Faulty DS418

[Wedgehog]

Hi Guys, Of course the house power went off during a system upgrade and I was left with a flashing blue LED.
I couldn't do the resets as it wouldn't beep when pressed for 4 seconds or more
I took all the drives out and powered on but it sat there all night with the flashing blue LED
I tried it with just drive 1 in and it actualy eventually beeped and had a steady blue LED and solid green status , so I tried the resets, I did mode 2 and it beeped after the first press and beeped three times after the second, the blue LED started flashing again so I left it and when I returned later it was sat there with solid blue and greens, I thought it was working, but no LED's on the network socket and could not find it with Synology Assistant on my network.
I took it to bits with a plan to re flash the memory, Oh! first of all I contacted Synology and asked if they could sell me a pre programmed flash memory, They answered my ticket by asking for proof of purchase, I sent it, but I wasn't asking for any guarantee work, the answered that by saying it's not under guarantee so clear off. What a waste of space they are, and they have the cheek to call themselves technical assistance!
So I downloaded a .pat and extracted the files, but then noticed there is a serial connection on the edge of the board. So I connected my serial to USB adapter to it and switched it on monitoring it on the pc. It wasn't as dead as I thought, it completed BIOS and a lot of the setup said welcome to linux and started setting up a lot more, then it got to a point where it actually said oop's there is a problem, it couldn't load something and then spen a couple of thousand times trying again, but basically just looped.
It then occurred to me that you can put your drives into another synology, so I took the drives out of the 215J and put them into it, switched it on and in a short time I had solid blue and solid greens AND LIGHTS ON THE ETHERNET woohoo thought I, I ran the search on the synology assistant and it found the DS920 and the DS418
yes it actually showed up, but of course in keeping with my usual luck I click on it and it won't connect, I just get a page saying we are having trouble connecting to that site try later?
I don't really know what to do now, I enclose the log file if anyone want's to try and help me and who has enough knowledge to understand it as I don't :-( It says something about "Killed by term signal" I thought that might mean it couldn't talk to the network while it was talking to my Serial terminal, so I disconnected it but still the same, It's just doing my head in that I can see it on the network now but not connect to it, can anyone help please?

 

[fredbert]

Sorry for the long approval. Hope you get the NAS fixed.

 

[Wedgehog]

Sorry for the long approval. Hope you get the NAS fixed.

That's ok Fredbert, Where should I have put this post? there doesn't seem to be a board for faults?

 

[SynoMan]

Where should I have put this post? there doesn't seem to be a board for faults?

Moved to System Management.

 

[Wedgehog]

Moved to System Management.

Ahh! thank you

 

[Tedster]

This video may help you.

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[Wedgehog]

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Hi Ted, thank you for your reply, Yes I have already seen it, unfortunately it's a different model. The guy in this video states he downloaded the BIOS file from SYNOLOGY you cannot do that, all you can download is a DSM .pat file and you need a special program to extract it. When Synology discovered that some people were doing this and extracting the bios files and repairing their own units and not spending hundreds buying a new one, they encrypted the DSM files, so now we are in a sittuation where you will have the latest or close to DSM on your NAS at the moment I think it's 7.1.1 and if you brick it and need the Bios file for that version, like me you are stuffed as you cannot extract the file anymore do to those gits encrypting it.

 

[Tedster]

Oh that sucks! Synology are looking less and less attractive to me. I hope you can find a solution!

 

[Wedgehog]

Oh that sucks! Synology are looking less and less attractive to me. I hope you can find a solution!

Hi Ted, I can't believe they make consumer electronics at the kind of prices they are with no protection against power loss when updating and no simple way to re flash via usb. I contacted them and told them I would be happy to pay them to help me repair this one, but they had no interest in helping a customer whatsoever, stating they only do guarantee work.

