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installation problems (can't find server)


AMelbye

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Hi,

 

I've been trying for a while now to get jun's loader 1.01 to work. The built in ethernet adapter (atheros) is not supported, so I bought an intel adapter that should work.

 

I updated the mac adress and the vid/pid of the usb stick, but still can't find the server. I then purchased a realtek ethernet adapter, updated the files, still nothing. Bought another Intel (different model), and same thing.

 

I then bought another pendrive, and updated vid and pid, still same thing.

 

Is there any way to troubleshoot this? I'm getting tired of buying new hardware that leads me nowhere :/

 

Btw: on DSM 5.2 all four adapters work fine, but I'm having issues with my ATA drives. Partitions are lost on all ATA controllers whenever I reboot (SATA works). Which is why I want to try 6.x.x

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5 hours ago, AMelbye said:

Hi,

 

I've been trying for a while now to get jun's loader 1.01 to work. The built in ethernet adapter (atheros) is not supported, so I bought an intel adapter that should work.

 

I updated the mac adress and the vid/pid of the usb stick, but still can't find the server. I then purchased a realtek ethernet adapter, updated the files, still nothing. Bought another Intel (different model), and same thing.

 

I then bought another pendrive, and updated vid and pid, still same thing.

 

Is there any way to troubleshoot this? I'm getting tired of buying new hardware that leads me nowhere :/

 

Btw: on DSM 5.2 all four adapters work fine, but I'm having issues with my ATA drives. Partitions are lost on all ATA controllers whenever I reboot (SATA works). Which is why I want to try 6.x.x

Try;

Disabling the onboard nic so that only the intel is detected

Disable on board devices that are not needed (sound, parallel port)

Do not edit mac address or sn in grub until after DSM installed/setup

You can also connect a serial port and via Putty check the boot process - similar to the vga output you see with XPE 5.2

Also, be aware that there is limited support for pata interfaces in 6.1, the default loader will probably not see any drives, so you will need to try the enhanced extra.lzma ramdisk prepared by @IG-88 - and depending on the pata controller it still may not work. Having the serial connection will help with checking this.

 

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sbv3000: Thanks for your help!

 

I'm not sure if it was disabling the onboard NIC or moving to a different PCI express slot that made the difference, but at least now it works.


I'm a bit confused though: the mac address in the grub.cfg is now incorrect, still things seem to work fine. What's the purpose of setting the mac address in this file?

 

For now I'm just testing 6.0.2 to see if it solves my problem with IDE devices being dropped from all types of arrays on reboot. If this does not work, I guess the last thing to try is to roll back to DSM 4.x.x

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Now however, whenever I insert a PCI PATA or SATA card or enable the onboard PATA controller, it seems that the server gets stuck on boot, and I don't get ethernet.

 

I think I'll give DSM 4.3 a try, guessing it might be more likely for older software to work with my old hardware.

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2 hours ago, AMelbye said:

sbv3000: Thanks for your help!

 

I'm not sure if it was disabling the onboard NIC or moving to a different PCI express slot that made the difference, but at least now it works.


I'm a bit confused though: the mac address in the grub.cfg is now incorrect, still things seem to work fine. What's the purpose of setting the mac address in this file?

 

For now I'm just testing 6.0.2 to see if it solves my problem with IDE devices being dropped from all types of arrays on reboot. If this does not work, I guess the last thing to try is to roll back to DSM 4.x.x

Setting the MAC address in the grub file to match the nic card helps stability and minimises ip address/dhcp issues

You may have a hard time getting IDE devices to work with 6.1, maybe try XPE/DSM 5.2 which (imho) was better than nanoboot/dsm4 

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On 11/19/2017 at 8:27 PM, AMelbye said:

sbv3000: Thanks for your help!

 

I'm not sure if it was disabling the onboard NIC or moving to a different PCI express slot that made the difference, but at least now it works.


I'm a bit confused though: the mac address in the grub.cfg is now incorrect, still things seem to work fine. What's the purpose of setting the mac address in this file?

 

For now I'm just testing 6.0.2 to see if it solves my problem with IDE devices being dropped from all types of arrays on reboot. If this does not work, I guess the last thing to try is to roll back to DSM 4.x.x

 

On 11/19/2017 at 9:37 PM, AMelbye said:

Now however, whenever I insert a PCI PATA or SATA card or enable the onboard PATA controller, it seems that the server gets stuck on boot, and I don't get ethernet.

