Wednesday, April 13, 2011

[nslu2-linux] Another Slug dead (itr doesn't boot..) -- any hint/suggestion very welcomed

 

Hello everyone!

I've been using my 1th slug (Unslung 5.5) for more than 3 years now without a single problem (installed web server, CUPS, MusicBrowser, etc).

Here's the situation.
Recently I got a brand new 2d slug, upgraded from the original V23R25 to V23R29, then to V23R63, tested with 2 Ext. Disks (Lacie and Memup - 1 Tb cap. each); finally, since everything appeared to be working properly, upgraded to unslung 6.10.

I was unsure about the slug's behaviour with the 2 large hard disks attached, but my first tests after the unslung/unsling process went smoothly: it recognized, mounted and formatted both disks to EXT3 without any trouble; I was also able to access the web interface and perform the basic download/uploading of large files -- all worked well.

Then, in my ignorance (being an average windows user lacking the proper knowledge of Linux), I made what I thought it was a trivial change, but that turned out to be a total disaster: at the slug's web interface I decided to delete a user I had created before upgrading to unslung 6.10 (having admin. privileges) and then, changed my mind, and, in that same windows session, recreated the same user back again. Immediately after that, windows (Vista Home Prem. 32b) started denying me access into the admin folder; but much worse than that: after restarting the slug in an attempt to fix things, I realized that the slug wasn't booting anymore: since then, in all my attempts to reboot properly (with no disks attached), it starts as usual by flashing the 1th led (amber => green) and then the 1th and the 2d led, but it never ends the boot process with the final little beep... Both leds remain steady green (the 2d flashing sometimes indicating some ethernet activity) but no way of reaching the slug using telnet/http/ftp with Putty/WinScp, etc

I'll list below the attempts that I made so far trying to fix the situation, hoping that someone among the more experienced users at the forum (or someone having been through the same trouble) may give me some hint to put me on the right track so I could get my slug back into business:
1) Of course I started by trying those basic solutions like booting without any disks attached, press for 30 secs the reset button at the back of the device and then restart... no joy.

2) Thanks to the wonderful how~tos available at the forum's site, I was able to get into the slug's redboot prompt(from a linux session using a Knoppix 6.4.4 CD and then following the method of telneting to 192.168.0.1, port 9000, using iputils/arping commands).

3) At redboot prompt, first, I only issued the command 'reset', closed the linux session, restarted windows, rebooted the slug and tried to access the web interface - no success!

4) Then, I thought the trouble probably was due to some malfunction at the non-volatile SysConf area of flash; so I got again into redboot prompt and issued the command 'fis erase -f 0x50040000 -l 0x20000' and then 'restart' to put the slug in upgrade mode, closed that telnet session at redboot and upgraded the slug back to linksys V23R63 firmware; although the upgrade process finished successfully according to Sercomm's utility final message - the slug doesn't finish the boot process!

5) After that I reflashed several times (using the same method) - sequentially from V23R63 back to V23R25 and then again conversely up to unslung 6.10 - still no joy!

The list of the available commands produced by 'help' at the redboot command intimidates someone lacking the specific knowledge like me, so I didn't dare to use them (except for the command 'boot' related to Sercomm's utility, which anyway didn't produced any visible change).

So I'm running here out of ways to try to fix things. I recognize at this stage I feel tempted to try the infamous linksys EraseAll utility (since, despite the risk, it apparently erases all the slug's flash prior to reflashing a fresh image and, thus, maybe, the offended part will be reseted as well. In fact, the choice seems to be: throwing the little fellow into garbage or try that last attempt. But before I do that, I want to see if there's some another possible solution to try and would be very grateful if someone could help me to get into the right track.

Greetings to all (and sorry for being so long in my post)
Joao Miranda (Lisbon)

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