-- post merged: 10. Dec 2022 --

Ok, just in case anyone is interested I will report what I did today. I thought about the problem during the night and remembered that you can put the disks from one disk station into another and it will sort it out. so this morning I took the disks out of my 920 and put the three 5TB disk from the 418 into that, my thinking was if when the power went off at 92% it was just writing the operating system to the disk and had already finished with flash memories, I could get the operating system re installed on the 920. so anyway I switched on and all was good and on my PC it asked me to log in and then reported the operating system needed to be updated, I tried to tell it to manually load a 418 DSM, but of course it wouldn't have it, so it had to be the latest DSM 711 or whatever it is, it did that and then re-booted and worked perfectly, all the data on my disks was fine.
So I shut it down expecting it to now work in reverse on the 418, I put the disks back in the 418 and switched on, nothing but a flashing blue LED, I was hoping it would fire up and ask to update the DSM and this time it would load a 418 one. Nope, So I connected the serial UART cable and fired up the terminal to have a look what was going on. Although I am not a Linux man I could see it boot, several pages went by with it loading drivers and whatever and eventually it froze saying it couldn't load some file or other.
Well we know the disks are ok so it has to be the flash was corrupted too, so I de-soldered the flash and read it's contents in to a file. I then extracted a Ubootds418.bin and wrote it to the flash, then fitted it back on the board.
Powered up and continuous blue flashing LED, checked the terminal and this time it's stopped at Can't find the correct GZ file.
Well A GZ file or gunzip file is a compressed archive which apparently in Linux they often use and expand the contents when it is called for, so obviously the flash is calling for the GZ file of the version I got the UBootDS418.bin from but wants the one from the DSM 711 which it upgraded to when in the 920.
Which of course I cannot give it as the 711 file is encrypted to prevent it.
My plan tomorrow is to take the 920 to bits and see if the flash memory is the same chip, or at least 64k in size, if so I will copy the 920's flash ( One way to get the damn file) and flash it to the 418, then it will match the DSM that's on those disks now. wish me luck, will report later tomorrow.

 

[Tedster]

Good luck!

 

[Wedgehog]

Good luck!

Well, no luck with that, I tried several files extracted from the DSM .pat files but no good and to be honest I was clutching at straws because these .PAT files are updates, not complete operating system files, I am fairly certain my 418 was on version 7.1.1-42962 but there has been three updates to that, Also I believe the flash is made up of three different things at different memory locations, and you really need to know what you are doing to build it, I'm not good enough and need help. That or if someone who has a DS418 could do me a copy of their flash memory that would fix it because the file would all be assembled in the correct places ready to go.
I am getting the impression by the responses to my posts that there are not a lot of technical folk on here? or if there are they are reluctant to help anyone?

 

[Tedster]

I think the thing to take from this, is that Synology sucks!

No way to reflash a bios by usb, removing the bios files from their downloads. Encrypting their downloads. Stopping you from reverting the DSM version to an earlier, stable one. Deleting "faulty" updates and replacing them with new versions with the same version name as before! Not interested in helping customers after the warranty expires.

Sneaky, underhanded and anti-customer. I hope they reap what they sow.

 

[Wedgehog]

I think the thing to take from this, is that Synology sucks!

No way to reflash a bios by usb, removing the bios files from their downloads. Encrypting their downloads. Stopping you from reverting the DSM version to an earlier, stable one. Deleting "faulty" updates and replacing them with new versions with the same version name as before! Not interested in helping customers after the warranty expires.

Sneaky, underhanded and anti-customer. I hope they reap what they sow.

