Faulty DS418

[Tedster]

You can bet the farm, that if Wedgehog had a big YouTube channel. Synology would have been tripping over themselves to provide a solution.

 

[Tedster]

To be fair to Synology. They did an RMA on my 1515+ just out of extended warranty. They didn't need to do that for me but they did.

It's just a shame, support seems to have gone downhill, big time, in the past couple of years.

 

[Elextrixman]

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?

Boot log is missing alot of info. Sure you captured it correctly? Is this capture from serial, or lan? AND REMOVE THE COIN CELL BATT. AND BOOT AGAIN.

 

[Wedgehog]

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.

There is no doubt Ted it is a rip off and a scam, considering how much this 418 cost, the tiny PCB I doubt has £50 worth of components on it plus the case and frame, but I would say they make considerable clear profit, and as you say plus the rip off licences. I got caught with that with Surveillance station when I tried to add more camera's and had to pay £50 for licences

-- post merged: 18. Dec 2022 --

Boot log is missing alot of info. Sure you captured it correctly. Is this capture from serial, or lan?

Hi, Captured from serial via Bus Pirate. Here is the latest one.

 

[Elextrixman]

There is no doubt Ted it is a rip off and a scam, considering how much this 418 cost, the tiny PCB I doubt has £50 worth of components on it plus the case and frame, but I would say they make considerable clear profit, and as you say plus the rip off licences. I got caught with that with Surveillance station when I tried to add more camera's and had to pay £50 for licences

-- post merged: 18. Dec 2022 --

Hi, Captured from serial via Bus Pirate. Here is the latest one.

Weird. As no boot log. Only misc running log. Remove the coin cell and try a boot. As when all Synology boots. There is a choice menu to start. And normally the choice menu pops up with either boot Syno1 or Syno2, and the default will always be Syno2 for the OS to launch. Coin cell out will reset memory map. And try again, and leave coin cell out. Usually this is from a common flash drive failure. But the NAS is too new for this to happen. Is this for sure a straight DS418, or DS418play?

 

[Wedgehog]

Weird. As no boot log. Only misc running log. Remove the coin cell and try a boot. As when all Synology boots. There is a choice menu to start. And normally the choice menu pops up with either boot Syno1 or Syno2, and the default will always be Syno2 for the OS to launch. Coin cell out will reset memory map. And try again, and leave coin cell out. Usually this is from a common flash drive failure. But the NAS is too new for this to happen. Is this for sure a straight DS418, or DS418play?

I think you might be thinking of a different processor, this DS418 is an Arm proc. the only menu I have seen is the Uboot menu when you press esc.? I'm asking not telling as I don't have a clue . Yes straight DS418

 

[Elextrixman]

I think you might be thinking of a different processor, this DS418 is an Arm proc. the only menu I have seen is the Uboot menu when you press esc.? I'm asking not telling as I don't have a clue . Yes straight DS418

LOL! My mind keeps sending me to + unit world. Yes. You got the Realtek CPU. Well. You NAS runs, and gets the Beep. The beep is critical.. And I see you asked Synology for the flash. When you asked for flash. Were you thinking ROM, or DOM USB? You still need to do the coin cell reset. There is a technique we use in lab, as we service many of these. Haven't seen a 418 straight in a long long time. Now, the reset process for this to remap and start fresh requires a risk. The goal in summary is this. First try and boot no coin cell. All Syno Nas remap with no cell. And errors are erased and not brought back tot he table. Yes. If you NAS had a issue on last boot. It will keep it in memory, and keep doing it. You need to reset that. Coin cell does that. This is a low level reset. The high level reset, I have to message private, as it is more dangerous to do to be posting online. But report back what happened with the low lever reset. To do low level. Unplug adapter. Remove the coin cell. While holding power button down, plug in adapter, and keep holding the power button for 10 secs. Now let go of PB and push it again to start. WHat happened? And did anything change?

