Author Topic: buffalo terastation lost boot image  (Read 4094 times)

phirephoto

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buffalo terastation lost boot image
« on: July 21, 2020, 10:19:38 PM »
Hi all,

I have a Buffalo terastation NASTS-XE4.0TL/R5 . When it boots, it boots to TFTP MODE LOST BOOT IMAGE E06.
I found what I thought appeared to be the TFTP app and firmware. I reconfigured my PC to be 192.168.11.1, and the terastation boots and gets the files, but nothing happens after that.

The NAS Navigator and Firmware software don't see the terastation when it's connected to the same network.

Any suggestions on what I can do?

Thanks!


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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2020, 09:38:06 AM »
One possibility is that you have the wrong firmware updater. TSupdater will only show devices that match the correct model for that updater. That would not explain why NasNavigator doesn't see it though.

What does the LCD screen on the device say?

It could be something about the network config of the PC or device is causing the communication to fail though that shouldn't be. TFTP booting happens within the bootloader to the hardcoded ip address (192.168.11.1) but once it boots it initializes the network again and will attempt to get an address via DHCP like normal. This could leave the settings in an odd state if there is no dhcp for it to connect to. That shouldn't be a problem since tsupdater/nasnavigator communicate via UDP broadcast packets which should work even if the network settings aren't correct (as long as the PC and device are on the same network segment). These could be blocked by a firewall but that usually isn't the case unless you are on a mesh network and connecting from different access points, or are connecting from different VLANs or other scenarios not common on a home network.

Personally, I tend to avoid TFTP because that type of network troubleshooting gives me a headache. You could give this procedure a try with your normal network config and see if that helps anything:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_without_TFTP




phirephoto

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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2020, 08:29:13 PM »
One possibility is that you have the wrong firmware updater. TSupdater will only show devices that match the correct model for that updater. That would not explain why NasNavigator doesn't see it though.

What does the LCD screen on the device say?

It could be something about the network config of the PC or device is causing the communication to fail though that shouldn't be. TFTP booting happens within the bootloader to the hardcoded ip address (192.168.11.1) but once it boots it initializes the network again and will attempt to get an address via DHCP like normal. This could leave the settings in an odd state if there is no dhcp for it to connect to. That shouldn't be a problem since tsupdater/nasnavigator communicate via UDP broadcast packets which should work even if the network settings aren't correct (as long as the PC and device are on the same network segment). These could be blocked by a firewall but that usually isn't the case unless you are on a mesh network and connecting from different access points, or are connecting from different VLANs or other scenarios not common on a home network.

Personally, I tend to avoid TFTP because that type of network troubleshooting gives me a headache. You could give this procedure a try with your normal network config and see if that helps anything:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_without_TFTP

The screen says "TFTP MODE LOST BOOT IMAGE E06" - and it's getting a IP of 192.168.11.1 - my home network is 192.168.1.x - It's showing on my router, but not getting dhcp - I forced a static IP on my router, but it ignores it and boots with .11.1 :(

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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #3 on: July 22, 2020, 08:53:47 PM »
If it was successfully booting from TFTP it should change to “welcome to terastation” or “em mode” or something like that.

What are the filenames you’re using? This model’s are different than others, they should be uImage-88f6281.buffalo and initrd.buffalo

If you need the correct ones you can extract them with this process:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Extract_Boot_Files_from_Stock_Firmware

phirephoto

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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #4 on: July 23, 2020, 12:58:55 AM »
If it was successfully booting from TFTP it should change to “welcome to terastation” or “em mode” or something like that.

What are the filenames you’re using? This model’s are different than others, they should be uImage-88f6281.buffalo and initrd.buffalo

If you need the correct ones you can extract them with this process:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Extract_Boot_Files_from_Stock_Firmware

Ok, I think I'm getting somewhere now.. It seems to have taken the firmware - at least now it boots up and at least the navigator and updator see it. I run the update, it says no boot partition found on drive, and asks me to format the drive. It sits on formatting, please wait and takes a bit, and at the end says "Format failed. Upload aborted."
One of the documents I saw mentioned unzipping uimage.img. There's 3 files in there, and the document mentioned you may need to find which one is the correct one - does this sound like I picked the wrong one? Or something else?
It then said "No array Info".

