Buffalo Forums
Products => Storage => : theedgecine August 12, 2019, 09:28:55 PM
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Hello!
I have a Terastation TS-QVH4.0TL/R6 and removed the data off of it so I could replace the old drives with new ones. The old drives were sent immediately to recycling. Unfortunately, I didn't know that the firmware resides on the drives! Who would have thought? On power up, the screen displays "Terastation Boot Fail". The device is no longer present on our network and can't be seen in the NAS Navigator 2. I understand that I need a TFTP Boot Recovery program specific to this device. I don't see it in the software downloads on the website. Does anyone know where I could download it? AND.......is there a procedure to install a new boot image that doesn't require a knowledge of Linux or Ubuntu?
Neil
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You’ll need a usb recovery disk to get into EM mode, then you can use the firmware updater to install the firmware.
I put together a guide for creating your own recovery disk:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Create_Recovery_Disk_for_Intel-based_Terastation
Buffalo support can also send you an SD card with the recovery image for a fee.
Once you boot from the recovery disk you’ll need to use the debug options of tsupdater to force a repartition/reformat as part of the install:
https://buffalonas.miraheze.org/wiki/Enable_Debug_mode
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Hey, thanks for your very quick response! I appreciate it.
I'm the IT guy at my company becuse no one else will do it! I can fumble around creating files in DOS, but Linux is a little over my head. How does one create a grub.cfg file? Is the quad nas a 4000 series?
Neil
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That model falls under Terastation WVHL/QVHL/6VHL/8VHL/RVHL
the grub.cfg is just a text file, you can just copy and paste the section from the wiki into the text editor of your choice (I mainly use nano).
apart from that all the needed commands are on the wikipage and should work from something like an ubuntu livecd.
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Hello
I'm in a similar situation. TS-QVH4 that is not happy.
I got here by a different route, a bad HDD, and by the time I figured it out, I'd unknowingly erased the OS.
Same outcome, I'm trying to USB boot this thing back to life.
I've followed 1000001101000's website, all very useful and helpful thank you.
Only problem is, I get stuck in a boot loop.
I've got a monitor and keyboard hooked up so I can see what is happening.
I added a delay to Grub to check that I was getting that far. I am.
Then the NAS sits there for a little while, I get a full white screen and a reboot.
Any hints as to what is wrong?
Thank you
Chris
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If you post some details about the steps you took and in particular your grub.cfg I might be able to spot an issue.
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Thank you.
I'll do my best to remember what I did. I've had a few tries.
All done on a laptop running windows 10 and WSL2 for the Linux bits.
Download tsv-v136.zip from Buffalo
Unzip this to a folder on the laptop
rename initrd.img to initrd.zip
unzip (windows built in engine) initrd.zip (second password in the list) to get initrd-atom_d510.buffalo
rename uimage.img to uimage.zip
unzip as before (third password this time) to get vmlinuz-atom_d510.buffalo
create a grub.cfg file
---
set timeout=5
set default=0
set root='(hd0)'
menuentry "Terastation WVHL/QVHL/6VHL/8VHL/RVHL EM Mode" {
linux /vmlinuz-atom_d510.buffalo root=sde1 rw usbboot=yes mode=initilize ts4000=no acc=no
initrd /initrd-atom_d510.buffalo
}
---
Run up my Windows Linux terminal
create the directory structure mkdir -p disk/boot/grub
copy the two .buffalo files to disk/
copy grub.cfg to disk/boot/grub
sudo apt install grub2 xorriso grub-pc-bin
sudo grub-mkrescue -o ts-recovery.iso disk/
copy ts-recovery.iso to windows desktop
Use balenaEtcher to put the iso onto a USB pen
Put pen drive in NAS, flick switch to USB, cross fingers and power on.
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I tried making one following the instructions on the wiki and got more or less the same result you did. It looks kind of like something is writing a bunch of binary data to the console. I tried again with the boot files that I used when I originally made the guide and got the same result. This made it seem like the issue is with current versions of grub2 or grub-mkrescue, as unlikely as that seems.
I tried making a new image based on syslinux (specifically extlinux) since I've been meaning to look into it for other projects. It worked basically on the first try with no issues. When I get some time I plan to update the wiki page to use this method instead of Grub.
In the meantime if you want to give it a try you should be able to follow any syslinux howto article and set one up as well.
https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos
Here is the contents of the extlinux.conf that worked for me:
ui vesamenu.c32
TIMEOUT 100
label tsv
menu label Terastation WVHL/QVHL/6VHL/8VHL/RVHL EM Mode
menu default
kernel /vmlinuz-atom_d510.buffalo
initrd /initrd-atom_d510.buffalo
append root=sde1 rw usbboot=yes mode=initilize ts4000=no acc=no
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Thank you.
