luck with yours.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

@dumbtechie 

Hi, and welcome to "the club" :-) (I keep 5 G7 microservers running with XPE myself, and support a "few" others for friends/famly)

As you pointed out, backup is never a bad idea ;-) I keep on telling people to do so, but I'm not that good at it to do it myself.

We have a saying: real men don't do backups, but we cry a lot :-D

 

Have you done the "Update 3" yet? It might help on the reliability issues.

 

 

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5 hours ago, bearcat said:

We have a saying: real men don't do backups, but we cry a lot

originaly it's

“Only wimps use tape backup. REAL men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.”

― Linus Torvalds

 

On 12/17/2020 at 3:14 AM, dumbtechie said:

I have only just joined the forum, so I didn't get any warnings about 6.3-25426 being unreliable!

thats mainly if you come from 6.2.1 or 6.2.2, there are differences with drivers

6.2.(0) and 6.2.3 are compatible, 6.2.1 and 6.2.2 have different kernel settings (binary compiled kernel from synology) and drivers are different and might not work with other versions

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