DNS-323 Rev B on RC5 Bricked

[Abe Trottle]

Had been running ALT-F RC3 for a while and upgraded to RC5 shortly after it came out (I know, I know).  Upgrade seemed to go fine, then randomly box bricked (blinking light syndrome) after several months working on RC5.  Serial connection on boot reveals the attached boot sequence of events.  Can anyone point me in direction how to fix this issue?   Thx!

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, 9 June 2017 12:42:15 UTC+1, Abe Trottle wrote:

Had been running ALT-F RC3 for a while and upgraded to RC5 shortly after it came out (I know, I know).  Upgrade seemed to go fine, then randomly box bricked (blinking light syndrome) after several months working on RC5.  Serial connection on boot reveals the attached boot sequence of events.  Can anyone point me in direction how to fix this issue?   Thx!

You have a mix of RC3 (the rootfs) and RC5 (the kernel)

 ## Booting image at ff820000 ...

   Image Name:   Alt-F-0.1RC5, kernel 3.18.28

...

## Loading Ramdisk Image at ff9a0000 ...

   Image Name:   Alt-F-0.1RC3, initrd

As you have a serial console you are not doomed, search the forum on how split a firmware file into a kernel and initrd/rootfs and to load each one into memory on a DNS-323-revB and run it from memory without flashing; this would bring the webUI alive allowing you to flash a new firmware.

Alternatively, on the 323-revB you can load and flash each one of the kernel and initrd, although I consider this to be more risky than the first approach.

search the FAQ https://sourceforge.net/p/alt-f/wiki/Alt-F%20FAQ/#faq8 and also search http://forum.dsmg600.info/viewforum.php?id=6 and http://dns323.kood.org/

[Abe Trottle]

Thanks, I’m in.

I tried loading the RC5 initrd first…and got a bad CRC error which it seems from reading is a size issue.

So I loaded both the RC3 kernel and initrd and it came back up.

I appreciate all the info!