 

I think I'll give DSM 4.3 a try, guessing it might be more likely for older software to work with my old hardware.

 

 

The server get's stuck most certainly because those PATA/SATA controllers modules are not included in the loader. Since you do no provide any hardware information on those controllers then it's not possible for me (or anyone else) to troubleshoot your issue. Also, one thing is sure you need to disable the onboard NIC as that is the default NIC that will be used if left enabled and since it doesn't seem to be working then you won't see the server on the network.

 

You can try loader v1.02a2 with the additional ramdisk (extra.lzma) provided in the tutorial. You could also try using the latest loader v1.02b.

 

As for the MAC address, it doesn't have any real importance. I recommend using your NIC's real MAC address so to be consistent. There is no real need to spoof it.

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Hi again,

 

thanks you your input Polanskiman.

 

I did some more testing, and my SATA controllers are actually working.

I have two silicon image SATA controllers, both supported by additional drivers included in the custom extra.izma, and they seem to work fine.

 

The non-working IDE controllers are Marvell 88SE6102 (included in motherboard) and highpoint hpt372A (PCI). These are also supported by the custom extra.izma, but will cause the system to fail to boot, on 6.0.2. When I was using DSM 5.2 both these controllers would seem to work, but whatever configuration I made on them (RAID, single disk etc.) would get dropped whenever I reboot.
 

If anyone can reccomend an IDE controller that is tested and fully working with any version of XPEnology, I'd be very grateful. I have quite a few medium and large capacity ATA drives with low hours. It'd be great to be able  to put them to use.

 

I'll leave the MAC adresses for now, as it doesn't seem to be related to the issues I'm having.

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if its PATA/IDE then dsm 6.1 is not a good choice as the pata_* drivers are still broken (same as the sata_*)

 

On 11/28/2017 at 6:16 PM, AMelbye said:

have quite a few medium and large capacity ATA drives with low hours. It'd be great to be able  to put them to use.

 

depends on you point of view, afair the largest ide drives where 750GB and thats more a "small" for a NAS

 

 

 

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I intend to use either DSM 5.2 or 6.0.2.

 

I don't really need any new features, this server will mainly be used for keeping backups. 

 

For me, this is more about giving my old hardware a new lease of life than maximising performance. Power consumption is not an issue. I live in a cold climate and need heating most of the year anyway. 

 

Putting 10 older drives to use makes sense for my purpose, even though I'd never do this if I built a nas for a client. A larger number of drives also helps justify 2 redundant drives. 

 

I'm going to give 6.0.2 another try on fresh drives and a different psu/motherboard before I give up. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I gave up and reverted to 5.2.

 

Then I gave up on using IDE controllers, and got IDE to SATA converters for all my old drives.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-5-HDD-IDE-to-Serial-ATA-SATA-Adapter-Parallel-To-Serial-Hard-Drive-Convertor/232195324527?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

 

They seem to work fine!

Just as I got all my old drives up and running I realized I was out of power connections for my newer drives, so no I'm waiting for a few of these:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-ATX-4Pin-4P-IDE-Molex-to-4-SATA-Serial-ATA-Power-Supply-Cable-Cord-18AWG-Wire/272988657406?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2648

 

Hopefully in a week or two it will all be up and running. For my purpose, I don't think there are any advantages of using a newer version than 5.2, so I'll stick to what works for now.

 

 

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I gave up and reverted to 5.2.

 

Then I gave up on using IDE controllers, and got IDE to SATA converters for all my old drives.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-5-HDD-IDE-to-Serial-ATA-SATA-Adapter-Parallel-To-Serial-Hard-Drive-Convertor/232195324527?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

 

They seem to work fine!

Just as I got all my old drives up and running I realized I was out of power connections for my newer drives, so no I'm waiting for a few of these:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-ATX-4Pin-4P-IDE-Molex-to-4-SATA-Serial-ATA-Power-Supply-Cable-Cord-18AWG-Wire/272988657406?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2648

 

Hopefully in a week or two it will all be up and running. For my purpose, I don't think there are any advantages of using a newer version than 5.2, so I'll stick to what works for now.

 

 

I still use 5.2 for some backup jukeboxes, synology are still releasing update patches for security fixes so its not totally 'end of life'.

If you haven't already done so, I would disable the onboard IDE controllers you are not using, that should stop you having empty slots showing in Storage Manager

You would probably find that the ide/sata works with v6 loaders, assuming its a generic ahci interface, maybe test to give yourself an upgrade option later? 

 

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