Tried two drives in slots 1 and two, and swapped drives.
Thanks :)

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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #5 on: July 23, 2020, 08:52:25 AM »
Are you using 4 drives and are they blank?

What you describe sounds like what happens when you try to install the firmware without all the drives. There’s a command you can run to change the expected number of drives if needed. You can find that here:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_without_TFTP

If you haven’t already you’ll need to enable formatting in debug mode:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Enable_Debug_mode

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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #6 on: July 23, 2020, 08:58:22 AM »
oh, I just noticed you said you used two drives. That's definitely why that happened then.

Right before starting the install you can run this command with acp_commander to temporarily make it think it's a two bay device and hapily install to two drives:

Code: [Select]
java -jar acp_commander.jar -t <device ip address> -c "echo MAX_DISK_NUM=2 >> /etc/nas_feature"
You can get acp_commander here:
https://github.com/1000001101000/acp-commander

phirephoto

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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #7 on: July 23, 2020, 11:13:57 AM »
Are you using 4 drives and are they blank?

What you describe sounds like what happens when you try to install the firmware without all the drives. There’s a command you can run to change the expected number of drives if needed. You can find that here:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Restoring_Stock_Firmware_without_TFTP

If you haven’t already you’ll need to enable formatting in debug mode:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Enable_Debug_mode

Awesome, thank you! It's up and running. So I set that at 2 - I had two drives in. If I add drives (which I intend to do), do I need to run that again? Or can I add more drives at any time?

And is it possible to install a drive and preserve the data on it? Or does the drive need to be formatted in the NAS?

Thanks for all your help!

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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #8 on: July 23, 2020, 11:47:32 AM »
You shouldn't have to do anything special when you add more drives.

When you're in EM mode for the install the device is running a stripped down version of the firmware which lives entirely in memory. The change made to that config file should disappear once the device is rebooted.

You can verify what the setting is on your system after the install by running:
Code: [Select]
java -jar acp_commander.jar -t <device ip address> -c "grep MAX_DISK_NUM /etc/nas_feature"**you can probably see it in the web interface somewhere too.

Believe it or not I don' t know much about managing disks using the stock firmware. Generally speaking when you add a drive it gets formatted and added to the raid array(s) that contain the boot/system/swap volumes. The options are different when attaching via USB but I'm not familiar with that process. It's probably easier to connect the drive to a different system and copy the data over the network.

If you'd like you can install Debian instead of the stock firmware:
https://github.com/1000001101000/Debian_on_Buffalo

You get a lot more flexibility that way but have to a lot more config for yourself. 


phirephoto

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Re: buffalo terastation lost boot image
« Reply #9 on: July 23, 2020, 12:01:37 PM »
You shouldn't have to do anything special when you add more drives.

When you're in EM mode for the install the device is running a stripped down version of the firmware which lives entirely in memory. The change made to that config file should disappear once the device is rebooted.

You can verify what the setting is on your system after the install by running:
Code: [Select]
java -jar acp_commander.jar -t <device ip address> -c "grep MAX_DISK_NUM /etc/nas_feature"**you can probably see it in the web interface somewhere too.

Believe it or not I don' t know much about managing disks using the stock firmware. Generally speaking when you add a drive it gets formatted and added to the raid array(s) that contain the boot/system/swap volumes. The options are different when attaching via USB but I'm not familiar with that process. It's probably easier to connect the drive to a different system and copy the data over the network.

If you'd like you can install Debian instead of the stock firmware:
https://github.com/1000001101000/Debian_on_Buffalo

You get a lot more flexibility that way but have to a lot more config for yourself.

Thanks - it shows 4. I took it out of raid mode, but yeah appears it needs to format drives. Was hoping to just put my drive that I currently have in a USB enclosure into it. Looks like I need to copy data over first :(

I'm somewhat new to Linux, so I think Debian firmware would be a nightmare for me! :-D