 

[Wedgehog]

LOL! My mind keeps sending me to + unit world. Yes. You got the Realtek CPU. Well. You NAS runs, and gets the Beep. The beep is critical.. And I see you asked Synology for the flash. When you asked for flash. Were you thinking ROM, or DOM USB? You still need to do the coin cell reset. There is a technique we use in lab, as we service many of these. Haven't seen a 418 straight in a long long time. Now, the reset process for this to remap and start fresh requires a risk. The goal in summary is this. First try and boot no coin cell. All Syno Nas remap with no cell. And errors are erased and not brought back tot he table. Yes. If you NAS had a issue on last boot. It will keep it in memory, and keep doing it. You need to reset that. Coin cell does that. This is a low level reset. The high level reset, I have to message private, as it is more dangerous to do to be posting online. But report back what happened with the low lever reset. To do low level. Unplug adapter. Remove the coin cell. While holding power button down, plug in adapter, and keep holding the power button for 10 secs. Now let go of PB and push it again to start. WHat happened? And did anything change?

Good morning Elextrixman No worries, and thank you for your help, I am very grateful. yes that's the one, when all is in order it boots when its ready for service and the blue flashing LED of death finally stops flashing, except mine doesn't. Yes I initially asked them for a pre programmed flash as I knew they encrypted the latest .PAT files, so I couldn't access them, after they refused I thought about it and it occurred to me that I could use the files from an older version (which I could access) and if I got it working it would update itself. If you have read all the above you know that the power went off during an update of the dsm. I presumed the flash was corrupted. No this one does not have the little USB board, the flash chip is a 25L6433F SOIC, I removed it with my hot air rework station and re flashed it and put it back, several times now!
I noticed that other than Uboot (redboot) the files in the older dsm were different sizes, all I could do was load the file which I originally read and saved out of the flash into a hex reader/editor and make a not of the offsets that each of the files started at, and then build the new one with them in the same positions, obviously Uboot is no problem as it's at 00 I guessed Zimage was next and put that at 100000 and RD.gx at 3f0000 serial number and checksum at 7EF0000 and Vendor at 7FF300, I copied the serial number and vendor area from the original and built the new flash file. The result was what you saw above in the log. I did try taking the cro32 battery out, and it made no difference, but of course I didn't know the instructions you gave about holding in the on/off button, I will go try that in a bit.

I am not absolutely certain that the original flash was corrupted, it was my best guess, as i said I have the original which I read out of it before I flashed it, so I could put it back if needed, the attached log was the result I had with that file, with the original flash it just kept saying "Internal error: Oops - undefined instruction: 0 [#488] SMP" and repeating it as you can see that was the 488th time!
Oh! and of course I have been doing all this with no disks in because I know it should boot with no disks and then ask me to put a disk in, at the moment I can't even see it on the network with Syno assistant.
I will go try the battery reset again and let you know what happens Bob

 

[Wedgehog]

Ok I have removed the battery and held the power button in while I connected the power, waited ten seconds let go off the power button and it started on it's own, I didn't need to push it again? Anyway it made no difference. Log attached.

I also just tried the b2ndbc command while in the bootloader menu it's supposed to load the second stage bootcode this is the result

"Realtek> b2ndbc


EXPORT ENV AT 0x10000000, ENV size info:0x00002000,0x00001ffc,0x00000004
rtk_preload_bootimages_spi : header info
0x00000c00 0x00062c80 0x00010b00 0x00000000
0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00026388
0x00000000
rtk_preload_bootimages_spi : load U-Boot 64 from 0x88194c40 to 0x01500000 with size 0x00026388
fdt_chosen: FDT_ERR_BADMAGIC
check factory flag
copy_2nd_bootloader_and_run : src:0x01500000, dst:0x00021000, size:0x00028000
Jumping to 2nd bootloader...


U-Boot 2015.07-g428cfe7-dirty (May 16 2018 - 10:29:38 +0800)

CPU : Cortex-A53 Quad Core
Board: Realtek QA Board
DRAM: 2 GiB
mapping memory 0x20000000-0x40000000 non-cached
In: serial
Out: serial
Err: serial
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
Unknown command 'run' - try 'help'
Unknown command 'run' - try 'help'
rtk_plat_set_fw not port yet, use default configs
Not raw Image, Starting Decompress Image.gz...


