IO-Data HDLM NAS experience?

[MRE]

Anyone have any experience working with NAS boxes from IOData?

Particularly the HDLM series boxes. (only in Asia? Or is IOData just piss poor on multi-language documentation and software?)

For reference: http://www.iodata.jp/product/hdd/lanhdd/hdlm-u/


I go the box without drives (just empty cases). I am trying to get it up and running, but just get the various beeps and warning blinks.

Best status so far seems to be that it recognizes two drives, and that one is the master.. but then it fails. My guess is one of the following:
1: Drive format - I have tried both drives as FTFS and exFAT
2: It may be expecting a boot partition with firmware

I opened the box, and the electronics are decidedly simplistic. A fat FPGA does all the work on the drive end, and a small network board handles the coms.
I poked around for software or firmware on IOData's Japanese site and found a set of files sorted by OS. But when I open it up, I just see a small .BIN file. Unfortunately the readme.txt is encoded terribly, and just comes up as messed up symbols on my pc.

I am likely going to attempt returning the NAS and the drives. I have a 1 week warranty on the drives, even though they are used. Not sure about the NAS.. but was only 3000 yen. Wouldnt be happy not getting my money back, but wouldn't be put out much either.

Any last chance advices or ideas before I try to send this stuff back on Tuesday?

[Richard Frankum]

Open the readme in a sane editor that can read MS932 (shift-JIS), or open it in your web browser and check the view encoding. Mojibake is the enemy!

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[MRE]

suggestions as to what editor would do it?
Mozilla browser didnt.
Notpad didnt.
Wordpad didnt.
Notepad++ (a code editor) didnt.

[Richard Frankum]

N++ might not open it readable by default (especially if you tried Windows Notepad first ). But you should be able to change encoding. What OS was this for, give me a link to the support page and I'll check tonight.

[David Lyon]

Have you come across geany? It's a pretty decent editor that can be installed on 'anything'.

[Jud Taylor]

I aim to write an application named "notpad".

[MRE]

I know.. days later... sorry.

Richard, the service link is:

http://www.iodata.jp/lib/product/h/1536.htm

You will find the readme in any of the zip files associated with the appropriate OS (odd.. since MY OS should have nothing to do with the device OS.. unless this is some sort of upload disk. But, I cant even get it to talk over Ethernet.. IT seems to me that the system goes so far as to check and confirm the hard drives, and then it just errors out, implying that it is looking for some firmware on one of the drives itself to actually 'boot')

[MRE]

SNAP!

In this extract file: http://www.iodata.jp/lib/soft/h/hdlm_f153m04.exe
there is another one of the readme files I cant read, plus a tgz file (the original file I was looking at was much smaller, and just a small .bin file).

Inside that tgz file, there are about 9 files, one is factory?check, landisk-update.sh, lilo and rmfiles..
But one is yet another .tar.gz file.
Inside THAT file, is a sturcture that immediately makes me think its a linux partition. we have bin, boot, dev, etc, home, lib, mnt, root, sbin and usr folders. down in the usr file I even see apache (I assume for the web interface, but that makes me think it could actually host and serve up a website, if I were to be so dumb as to give access to my drives to the outside world.

Any thoughts on how exactly this drive might need to be set up? It appears to be running busybox version 1.0 as found in the bin folder.

[MRE]

using the forum as a public notepad:

Took the box completely apart. Now looking at the main board, and here are the chips I see:
CPU is an SH-4, BP267V

ACARD ATP865-A 
(I actually had dealings with these guys once in an old engineering job. They make hard disk controllers and the like. This is likely the IDE interface to the SH4. On another board, there is the actual drive connectors and a large fpga (cant see it well enough to read a part number down inside the drive cage. I suspect the fpga handles the master/slave stuff as well as hotswapping and raid work. The Acard chip just provides the primary controller. Will have to look up the pn to confirm... looked up.. confirmed. this is the disk controller)

RTL8139C
Lan controller. pretty obvious

NEC D720101GJ  - Interwebs says its a 5 port USB controller. Two ports on the back of the machine
Samsung K4S561632E - 256MB high speed ram (2 chips)
ST M29W400DB - 512KB FLASH
Xylinx XC9536XL - CPLD for glue logic
A couple of scattered 74LV series surface mount logic ICs

and here's johnny! mysterious 5 pin connector (bare holes) marked CN7.
Pins
1 - coupled with a cap to ground
2 - seems to go somewhere
3 - seems to go somewhere
4 - to ground
5 - appears to be going nowhere. Likely to an inner plane, such as VCC Will have to check it on with power

pin 2 and 3 appear to go to some 74LV logic very closely tied to the cpu. My guess: This is my serial debug terminal. Which, would be super awesome.