Yep, you've got it mate, I still have the 920 which is a better and faster NAS than the 418 and I still have the two bay little 215j but that's the oldest and slowest, I used the 418 as a backup, I set it up so whatever was written to the 920 was also written to the 418 that way they were identical, it meant several things, first they were identical, so if one went down we had it all on the other, and that paid off this time, although i can read the three disks from the 418 in the 920, and it meant you didn't have to set up 50 50 raid in the 920 which wastes half your storage, and anyway if I had had raid as a backup on the 418 it would have been pointless, how can it repair the disks if you can't even start the damn thing. and last it meant we used the fastest NAS and the automatic copy to the 418 could take whatever time it wanted and what we were doing on the 920 wasn't slowed down by the process.
The only hope I have now is if someone will do me a copy of their flash memory from a DS418.
Things I have proved.
With no disks in a working NAS will do a mode 1 reset and ask you to re-install the DSM
I wish my 418 would do that, but it doesn't get far enough in the boot to do it.
You can put the disks from one NAS into another, providing you have enough bays, you need to remove the originals first of course, then the NAS will update the DSM on the disks.
I did this which proves my three 5.5TB disks are ok.
The flash file has several parts to it loaded at different memory locations, the fist thing to occur at power on is like a BIOS, when that has finished it calls the second mem location and runs the Uboot and finally loads the disk structure image, called Zimage, and that's where mine goes tits up, this is from the log and you can see it cannot create the linux folders

5.378020] RAMDISK: lzma image found at block 0
[ 5.496779] LZMA data is corrupt
[ 5.508878] EXT4-fs (md0): unable to read superblock
[ 5.515236] EXT4-fs (md0): unable to read superblock
[ 5.520388] EXT2-fs (md0): error: unable to read superblock
[ 5.526181] EXT4-fs (md0): unable to read superblock
[ 5.531325] EXT4-fs (md0): unable to read superblock
[ 5.536476] EXT2-fs (md0): error: unable to read superblock
[ 5.542195] List of all partitions:
[ 5.545772] 0100 655360 ram0 (driver?)
[ 5.550514] 0101 655360 ram1 (driver?)
[ 5.555258] 0102 655360 ram2 (driver?)
[ 5.559998] 0103 655360 ram3 (driver?)
[ 5.564740] 0104 655360 ram4 (driver?)
[ 5.569481] 0105 655360 ram5 (driver?)
[ 5.574224] 0106 655360 ram6 (driver?)
[ 5.578962] 0107 655360 ram7 (driver?)
[ 5.583706] 0108 655360 ram8 (driver?)
[ 5.588445] 0109 655360 ram9 (driver?)
[ 5.593187] 010a 655360 ram10 (driver?)
[ 5.598014] 010b 655360 ram11 (driver?)
[ 5.602847] 010c 655360 ram12 (driver?)
[ 5.607674] 010d 655360 ram13 (driver?)
[ 5.612507] 010e 655360 ram14 (driver?)
[ 5.617336] 010f 655360 ram15 (driver?)
[ 5.622167] 1f00 1024 mtdblock0 (driver?)
[ 5.627350] 1f01 3008 mtdblock1 (driver?)
[ 5.632537] 1f02 4092 mtdblock2 (driver?)
[ 5.637721] 1f03 64 mtdblock3 (driver?)
[ 5.642908] 1f04 4 mtdblock4 (driver?)
[ 5.648090] No filesystem could mount root, tried: ext3 ext4 ext2
[ 5.654468] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(9,0)

So that's about where my ability with Linux ends, unless some kind soul gives me a flash image

 

[Tedster]

I'm no longer trusting my 1515+ despite it running again with my transistor and resistor "fixes".
I was going to pull the trigger on a new Synology. Nah, I don't think so!

I can only wish you good luck.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

I am getting the impression by the responses to my posts that there are not a lot of technical folk on here? or if there are they are reluctant to help anyone?

I think that Synologys are closer to being appliances than open PCs, so people like yr good self who get stuck into hardware hacking on Synos are relatively rare, unfortunately. A situation made worse ofc by the increasingly closed, proprietary route Syno appears to be heading down, ref the encypted bios, drive lock-ins etc. I think most typical Syno users in your situation would just go out and buy another one.

Have you had tried asking re the flash img on the Xpenology forums? They're probably more geared up to hardware tinkering etc and someone might have the image you need.