Error: Bad gzipped data
Decompress FAIL!!
ERROR do_booti failed!
Realtek>"

 

[Elextrixman]

Ok I have removed the battery and held the power button in while I connected the power, waited ten seconds let go off the power button and it started on it's own, I didn't need to push it again? Anyway it made no difference. Log attached.

I also just tried the b2ndbc command while in the bootloader menu it's supposed to load the second stage bootcode this is the result

"Realtek> b2ndbc


EXPORT ENV AT 0x10000000, ENV size info:0x00002000,0x00001ffc,0x00000004
rtk_preload_bootimages_spi : header info
0x00000c00 0x00062c80 0x00010b00 0x00000000
0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00026388
0x00000000
rtk_preload_bootimages_spi : load U-Boot 64 from 0x88194c40 to 0x01500000 with size 0x00026388
fdt_chosen: FDT_ERR_BADMAGIC
check factory flag
copy_2nd_bootloader_and_run : src:0x01500000, dst:0x00021000, size:0x00028000
Jumping to 2nd bootloader...


U-Boot 2015.07-g428cfe7-dirty (May 16 2018 - 10:29:38 +0800)

CPU : Cortex-A53 Quad Core
Board: Realtek QA Board
DRAM: 2 GiB
mapping memory 0x20000000-0x40000000 non-cached
In: serial
Out: serial
Err: serial
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
Unknown command 'run' - try 'help'
Unknown command 'run' - try 'help'
rtk_plat_set_fw not port yet, use default configs
Not raw Image, Starting Decompress Image.gz...


Error: Bad gzipped data
Decompress FAIL!!
ERROR do_booti failed!
Realtek>"

Sorry as so busy here. Will be back asap!

 

[Wedgehog]

Sorry as so busy here. Will be back asap!

No problem, at your convenience, I am just pleased to have the help. Bob

 

[Elextrixman]

No problem, at your convenience, I am just pleased to have the help. Bob

Sure. Before I go over your logs, Few questions? Is it only showing flashing power light? Is the fans spinning? And do you have history on what might have happened prior to it going down? I apologize. I know I can over all the messages you made.
But in summary is best. Let me know.
I will go over these logs too. Thanks!-

-- post merged: 19. Dec 2022 --

No problem, at your convenience, I am just pleased to have the help. Bob

And is there drives in the system? Or do you have a spare drive we can use for testing?

 

[Wedgehog]

Sure. Before I go over your logs, Few questions? Is it only showing flashing power light? Is the fans spinning? And do you have history on what might have happened prior to it going down? I apologize. I know I can over all the messages you made.
But in summary is best. Let me know.
I will go over these logs too. Thanks!-

-- post merged: 19. Dec 2022 --

And is there drives in the system? Or do you have a spare drive we can use for testing?

I guessed you would need a summary and it is a post above yours, I posted that this morning, at the moment the chassis is out the box so the fans are not connected and with the disks out the only flashing light is the blue led.
I only have the original three drives, which I know are ok as I put them in my DS920 and they are fine and so is my data, the 418 should boot with no disks in and then ask for a disk, at the moment it can't even be found on the network, please read the post above the one where I did the battery test. Bob
Oh! and in the sumary post above I included a log from a start up with the original flash in it and the three disks in it, you will see my comment and in the log that it tries 480 times to do something?

 

[Elextrixman]

OK. A little reading, and then the fun stuff in the middle. LOL!
Checking the logs, i see only the usual with a few exceptions. AT least you are booting in SYNO2. Or Flash would be bad. All Synology's have 2 boot loaders. SYNO1 is factory and old default and resides on ROM. Syno2 is your real up and running OS on flash. Bad flash will force SYNO1 to boot. And that's just a skimmed down version of Linux on the system. Sort of a limp home mode. But that part is ok ion your NAS as I see it does boot SYNO2 ok. Fans are off, normal, and no drives installed, and even Ethernet came up ok,,,,,all normal stuff. You definitely have a issue on boot looking at the end of the log. The kernal panic happens at the very end, as the file system seems corrupt or missing. And can't register in memory as root. Highest level. May even still be stuck in memory. Before we do anything. Lets guarantee. The NAS is remapped in memory. I want you to follow this closely. Very closely. As its important! Gonna require 2 hands, and get help if need be. Here it is: 1) Unplug the unit. 2) Remove the coin cell battery. In fact leave it out until this thing is fixed. We don't need it anyways for our work. 3) Power on the unit. And wait 5 minutes. 4) The tricky part. And dangerous. So keep your eyes peeled at anything you touch. And touch nothing else but what is described. What I want you to do is short the coin cell battery socket only, and at the exact same time hold the power button down, until the unit shuts off. Usually about 13 seconds. But keep that short and holding the power button until it powers off. 5) Remove the short, and your finger on the power button at the same time. You should be looking at an off unit now. 6) Hit the power button, and report back what happens. Gather the log as it boots if you can. Thanks! Ray

