Unbricking after a broken firmware

[hno]

There is two methods to "unbrick" a device with broken firmware but working iboot. Both is described in the readynas FAQ

a) TFTP booting. Enabling by holding down the powerbutton ca 10 seconds. (2 blinks).

b) USB booting from a usbstick in the "backup" connector in the front. Activated by holding the power button for 20 seconds (4 blinks)


The USB recovery method uses a special kernel + initrd, and the flash image.

If the root filesystem is in working condition you can probably dd only the matching firmware to the usb stick to boot directly.

[hno]

alternatively, if the firmware as such appears fine but the root filesystem is corrupt somehow and firmware "reinstallaton" does not help then the tech support mode is your best friend.

The official recovery method in these cases is a factory defaults, but this has the very nasty sifeeffect of also wiping the drives clean erasing any data you may have on there.. Would be really nice if there was a forced firmware reinstallation that completely cleaned up the root filesystem, not just overwrote the existing files keeping what other files you may have on there.

[Mijzelf]

What about first unmounting the datapartition before you reset to factory defaults?

[hno]

A factory reset completely wipes the partition tabe and rebuilds it from scratch.