Password recovery: Freecom Data Tank Gateway

[Mark Robson]

Hi,

I've got a "Freecom Data Tank Gateway" NAS for which the admin password is lost. I know the wifi password and a password for one user, and some of its other config.

The manuals are available on the internet on those crappy "PDF manuals" sites.

The device is running some kind of embedded Linux. I am pretty sure it boots from an on-board flash (not from the hard drives which contain user data). It stores all its configuration on this embedded flash, as well as its own firmware. User data is on a pair of hard drives.

There is a recovery mode, which I've successfully activated, and it appears to try to network boot (using bootp? ). However, I don't have the other part. It seems that the device was shipped with Windows-only software to recover the device when in this mode. This Windows-only software presumably behaved as a bootp server and sent a new firmware image etc. I don't have this windows software- the CDs shipped with the device are long lost.

The original vendor, Freecom, have been acquired and show absolutely no interest in supporting an obsolete product. They don't have any manuals, software, drivers, or even an acknowledgement of the existence of the product on their web site.

The original vendor also claimed (in the manuals I have) that the software was "open source", but I have yet to find any evidence that the source code for its firmware was *ever* available. I don't even have any binaries for its firmware.

There are many adware-malware-y "free software drivers download!!111" web sites which claim that they have the original software, however, on closer inspection they invariably don't (although I'm sure they have plenty of adware/ malware). Anything I download from such a site will go in a VM so it can't access or corrupt important stuff.

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I can probably recover the data by simply installing the hard drives in another (Linux) box and just mounting the volumes. But it would be nicer to be able to totally recover the NAS a useful machine.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mark

[Mr E]

I would certainly start with taking the drives out and attaching to a PC, then booting Linux to see if it will pick them up.  You might have to get into some RAID foo!

Once you've got the data off (fingers crossed it wasn't encrypted), then it must store the configuration somewhere, so in theory, if you could zero that out, and then reboot, I bet it would go in to starting from scratch, initialization mode.

In terms of bootp - yes you could setup a bootp server, but I'd have thought unless you have the right Linux kernel for the exact (probably ARM?) cpu and options it'll never work.  More info needed on that one.

Good luck!

Rupert

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[Stuart Ward]

Mark

I keep a USB with System Rescue CD on it http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/ that has a lot of tools for doing exactly this type of job.

Stuart

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Stuart Ward M +44 7782325143

[Mark Robson]

Thanks, but

1. None of these would be remotely useful, as it is an embedded system running off on-board flash using an arm-based soc;

2. I've already fixed it by correctly guessing the password :)

[mikethebee]

I found http://www.techadvisor.co.uk/forum/helproom-1/freecom-network-drive-password-315581/ but glad you sorted it yourself. - M.