 

[Wedgehog]

OK. A little reading, and then the fun stuff in the middle. LOL!
Checking the logs, i see only the usual with a few exceptions. AT least you are booting in SYNO2. Or Flash would be bad. All Synology's have 2 boot loaders. SYNO1 is factory and old default and resides on ROM. Syno2 is your real up and running OS on flash. Bad flash will force SYNO1 to boot. And that's just a skimmed down version of Linux on the system. Sort of a limp home mode. But that part is ok ion your NAS as I see it does boot SYNO2 ok. Fans are off, normal, and no drives installed, and even Ethernet came up ok,,,,,all normal stuff. You definitely have a issue on boot looking at the end of the log. The kernal panic happens at the very end, as the file system seems corrupt or missing. And can't register in memory as root. Highest level. May even still be stuck in memory. Before we do anything. Lets guarantee. The NAS is remapped in memory. I want you to follow this closely. Very closely. As its important! Gonna require 2 hands, and get help if need be. Here it is: 1) Unplug the unit. 2) Remove the coin cell battery. In fact leave it out until this thing is fixed. We don't need it anyways for our work. 3) Power on the unit. And wait 5 minutes. 4) The tricky part. And dangerous. So keep your eyes peeled at anything you touch. And touch nothing else but what is described. What I want you to do is short the coin cell battery socket only, and at the exact same time hold the power button down, until the unit shuts off. Usually about 13 seconds. But keep that short and holding the power button until it powers off. 5) Remove the short, and your finger on the power button at the same time. You should be looking at an off unit now. 6) Hit the power button, and report back what happens. Gather the log as it boots if you can. Thanks! Ray

Hi Ray, bad news I'm afraid, first of all allow me to put your mind at rest when you give me instructions, I am a retired electronics engineer with over 50 years in the business, but i am not at all familiar with Linux, or much by way of codes, other than a bit of Arduino but you can trust me to follow your instructions.
So the bad news, did exactly as you said but it will not shut down, and come to think of it it will not shut down under normal circumstances if you hold the button in for a bit and it will not shut down if I select the shut down command from the boot menu. I tried it three times, each time starting fresh and waiting five minutes before shorting the battery terminals and at the same time pressing and holding the button, held it for over a minute, nothing, just keeps going!
Do you think I should put the original flash code back and try with that?

 

[Elextrixman]

Hi Ray, bad news I'm afraid, first of all allow me to put your mind at rest when you give me instructions, I am a retired electronics engineer with over 50 years in the business, but i am not at all familiar with Linux, or much by way of codes, other than a bit of Arduino but you can trust me to follow your instructions.
So the bad news, did exactly as you said but it will not shut down, and come to think of it it will not shut down under normal circumstances if you hold the button in for a bit and it will not shut down if I select the shut down command from the boot menu. I tried it three times, each time starting fresh and waiting five minutes before shorting the battery terminals and at the same time pressing and holding the button, held it for over a minute, nothing, just keeps going!
Do you think I should put the original flash code back and try with that?