Flash transplant

Hi all, It is possible to get the DS412+ to boot from an external USB drive, I have done this successfully with an A-DATA C802. Normally the NAS will not boot any old USB you connect to it, regardless of whether the drive is in the front USB port or the back. It turns out the BIOS is locked to on...

xpenology.com

Good luck!

 

[Wedgehog]

I'm no longer trusting my 1515+ despite it running again with my transistor and resistor "fixes".
I was going to pull the trigger on a new Synology. Nah, I don't think so!

I can only wish you good luck.

Hi Ted, well thank you for your comment on the other forum, I have posted the issue on there and on the XPEnology forums, waited over a week and not one person has bothered to speak to me let alone offer help.
I have still been working on it, I tried many times at re constructing the flash with an older DSM pat, I think I got it ok as when I follow the serial dump log it certainly loads Uboot as that's the first file in the flash and I can actually see where it says it is going to load the Kernal (Zimage) it says it has found it and starts to work with it but then fails saying it cannot write it to the DDR, I have no Idea why, but I see it's a common complaint with Linux where people update their system and get
"end Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(9,0)"
I even tried to use the tftpd server and told Uboot to load from it with a view to getting the kernel into memory and then running Bootm to start it, but I don't appear to have a working network socket so that's stuffed. As I am fairly certain that the flash file is now correct for the older version from the pat file, I am going to try and manually load the Image from the flash to a different offset in the DDR4 and see if I can start it from there,

-- post merged: 17. Dec 2022 --

I think that Synologys are closer to being appliances than open PCs, so people like yr good self who get stuck into hardware hacking on Synos are relatively rare, unfortunately. A situation made worse ofc by the increasingly closed, proprietary route Syno appears to be heading down, ref the encypted bios, drive lock-ins etc. I think most typical Syno users in your situation would just go out and buy another one.

Have you had tried asking re the flash img on the Xpenology forums? They're probably more geared up to hardware tinkering etc and someone might have the image you need.

Flash transplant

Hi all, It is possible to get the DS412+ to boot from an external USB drive, I have done this successfully with an A-DATA C802. Normally the NAS will not boot any old USB you connect to it, regardless of whether the drive is in the front USB port or the back. It turns out the BIOS is locked to on...

xpenology.com

Good luck!

I did read the post you attached and I even tried to contact the OP, the problem with what he has done is that it will only work on that specific make and size of USB stick, he says he still has a few, (In Jan this year) so to contact him, so I left a post telling him I had messaged him, but of course nothing! Thanks for your input by the way. Bob

 

[Jan Janowski]

My $.02 and you know I'm saying what I believe......
Many MFG's are doing this now... Everything is throw away, and many devices used within them are spec'd 'lower quality' product purchased to save MFG Money-- last the length of warranty and not much longer! (Electrolytic caps, some memory devices)...

In Many Instances in the past few years, I'm getting the gut feeling that the person manning the phone, or email, doesn't know the product, and is looking at flip cards!

Some MFG's Will go out of their way and release partial schematics on chronic failure areas of obsoleted devices, and this can assist folks wanting to fix obsolete things out of warranty.... Some even have ECN's (Engineering Change Notifications!!).. But that's usually on a one on one basis, over the phone, with a technician who 'cares'... Can you imagine how much Positive Reinforcement toward the "Company" this assistance generates??? They obviously don't!

The "resistor added to transistor" repair is a case in point to be considered... How about: "Added resistor to Fix CPU?" Both of these are ECN's BEGGING to be written!!!! Where are they???? (Crickets!)

They (MFG's) are gonna do what they wanna do... They are dealing with a captured audience... (Us).. Support to them is an expense -- and expense needing to be reduced... if possible!!
"Support" is not living up to the Webster's explanation of the word... From our point of view..

Be it documentation (my Max Drive size post, finding multiple answers for same question, or a operations manual that contains 30 or so separate printouts.... because there is no one complete manual for the devices, leading to confusion for the new user -- until they find the 30 other posts to print out!)... It's Kinda Sad...

