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Preparing for hardware failure


Cleo

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Hello everyone, I just want to prepare my new “D36617xs” with DSM6.2.3 installation for hardware failure, and I need your help please.

Can you please help me to prepare for it? My guesses for hardware failure are:

 

HDD Failure – I will create a RAID5 with 3 drives so DSM will take care of this. I have external Backups with Hyper Backup.

USB flash drive Failure – Here is where the Jun’s Loaders 1.04b boot lives right? And it has the VIP/PID from this specific USB flash drive. What can we do to prevent hardware failure here, or fix it if it happens?

Motherboard Failure – If I replace the motherboard, then the usb flash drive boot loader has another Mac address. What can we do to prevent hardware failure here, or fix it if it happens?

Can you please help me to bulletproof as much as I can my system, thanks a lot everyone for your time and patience,

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1 hour ago, Cleo said:

Hello everyone, I just want to prepare my new “D36617xs” with DSM6.2.3 installation for hardware failure, and I need your help please.

Can you please help me to prepare for it? My guesses for hardware failure are:

 

HDD Failure – I will create a RAID5 with 3 drives so DSM will take care of this. I have external Backups with Hyper Backup.

Sounds good, external backups covered - they are important if something damages your data while the NAS is fully intact (i.e. ransomware)

 

1 hour ago, Cleo said:

USB flash drive Failure – Here is where the Jun’s Loaders 1.04b boot lives right? And it has the VIP/PID from this specific USB flash drive. What can we do to prevent hardware failure here, or fix it if it happens?

Not a big deal.  You can just burn a new copy of the loader and your system will resume normally.  VID/PID is specific to make and model of flash drive. If you can get another one that is identical, no change to the image needed, otherwise just change VID/PID to new pen drive and boot.

 

1 hour ago, Cleo said:

Motherboard Failure – If I replace the motherboard, then the usb flash drive boot loader has another Mac address. What can we do to prevent hardware failure here, or fix it if it happens?

Can you please help me to bulletproof as much as I can my system, thanks a lot everyone for your time and patience,

Doesn't matter.  MAC configuration is only important if you are using wake-on-LAN.  If that is important to you, then just update the MAC of the new NIC in the loader.

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Hi flyride, thanks a lot for the info,

So, with the USB its just burn another one with the new VID/PID, uuu that sounds fast,

And for the MB If I don’t use wake-on-LAN it will work with the same loader,If I’m not using wake-on-LAN is it better if I modify my MAC address from the loader for safety reasons?

 

From here is sounds pretty save and easy to have a hardware failure (I hope it never happen),

Is there any other hardware related thing that can have a failure ?

Thanks again flyride for your time,  

Edited by Cleo
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4 hours ago, flyride said:

Not a big deal.  You can just burn a new copy of the loader and your system will resume normally.

not exactly like this

when using jun's initial loader it will have the kernel of dsm 6.2.(0)

in most cases you will have 6.2.3 installed on the disks

when booting that way the system will not just start because of that mismatch

 

at least two ways to fix it:

 

1. use synology assistant, it will recognize the mismatch and offer repair it (copy's the newer kernel from disk to loader), that is a synology covered scenario because if a customer gets a replacement unit, it might come with a older loader and then the dsm version  the customer has on its disks, so they need to be prepared for this (and as they do not support downgrade they need to get the loaders kernel (usb dom) renewed)

 

2. do it manually, use the *.pat file of the dsm version you have installed

depending if its a main version or a update (like u3 now for 6.2.3)

if its a main version (200-300MB *.pat) its zImage and rd.gz directly in the *.pat filen (you can open it with 7zip) and if its a update version you open the *.pat look for a "flashupdate_6.2-25426-s3_all.deb" (s3 is for update 3, 6.2-25426 is 6.2.3) further open it with 7zip and you will find zImage and rd.gz

zImage and rd.gz need to be copied to the 2nd partiton of the usb replacing the old files

Edited by IG-88
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  • 1 month later...
On 2/20/2021 at 9:36 PM, IG-88 said:

not exactly like this

when using jun's initial loader it will have the kernel of dsm 6.2.(0)

in most cases you will have 6.2.3 installed on the disks

when booting that way the system will not just start because of that mismatch

 

at least two ways to fix it:

 

1. use synology assistant, it will recognize the mismatch and offer repair it (copy's the newer kernel from disk to loader), that is a synology covered scenario because if a customer gets a replacement unit, it might come with a older loader and then the dsm version  the customer has on its disks, so they need to be prepared for this (and as they do not support downgrade they need to get the loaders kernel (usb dom) renewed)

 

2. do it manually, use the *.pat file of the dsm version you have installed

depending if its a main version or a update (like u3 now for 6.2.3)

if its a main version (200-300MB *.pat) its zImage and rd.gz directly in the *.pat filen (you can open it with 7zip) and if its a update version you open the *.pat look for a "flashupdate_6.2-25426-s3_all.deb" (s3 is for update 3, 6.2-25426 is 6.2.3) further open it with 7zip and you will find zImage and rd.gz

zImage and rd.gz need to be copied to the 2nd partiton of the usb replacing the old files

I fallowed all these steps, but after clicking on repair the system new shows up on my network again. I don't know what to do anymore, I'm worries I will lose 10tb of data.

 

Any help will be appreciated thanks.

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13 hours ago, ejwarrior said:

I'm worries I will lose 10tb of data.

 

you can access you files with a normal linux too, the raid is just made from normal linux tools like "mdadm" and "lvm2"

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/7004-tutorial-how-to-access-dsms-data-system-partitions/

even synology has a KB article about that for helping customers who want to recover data from a broken hardware and its pretty much the same way (using a rescue linux)

 

in most cases its also possible to install open media vault (not to the dsm disks, use additional usb/disk for this) boot that up and find you data volume from the dsm disks ready to use (and having windows network access to the files)

both ways if you need access to some files now before you restored your dsm installation - or you want to do a backup (always good to have)

 

if you use a recovery linux to access the dsm disks you can access the dsm system partition too (raid1 over all disks) and if you mount that raid1 and delete all files there then there would be no system to recover and dsm would have to reinstall for sure - but make sure you mount and delete the right thing, kind of a disaster of you delete the wrong ting without having a backup, also if reinstalling read twice whats written there, you dont wand you data deleted as a whole, if it says all data will be lost you should reconsider and stop

 

 

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