Yes. Oh. Didn't know you left the old code in it. Also when you push the power button down, try and record the logs. The log should see the shutdown command initiated, and post to the OS to SG-Kill the devices that are running. It should say PB pushed, and initiating shut down. Sorry forgot to ask that. I retire soon as a EE. About 45 years in this. But with all these dead NAS's I get daily. LOL! its crazy in here for me. LOL! I kinda thought you had experience reading what you did so far. And that helps tremendously. Thanks!-Ray

 

[Wedgehog]

Yes. Oh. Didn't know you left the old code in it. Also when you push the power button down, try and record the logs. The log should see the shutdown command initiated, and post to the OS to SG-Kill the devices that are running. It should say PB pushed, and initiating shut down. Sorry forgot to ask that. I retire soon as a EE. About 45 years in this. But with all these dead NAS's I get daily. LOL! its crazy in here for me. LOL! I kinda thought you had experience reading what you did so far. And that helps tremendously. Thanks!-Ray

Hi Ray, no I didn't leave the old code in it! my question was do you want me to put the original code back and try it?
Edit: I just had a thought, when you said "I didn't rialise you had the old code in it" did you mean the older DSM? if so I'm talking at cross purposes To be clear at the moment it has got the flash I made from the older DSM in it, Do you want me to put the original back in case it wasn't corrupt?

I did do a log but I didn't attach it as it showed nothing changing when I shorted things, here is the log for the last couple of tries.
Also I couldn't press to re start and do a log, because it would not switch off!

 

[Wedgehog]

Hi Ray, I don't know if you have read any of the above, but as I had no reply I went ahead and put the original flash back.
I tried your soft re set Battery out power up with button pressed. No change
I did the hard re set, hold button and short battery after it's been on five min.No change, it doesn't even say I am pressing the button.Log attached.
These re-sets seem unreliable to me as the involve the use of a software driven on / off switch, which in my case doesn't work, It used to, but now even if I just press it now nothing happens, and when I plug the power in, the nas comes on straight away.

Anyway nothing I can do now without your help Ray I wait in anticipation.

Just out of interest I hit esc while it was booting to get to the menu and there is a command syno_pwroff I ran that and it said "Shutdown DS" but it's still going! been ten minutes now.

Also I have attached a log with the disks installed, gives a different fail report.

 

[Elextrixman]

Hi Ray, I don't know if you have read any of the above, but as I had no reply I went ahead and put the original flash back.
I tried your soft re set Battery out power up with button pressed. No change
I did the hard re set, hold button and short battery after it's been on five min.No change, it doesn't even say I am pressing the button.Log attached.
These re-sets seem unreliable to me as the involve the use of a software driven on / off switch, which in my case doesn't work, It used to, but now even if I just press it now nothing happens, and when I plug the power in, the nas comes on straight away.

Anyway nothing I can do now without your help Ray I wait in anticipation.

Just out of interest I hit esc while it was booting to get to the menu and there is a command syno_pwroff I ran that and it said "Shutdown DS" but it's still going! been ten minutes now.

Also I have attached a log with the disks installed, gives a different fail report.

I'm gong to go over these logs you sent as soon as I catch up. A lot of NAS here today before the storm hits. What luck. When you entered the pwr_off command, did you see that it accepted it? Did it say system power off requested, and start the sig_kill commands?
Also have you tested a new power supply in this recently? Normally in root login, I enter "poweroff" command and it imitates the command sequence for powering down the unit. Same for all NAS's too.

 

[Wedgehog]

I'm gong to go over these logs you sent as soon as I catch up. A lot of NAS here today before the storm hits. What luck. When you entered the pwr_off command, did you see that it accepted it? Did it say system power off requested, and start the sig_kill commands?
Also have you tested a new power supply in this recently? Normally in root login, I enter "poweroff" command and it imitates the command sequence for powering down the unit. Same for all NAS's too.

Ok Ray, with regards to the shutdown command I did describe it in the post you just answered? Syno_pwroff and it showed "Shutdown DS" but it didn't
I have not tried another power supply for the reason that this is not a failure it is corruption due to my house power going off while it was updating. But are you asking because of the refusal to shut down? Does the Syno send a command to the power supply to shut down? I would be extremely grateful if while you are helping me you could tell me a bit about the system as well as I love to learn, I also have a DS920 I will try the power supply from that and let you know if it helps with the shutdown.
I have never seen a response on the log when I press the shutdown button HOWEVER I do get a Power has been unplugged, when I pull the dc connection out to shut it down. Bob