Ok... We know what support will -- and will not give -- for our products....

With No Support: It's up to us to either fix it, or walk away... Whattaya wanna do?

Many Power supplies, 2600 router, Nvida Display card, couple neighbor's flat Panel TV's are on my recent "Win" List...
couple Power Supplies, Different 2600 router, 24 Port GB Switch,, Flat panel TV, on my recent "Lose" List...

 

[Wedgehog]

My $.02 and you know I'm saying what I believe......
Many MFG's are doing this now... Everything is throw away, and many devices used within them are spec'd 'lower quality' product purchased to save MFG Money-- last the length of warranty and not much longer! (Electrolytic caps, some memory devices)...

Some MFG's will go out of their way and release partial schematics on chronic failure areas of obsoleted devices, and this can assist folks wanting to fix obsolete things out of warranty.... But that's usually on a one on one basis, over the phone, with a technician who 'cares'...

The "resistor added to transistor" repair is a case in point to be considered...

They (MFG's) are gonna do what they wanna do... They are dealing with a captured audience...
"Support" is not living up to the Webster's explanation of the word... From our point of view..

Be it documentation (my Max Drive size post, finding multiple answers for same question, or a operations manual that contains 30 or so separate printouts.... because there is no one complete manual for the devices, leading to confusion for the new user!)... It's Kinda Sad...

Ok... We know what support we will and will not get for our products....

It's up to us to either fix it, or walk away... Whattaya wanna do?

Power supplies, 2600 router, Nvida Display card, couple neighbor's flat Panel TV's are on my recent "Win" List...
Different 2600 router, 24 Port GB Switch,, Flat panel TV, on my recent "Lose" List

Hi Jan, you are perfectly correct, it's the same with everything you buy, But we do have a thing in which is spreading like a virus called "The right to repair" I really hope it takes off and forces these criminals to actually give value for money and to make repairing things easier, I don't know if you read all my posts above, but when I contacted Synology all they were interested in was whether it was in guarantee or not, and when they saw it was not they had no interest in helping me whatsoever, and then a few days later the cheeky criminals sent me a survey to ask if I thought they were wonderful. I told them!!

 

[Tedster]

I was looking at a Qnap, as an alternative, but they are just as bad. So many packages need a license and from my brief look. It seems that my new £1,000 NAS would come with 5 "licences" on the NAS that I could use on the packages I wanted to use. Any more would need an additional purchase. Screw that!
You've got Synology vendor locking hardware on theirs and now that kind of crap from Qnap.

For me it signals the end of my relationship with a pre-built NAS. When I can no longer coax my 1515+ into staying alive. I'll just build a low power, mediocre, PC. Stick a bunch of drives in it, maybe using "storage spaces" or something and be done with the whole crap shoot.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

For me it signals the end of my relationship with a pre-built NAS. When I can no longer coax my 1515+ into staying alive. I'll just build a low power, mediocre, PC. Stick a bunch of drives in it, maybe using "storage spaces" or something and be done with the whole crap shoot.

Exactly what I did a couple of years back for my 'real' NAS; I saw the direction Synology was heading in with their rarely-updated sata HDD 'compatibility lists' (!) and the stories of cheap PSUs dying early deaths and rolled my own server / NAS.

It has been a great move & i've learned a great deal from doing it; but then I do this stuff for a living. It's admittedly not for everyone; some people just want an appliance that gets out of the way and doesn't need cultivating to the extent that a from-scratch linux server does.

But not having to worry about compatibility lists and artifically enforced restrictions on USB devices and drives is worth the effort for me. I feel like I'm in control of my NAS, and have been able to succesfully use it for every new technology or use-case that has arisen since it was first commissioned, even if sometimes this has required some research before succeeding.

Being free of artificial restrictions and user-unfriendly 'support' policies that are only there to ++profitmargins is wonderful.