[MRE]

CPU is an SH-4, BP267V

HAH This makes it a Dreamcast NAS

[MRE]

74LS chips mentioned are octal bus transceivers..
Pretty sure bet its the serial debug for the SH4

Also, found the in circuit programing header for the Xylinx IC.
Anyone with some Xylinx experience want to download the chip.. I would be interested in how they set up the glue logic. This is making me revisit thoughts of dreamcast hacking.

[Taylan Ayken]

Bring it to THS on Tuesday meeting. I'll bring my JTAG adapter and we'll see if I can download it.

But the thing is I don't think that there is a way to reverse engineer FPGA sources. Maybe this will help but I'm not sure: http://code.google.com/p/debit/

---

From: MRE <epre...@gmail.com>
To: tokyohac...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 12:49 AM
Subject: Re: [THS:22764] IO-Data HDLM NAS experience?

[Kalin KOZHUHAROV]

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 1:02 AM, Taylan Ayken <taylan...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Bring it to THS on Tuesday meeting. I'll bring my JTAG adapter and we'll see
> if I can download it.
>
> But the thing is I don't think that there is a way to reverse engineer FPGA
> sources. Maybe this will help but I'm not sure:
> http://code.google.com/p/debit/
>

Reversing FPGA to make a new 2-bay NAS work... Guys, it is 2013, May.
Have a beer or two.


Tthen, better spend some time "reverse engineering" the Japanese
manual: http://www.iodata.jp/support/product/hdlm/top.htm
http://www.iodata.jp/lib/product/h/1268.htm

Kalin.

[MRE]

RTFM?!?!?

Noooooo way.

Actually not really TRYing to reverse engineer the FPGA just to get the NAS to work. I suspect it should be easy enough, I just need to know the right setup. It may be in the manual, or I will just poke around different ideas till I get it working.

Reverse engineering the FPGA was more about being interested in how they hung the IDE, network and usb controllers on the SH CPU.
Interested because it might point me to an idea about how to hang the same hardware off a dreamcast (also SH cpu). Again.. mostly for fun.


Thanks for the manual link. I had not come across a more in depth manual than a 4 page set up manual (which assumed everything was ready to go out of the box, like new).

[MRE]

Given the weight and size of this thing, unlikely.
But if I get nowhere in the next few weeks, I might bring just the board and psu.

[Luis Felipe RM]

On 05/08/2013 09:43 AM, MRE wrote:
> SNAP!
>
> In this extract file: http://www.iodata.jp/lib/soft/h/hdlm_f153m04.exe
> there is another one of the readme files I cant read, plus a tgz file (the
> original file I was looking at was much smaller, and just a small .bin
> file).
>
> Inside that tgz file, there are about 9 files, one is factory?check,
> landisk-update.sh, lilo and rmfiles..
> But one is yet another .tar.gz file.

it seems to me that you have pretty much everything you need
to boot your own root filesystem image, or to modify the root fs
they provided.

is there something you want your NAS to run?
sshd? mpd? a bittorrent client?

(as you know, you have to be careful not to make a bigger root fs that
won't fit the flash memory).

lilo, as you know, is the linux (kernel) loader. its configuration file
is stored under /etc
take a look, or copy the contents to a pastebin so we can analyze it.

> Inside THAT file, is a sturcture that immediately makes me think its a
> linux partition. we have bin, boot, dev, etc, home, lib, mnt, root, sbin
> and usr folders. down in the usr file I even see apache (I assume for the
> web interface, but that makes me think it could actually host and serve up
> a website, if I were to be so dumb as to give access to my drives to the
> outside world.

well, you might, assuming that a big chunk of the interwebs is running
apache
and is open to the outside world. you have to search for other services
your NAS is running by default.

> Any thoughts on how exactly this drive might need to be set up? It appears
> to be running busybox version 1.0 as found in the bin folder.

that is pretty standard, right? various embedded systems use busybox.
it is basically a solution to have various coreutils in one binary.

you shouldn't worry about it now. better to concentrate on the conf files
to understand how the firmware was designed.

happy hacking!

luisfelipe.

[Luis Felipe RM]

On 05/10/2013 07:55 AM, Kalin KOZHUHAROV wrote:
> Japanese manual: http://www.iodata.jp/support/product/hdlm/top.htm
> http://www.iodata.jp/lib/product/h/1268.htm Kalin.

Hey MRE,

Let me ask you: did you get a copy of the GPL v2 with the documentation
of your NAS?
That's the license of busybox. There are several cases of GPL
infringement involving busybox.
One infamous case is the cisco/linksys WRT54G routers shipping free
software and being sneaky about it.

