Need guidance for recovery - I think I shot myself in the foot (or NAS)

[Craig Holcomb]

First of all, it has been a while since I posted here and I don't remember being limited to this little entry window on the bottom right. Is there a way to increase the size of the entry window? Also, is there a way to view the posting as it will be displayed once it's posted (or am I already seeing that in this tiny window)?

As to my problem, I do not recall anything specific that might have caused this but the first thing I noticed (if I remember correctly) is the Status page showing that SDA4 (I think) was low on space. i was on the Status page because I wanted to see when the last time was that I file checked the hard drives (it had been 60+ days - at least that's what I think it showed me).

So I used Ubuntu Nautilus to look at SDA4 and saw what now I think is the problem but at the time I was confused because there was a huge file with the same name as a large directory I have on SDA2 called LINUX ISO's.  I did not attempt to change or delete anything there based on the README which warned not to (I'm thinking now I probably should have deleted the file but the confusion of having the file of that name kind of blew my mind). I decided to do a reboot from the web page which when Alt-f became re-accessible it showed it checking SDA2 and after a while it started simultaneously started checking SDB3 (which caught me by surprise because I thought I remembered that the drives were checked one at a time).

After a little while the Status screen was no longer accessible and  when I tried to access the web GUI Firefox displayed "the connection was reset". Every time I manually reboot the box now this same scenario occurs.  While the check files are in progress and still showing on the Status page I am able to log in with SSH and can process some commands but as soon as the status page is no longer accessible any attempt at using commands is met with a segment fault.  At that point if I log out of SSH and attempt to log back in I am met with a "connection closed" message.  Ping responds normally and Angry IP scanner displays the NAS network information  as it normally does.  Nautilus can not access SFTP on the NAS.

Anyway, a lot of blah blah for me to get to the point but I'm thinking it is very possible that  I inadvertently copied or moved that  huge directory there (although I don't understand why it shows as a file and not a directory).  It showed an update date in May this year.  Is that file most likely the problem and if so is their a way for me to remove that file or revert SDA4 to a previous state? When I attempt to list the contents of SDA4 while in SSH command mode it acts like there is nothing there.

[Craig Holcomb]

One very weird additional piece of info.  One of the main uses of the NAS for us is as a storage place for media files be they video or audio.  I have a Le Potato (Raspberry Pi variant) computer that I use for watching the videos directly from the NAS through an NFS share using KODI.  That still seems to be working even in the NAS's current state of insubordination! I was going to point the Le Potato at another source but noticed that while still pointing to the NAS it was showing folders. I navigated to a video and it plays just fine. I am really confused now. I just checked a Windows machine and the SMB shares are not available.

[Craig Holcomb]

A final entry about this issue which I have resolved. Basically I decided to reset the NAS back to Alt-f defaults using the reset pin hole button on the back of the NAS (DNS-320).  I also had reformatted the SDA4 partition which contained the Alt-f directory by using a SATA disk docking station I had on an Ubuntu desktop.  I thought I would be proactive and format it as EXT4 since I've seen so many posts in this group about that being the desired way to go.  Guess what? The default Alt-F setup can't handle EXT4 and made access read only! So I put it back in the docking station and reformatted as EXT3 and Alt-f was happy with that and checked all the partitions with the exception of SDA4. I don't remember it having a problem with doing that before but after reading through postings in the group it seems I can use the RebootAndCheck button on the System Utilities menu (I just didn't want to have a check done on all the drives and was hoping it was more selectable, sigh).

I would appreciate it if someone with authority to moderate metadata would mark this issue complete