No access to box (web admin or samba) or ping

[BlinkyNotBlinking]

UPDATE:  For posterity and others with the same problem. After the fsck finished running, nothing seemed to be happening and no access was possible. I then tried the holding of the front power button a few times and got an amber light! so ALT-F was installed. Pressed the button a few more times with differing press lengths, then suddenly could ping the drive, telnet, and access web panel.  Thank-you to the creator/maintainer of ALT-F for building and managing this...

Hoping someone has an idea how to regain access to the box.  

Currently:

- no access to the box, web, ping, telnet, ssh, Samba

- device name ('BlinkBox') appears in OSX finder but clicking on it gives 'Connection Failed' message

Setup:

- router assigning fixed IP (192.168.1.54) to the device based on permanent lease on MAC address. Router logs not useful

- arp -a shows device: blinkbox (192.168.1.54) at (incomplete) on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

History:

- installed funplug and used it for a year

- installed DebNas but discovered limitation of only using chroot debian to 'lenny' version

- today renamed /ffp directory to /ffp_bck and copies over ALT-F RC2 tar and fun_plug to root of dns-323

- rebooted and boot appeared normal judging by lights on the box but web admin didn't come up and ping doesn't work

- tried checking if ALT-F installed by pressing and holding (large square front-panel) power button, but no apparent change in lights or result

- pulled power cord and rebooted several times but same result

- did hard reset (pin in back while powering up). This seemed to cause an fsck check on the disk, still doing that now (1GB disk 93% full)

Possible options - that don't involve losing my existing data?

1. first wait for this fsck to finish and see if it now comes up after this hard reset. failing that:
2. remove the (single) drive and try to get to boot using DLink firmware (1.10 currently installed) then flash ALT-F firmware
3. caress the box until it behaves...

Does someone have a good suggestion?

[Joao Cardoso]

On Saturday, October 27, 2012 7:01:51 PM UTC+1, BlinkyNotBlinking wrote:

UPDATE:  For posterity and others with the same problem. After the fsck finished running, nothing seemed to be happening and no access was possible. I then tried the holding of the front power button a few times and got an amber light! so ALT-F was installed. Pressed the button a few more times with differing press lengths,

Read the About Leds and Buttons wiki.

 

then suddenly could ping the drive, telnet, and access web panel.  Thank-you to the creator/maintainer of ALT-F for building and managing this...

The issue, you mean? :-)

Reloading is tricky, sometimes it works, others it don't.

But if you mean the issue, you have to thank fonz, not me, he was the one who wrote 'reloaded' :-) and without his work Alt-F would never been born -- he is Alt-F's grand-parent!

 

Hoping someone has an idea how to regain access to the box.  

Currently:

- no access to the box, web, ping, telnet, ssh, Samba

- device name ('BlinkBox') appears in OSX finder but clicking on it gives 'Connection Failed' message

Setup:

- router assigning fixed IP (192.168.1.54) to the device based on permanent lease on MAC address. Router logs not useful

For the "reloaded" method, the IP is the same as the D-Link firmware is currently using, it is "communicated" to Alt-F using the kernel command line.

 

- arp -a shows device: blinkbox (192.168.1.54) at (incomplete) on en1 ifscope [ethernet]

History:

- installed funplug and used it for a year

- installed DebNas but discovered limitation of only using chroot debian to 'lenny' version

- today renamed /ffp directory to /ffp_bck and copies over ALT-F RC2 tar and fun_plug to root of dns-323

- rebooted and boot appeared normal judging by lights on the box but web admin didn't come up and ping doesn't work

- tried checking if ALT-F installed by pressing and holding (large square front-panel) power button, but no apparent change in lights or result

- pulled power cord and rebooted several times but same result

This is odd!

Alt-F fun_plug has a safeguard mechanism that should disable itself from running for the second and subsequent times, to avoid endless reboots if something goes wrong. It looks like some versions of D-Link firmware just ignored the "execute" bit on the funplug script, as this is not the first time the issue is reported.

 

- did hard reset (pin in back while powering up). This seemed to cause an fsck check on the disk, still doing that now (1GB disk 93% full)

fsck is only done by Alt-F, not D-Link firmware. And how was the power-button blinking during?

-If the box was not cleanly shutdown, then filesystems are not clean and a filesystem check (fsck) is performed, during which the blue power led blinks with a slow hearthbeat pace -- the boot process continues while the filesystems are being checked, but filesystems data can't be accessed until the check is finish.

 

 

Possible options - that don't involve losing my existing data?

1. first wait for this fsck to finish and see if it now comes up after this hard reset. failing that:

1. remove the (single) drive and try to get to boot using DLink firmware (1.10 currently installed. 

Without disks, you will be back to the D-Link firmware (when using reloaded) 

1. Then flash ALT-F firmware

Yes, that would be the right course of action :-)

I have being considering dropping "reloaded", as it only gives bad reputation to Alt-F. Currently, because it has been invaluable in the past, as I already said.