Not that I care about intellectual property and legal disputes... I care
about free software ;-)

[MRE]

hey there!

So, I have not played much recently with the box.

In particular, my problems are related to getting it to boot.
Its clear that the software is a linux distro, on possibly an ARM core cpu.
The problem I am having is:

What drive format should it be?
I tried the typical linux ext style (version 4 or something), as well as FAT.
Assuming it should be linux, then would 1 partition be fine, or should it really be multiple parts?

Assuming a linux partition, how to I get lilo in the right place, given that this is not a bootable device on its own, and has no 'head'

Yeah... so really, I need someone who has this same box, with functioning drives, and who can pull one out and take a deep look at how the drive is actually configured.

As you may know, theres some chip in the box expecting a particular drive format, with a particular file in a particular place to get the whole thing going. Thats what I was trying to figure out.


Now, the same shop has another NAS, which takes 4 SATA drives.
http://www.amazon.com/electronics/dp/B004QO8XVY

Its that same model, with no drives, for 3000 yen. I am strongly considering picking it up, just for fun. But again, given there are no drives, I dont know how one should be set up. From what I did manage to dig on the manual while in the shop, using my phone:
It has flash which holds part of the file system, and boots out of. Also, the desktop software update manager allows for completely wiping and rebuilding drives. So.. it might just handle blanks without the need to have a file system already there (like my current NAS seems to want).

Anyway. If I manage to get one or both working, I suppose I can resell them at a hefty markup?

[Kalin KOZHUHAROV]

On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 10:56 PM, MRE <epre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In particular, my problems are related to getting it to boot.
> Its clear that the software is a linux distro, on possibly an ARM core cpu.
>

Does it boot without a drive?

Most respectable NASes have flash drive that holds the OD, it is not
on the data drive(s).

> The problem I am having is:
> What drive format should it be?
>

Only docs may tell you. The way NASes work, AFAIHS, the have OS and
GUI/CLI and you are supposed to do everything from there. It is vendor
dependent (I've used mostly QNAP).

> I tried the typical linux ext style (version 4 or something), as well as
> FAT.
> Assuming it should be linux, then would 1 partition be fine, or should it
> really be multiple parts?
>
> Assuming a linux partition, how to I get lilo in the right place, given that
> this is not a bootable device on its own, and has no 'head'
>

lilo is long dead, grub or even grub-2 is what is used these decades.

> Its that same model, with no drives, for 3000 yen. I am strongly considering
> picking it up, just for fun. But again, given there are no drives, I dont
> know how one should be set up. From what I did manage to dig on the manual
> while in the shop, using my phone:
> It has flash which holds part of the file system, and boots out of. Also,
> the desktop software update manager allows for completely wiping and
> rebuilding drives. So.. it might just handle blanks without the need to have
> a file system already there (like my current NAS seems to want).
>

Yep.

> Anyway. If I manage to get one or both working, I suppose I can resell them
> at a hefty markup?
>

LoL...

Kalin.

[MRE]

Does it boot without a drive?

To a point of at least knowing what it is. It then immediately starts making some sort of beeping noise and flashing drive lights. Its is an unhappy camper.
I assume it is looking for a boot partition somewhere. I guess I just need to keep trying things till I find something that makes it happy.

Most respectable NASes have flash drive that holds the OD, it is not
on the data drive(s).

> The problem I am having is:
> What drive format should it be?
>  

Only docs may tell you. The way NASes work, AFAIHS, the have OS and
GUI/CLI and you are supposed to do everything from there. It is vendor
dependent (I've used mostly QNAP).

Having a hard time there.. not a whole lot, or at least, not in Engrish. I will keep searching till I find something that seems in the ballpark, then toss it to Richard.

 

>
lilo is long dead, grub or even grub-2 is what is used these decades.

Yeah. Hmm.. I went with looking up the manufacturing year, then making some guesses as to what type of disk file system might be appropriate. Being a linux newb, I honestly dont know.

>
Yep.

Yep.
 

> Anyway. If I manage to get one or both working, I suppose I can resell them
> at a hefty markup?
>
LoL...

HAH. Ok true. But If I were to believe the Amazon/Ebay, both machines go for between 400 and 800 USD used. Granted, thats with drives. 4x 2TB drives would be a significant portion of the price X[

 

[MRE]

On Tuesday, June 25, 2013 4:52:28 PM UTC+9, MRE wrote:

Does it boot without a drive?

Once we get moved into the new place, and have a bit more room (both shelf and work space), I will bring in the older NAS. I already have drives for it (used, but a matched set).
I'll keep poking around to see If I can come up with a working unit, but it seems unlikely given my current time restraints.

