alternating disk white lights

[jman...@gmail.com]

Hello everyone,

 

my disk lights on my dns321 a2 running latest alt-f-0 1RC4.1 are flashing white in an alternating pattern (every other second it seems).  in reading this forum, I see no mention of white lights, the wiki talks about "amber" lights -is this considered the same ?  from the reading I've been doing, I think the system is doing a fsck and if I'm patience, eventually I'll be able to talk with the box .

here's how the whole thing has come about - had a drive fail and thought that I might as well upgrade to larger disks and alt-f firmware.  upgrade to alt-f-0 1RC4.1 went well.   initially created a raid 1 set with the two new drives.  then decided to  start over and make 1 drive a simple drive and copy my 1.5tb on to it.  I had completed copying data over to the new drive and then I shutdown and pulled my 1.5tb out and put in my other 3.0tb drive in.    when I rebooted, the web interface wouldn't come up.  I then saw that the one new disk was flashing white and decided to shutdown and pull it and try to come back up with the prior set of disks.  still no response.  began wondering if the prior raid configuration on the 3.0tb drive was the issue (empty though) and had marked the other 3.0tb drive as belonging to the degraded raid1 set when I booted with the pair?

bit of a mess at the moment.

thanks for any help you can offer

[jman...@gmail.com]

okay, here is the light sequence with drives removed:

1. fast blink

2. slow blink

3. network light on

4. power led off

so it seems alt-f is loading according to the buttons and led guide, but I can find its statically assigned ip, nor running ip scans on the network. 

is there anything else that I can try, or am I left to having to try resetting  the unit via the reset button?  

have also tried:

- replacing network cable and

- disabling antivirus/firewall on laptop that was previously communicating with it

again, thanks for any help

[jman...@gmail.com]

more...

so alt-f appears to be alive on the box as the shutdown/reboot process go according to the about buttons and led page. there is one exception, holding the button down gives the right amber flashing and continuing to hold down then gives the left light flashes, but the left flashes white and blue alternating? and then does the shutdown.

I added a different spare drive (left bay) and this then becomes boot up sequence:

1.power flashes quickly

2 network light on

3.left drive light flashes and power led slows

4. power led turns off

5. left flashes again  & power comes back on

can't reach it at its assigned static ip and can find it at default 192.168.1.254-250 (scanned both complete subnets)

I've also tried connecting straight to laptop - would I need a network crossover cable (had a yellow one somewhere but couldn't find it), or is it smart enough to be able to straight connect (without switch).  have to go hunt for it

thanks for any input you can give.

[João Cardoso]

On Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 11:56:50 PM UTC+1, jman...@gmail.com wrote:

more...

so alt-f appears to be alive on the box as the shutdown/reboot process go according to the about buttons and led page. there is one exception, holding the button down gives the right amber flashing and continuing to hold down then gives the left light flashes, but the left flashes white and blue alternating? and then does the shutdown.

I added a different spare drive (left bay) and this then becomes boot up sequence:

1.power flashes quickly

2 network light on

3.left drive light flashes and power led slows

4. power led turns off

5. left flashes again  & power comes back on

can't reach it at its assigned static ip and can find it at default 192.168.1.254-250 (scanned both complete subnets)

You did all possible tests OK.

I can only suggest you to boot without any disk and the network cable unplugged. Then it will surely assign itself to 192.168.1.254; if you attach the network cable a minute after boot you should be able to find it. Crossover cables shouldn't be needed.

If the above also fails, then you have to perform a long (>20 seconds) reset, and it will use DHCP at the next boot.

[João Cardoso]

On Monday, April 27, 2015 at 2:38:38 AM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

On Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 11:56:50 PM UTC+1, jman...@gmail.com wrote:

more...

so alt-f appears to be alive on the box as the shutdown/reboot process go according to the about buttons and led page. there is one exception, holding the button down gives the right amber flashing and continuing to hold down then gives the left light flashes, but the left flashes white and blue alternating? and then does the shutdown.

I added a different spare drive (left bay) and this then becomes boot up sequence:

1.power flashes quickly

2 network light on

3.left drive light flashes and power led slows

4. power led turns off

5. left flashes again  & power comes back on

can't reach it at its assigned static ip and can find it at default 192.168.1.254-250 (scanned both complete subnets)

You did all possible tests OK.

I can only suggest you to boot without any disk and the network cable unplugged. Then it will surely assign itself to 192.168.1.254; if you attach the network cable a minute after boot you should be able to find it. Crossover cables shouldn't be needed.

I'm sorry, the above is wrong, it's only for DHCP and you have a static IP. You have to do the long reset.

[jman...@gmail.com]

I'm back up - had to do the long reset.

I ran wireshark first and there was no activity at all from the dlink. I was expecting some signs that it was alive and had re-assigned to another ip, but nothing.

so I did the long reset, then I saw it do serveral dhcp requests followed by it announcing its 192.168.1.254 ip - relief.

popped in my first 3.0tb disk and all data untouched.  popped in  second (although I did reinit the disk on my computer first as I'm suspicious of it having leftover config from my very first attempt).  started back up and all is good.  I'm now copying data from the single drive over to the raid disk (degraded).once all data s over, then I'll join it to the raid and let sync.  a little bit of extra copying but I wanted to be sure that I did not lose my original disk in a mistake.

Thank you Joao for you assistance.

Jaime