I really appreciate the time you've spent on this and the help.
In some ways it's good to know it wasn't me doing something stupid, but really odd that it's something up with Grub.
Time to start reading up on syslinux
Thanks again
Chris
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I would expect that this method would work from windows (along with the two files you extracted and the cfg that I posted):
https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos#How_to_Create_a_Bootable_USB:_Windows_XP_and_Vista
You'd actually be doing me a favor if you verified that (save me from needing to boot up windows somewhere).
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So far, no so good.
USB sick created, which felt way too easy.
Files copied across, again, this is too easy.
Plugged into the Terastation and booted.... It boots, but only to the loader.
Failed to load COM32 file vesamenu.c32
Boot:
Which repeats.
SysLinux also suggest RMPrepUSB, I'll give that a go and see what happens.
Chris
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part of the guide I followed included copying over vesamenu.c32 to the usb device was one of the steps. It's probably the only/main thing you're missing.
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It BOOTS!
So I tried RMPrepUSB - not worth the effort. Lots of options and it probably does a lot. I tried it once and it didn't feel like it did what I was asking, so I gave up on it.
Back to SysLinux.
Unpacked all the files and folders onto my windows laptop.
Got a USB drive and made sure it was a single partition and formatted to FAT32.
Opened up an elevated command prompt and ran (my usb was on d)
syslinux.exe -m -a d:
All feels too easy as it just works and doesn't appear to do anything, but it does.
I then copied over the 2 buffalo files and the config you supplied (thank you)
It gets to the bootloader but complain that vesamenu is missing.
Go back to the unzipped files for SysLinux and in the BIOS directory search for vesamenu.c32 Copied to file it finds to teh root of the USB drive.
I tried again and this time it complained about another missing file. Find file in BIOS directory, boot again, another missing file, find file add to USB......
I ended up with a root directory of:
vesamenu.c32
initrd-atom_d510.buffalo
syslinux.cfg
vmlinuz-atom_d510.buffalo
libcom32.c32
libutil.c32
Put that into the NAS, power it on and it BOOTS!
I watch the attached monitor go through the menu and then start linux.
The usual scroll of text as things are loaded.
It paused and checked the speed of my disks.
It then paused and complained about no network... Ah yes, I need to plug the network cable in. but I am now back into familiar territory.
I'll go find network cables and free sockets to plug things into and go from there.
Thank you for all the help, I hope my ramblings about what I did to make it work from a windows perspective are helpful.
Chris
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So I thought I was all fixed and sorted, but I was just past the first hurdle.
The NAS will now boot and appear in NAS Navigator and TS-Updater woo-hoo.
But that's it. Updater just fails with partition not found.
I've tried a completely empty disk with no partitions - same message.
I've tried creating an 1G EXT3 partition. - same message.
Again I feel I'm missing some really simple step. Something to recreate the RAID, or at least get the OS back onto a HDD.
I've got 3 HDD's in bays 1,2 and 3. Disk 4 is in the bin as it completely failed. I've tried pulling disk 3 and rebooting. Just in case the NAS is fussy over having an even number of disks.
I've enabled debug mode on TS-Updater, but the format all option is grayed out.
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It needs to be fully populated with working disks for the initial format, otherwise you will get the format failed error with the firmware.
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Thank you, that is exactly the type of thing that would trip me up.
Another question: Do I need 4 matching HDD's in terms of size, or just 4 HDD's?
Thanks again
Chris
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It's not you, they removed the "NoFormatting" flag in recent versions of LS/TSUpdater.
You can manually trigger the partition/format function by calling the script directly using acp_commander:
java -jar acp_commander.jar -t <device ip address> -c "/usr/local/bin/create_partition.sh"
If you are using less than 4 drives you'll probably also have to tweak the max drives value.
java -jar acp_commander.jar -t <device ip address> -c "echo MAX_DISK_NUM=2 >> etc/nas_feature"
After that the installer should work normally.
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Finally. All up and running and happy.
I added a 4th disk that is a different capacity, then used acp_commander to force the format. As I have a screen and keyboard attached, I did try running the command locally, but it asked for the root password.
Thank you so much for all the help.
I've gone from feeling stupid, to feeling relieved that I hadn't missed anything obvious and it just feels like this device was conspiring to stop me.
Now I need to find some subtle way to put a big note on it so I don't repeat my mistake.
Just need to wait for the RAID sync to complete and I can power it off, pull the USB stick and put all the screws back into the HDD's
Thanks again
Chris