[MRE]

Ok. It has become clear that the HDLM uses either its own format, or at the very least a linux raid format.

It CAN deal with FAT file systems, but only for backups. It does not run on it. I dont think it will boot one.

Any idea how a linux RAID drive is set up?
I assume at least one partition is for the OS (replicated on both drives) with a second partition on each for the raid stuff.

[Richard Frankum]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 4:52 PM, MRE <epre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Does it boot without a drive?
>
>
> To a point of at least knowing what it is. It then immediately starts making
> some sort of beeping noise and flashing drive lights. Its is an unhappy
> camper.
> I assume it is looking for a boot partition somewhere. I guess I just need
> to keep trying things till I find something that makes it happy.

The manual has a list of error codes for the LED and speaker indicators.
http://www.iodata.jp/lib/manual/pdf/71889_2_844_hdlm_setup_bmanu200039-02.pdf

I'm sure you can read the ピーピー and such for the sounds, the lights are
colored (red赤, green縁) and give a status off=消灯 blinking=点滅 on=点灯


--
--Richard Frankum

[Richard Frankum]

On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Luis Felipe RM <unix...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Let me ask you: did you get a copy of the GPL v2 with the documentation
> of your NAS?
> That's the license of busybox. There are several cases of GPL
> infringement involving busybox.
> One infamous case is the cisco/linksys WRT54G routers shipping free
> software and being sneaky about it.

According to their general FAQ, the source is available to be shipped.
http://www.iodata.jp/support/qanda/answer/s12850.htm

They're a little weaselly on their own software, will send the OSS
they've used but keep their own proprietary, and they link to GNU for
any questions.


--
--Richard Frankum

[Kalin KOZHUHAROV]

> --
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>
>

WOW, actually there is quite a lot of documentation, even on-line!
You should be able to reset everything and no format on the drives are
needed, AFAICS:

May be you need any 2 drives in, locked with the keys, then power the
unit, wait till power LED is stable, press/hold reset for 2+ seconds,
wait for LED to stop blinking:
http://www.iodata.jp/support/product/hdlm/htm/reset.htm#01

This will reset the NAS to the defaults found here :
http://www.iodata.jp/support/product/hdlm/htm/spec.htm#default
Connect the LAN, directly, st up your machine properly and connect
with a browser to http://192.168.0.200 with "admin" and no pasword
(see the blue 1..6):
http://www.iodata.jp/lib/manual/pdf/71889_2_844_hdlm_setup_bmanu200039-02.pdf

Perform factory reset to wipe/format the disks:
http://www.iodata.jp/support/prodhttp://www.iodata.jp/support/product/hdlm/htm/setup23.htmuct/hdlm/htm/setup23.htm

詳細 →［高度な設定］→［出荷時設定に戻す］

Finally update the firmware from Windoze:
http://www.iodata.jp/lib/soft/h/hdlm_f153m04.exe

Cheers,
Kalin.

[MRE]

Kalin,

Thanks for the info. I am not so good at reading Japanese, and so am a bit limited as to what google translate will read for me.
But, I had tried the reset button a few times. I tried again just now after reading your post.
I cant say with certainty that its doing anything.

Pinging the address just times out.
The power LED was always stable. Never flashing. I should record whats happening and post it up so you all can see the status lights, and hear the beep patterns. One in particular is rather strange.

All in all, I still think the boot process is halting somewhere, and not getting to the point where the web interface is up and running. I am going to check out the flash chips as well, to confirm their size. I suspect that only a small portion of the boot process resides in them. Something akin to BIOS, and that the Factory Reformat only formats the user's data portion of the drive (as in, the system runs from a small partition on drive 1, mirrored on drive 2). I had posted a link to the system files before, and it appears to be (from my limited knowledge of the topic) a complete linux os. Really, I just need to figure out precisely how they expect the drive to be set up.

I am going to try one other thing, which is to try your suggestion of the factory reset procedure on UNFORMATTED drives. Perhaps the initial startup process is capable to formatting the drives without the full OS running, but if so, its likely NOT aware of other drive formats. So. by just guessing at what the format should be, I am actually giving it drives it cant work with.

Anyway, IF I get nowhere with it, it would be a fun project to work with you on at the space.

Also, I went ahead and bought the Buffalo Terastation NAS. Again, no drives (and it needs SATA, so I have to buy yet more disks), but there is a LOT more info available, in English, including exactly how the drives are set up, hacking it, and modding the firmware. (That too could make for some fun projects at the space, in which I learn Linux the hard way).