Oxnas rootfs will not boot on Pogoplug Pro

I have a Pogoplug Pro that I ran for years. I haven’t used it in the last couple, but I dusted it back off today. It was previously running Debian Buster on the latest uBoot. Pluging it back in, I was not able to SSH into it. I tried using the most recent rootfs since I was planning to repurpose the device anyway and wanted to start from a clean slate and get on the latest OS.

Working through the instructions here: https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,16044,page=1 I am still unable to access the box via SSH. I’ve done the installation process twice on my USB drive and it seems to go without a hitch (the first time I skipped step 4, and the second time I did step 4… I’ve run this box for years so I read it as “I don’t need to do that step”). I also recently upgraded a Pogoplug Mobile (v4) without any issue.

I don’t have netconsole or a serial connection on the Pogo Pro unfortunately.

When I plug the fresh rootfs in, and power it on, the light alternates between solid yellow, a series of a couple/few yellow rapid flashes, then exactly 6 slower orange flashes.

I’m not sure what I’m missing here and why this box would cease to boot. At first (with the old buster installI thought it was because I had a network drive in fstab and I removed that. Still no luck.

Thanks for any ideas.

cdlenfert,

It would have been easier if you had a rootfs backup that you can restore from. And then look at the current one to fix any possible problem.

> When I plug the fresh rootfs in, and power it on,
> the light alternates between solid yellow, a
> series of a couple/few yellow rapid flashes, then
> exactly 6 slower orange flashes.

It means the kernel has not complete booting yet. The LED would be solid green after the kernel has successfully booted.

- What is the LED behavior when you boot with the old Buster rootfs?
- Have you tried taking the Buster rootfs to another Linux box and run e2fsck to check for file system errors? It could be that the last time you have this box running, you did not do a proper shutdown before shelving it.

-bodhi
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Hi Bodhi,

I don't recall if the previous roots had the same light flashing pattern or not. I only had the one flash drive and wanted to be on a new OS and fresh system anyway so I figured I would just overwrite it with the latest rootfs.

There could be a chance the drive was previously formatted as Ext3. I vaguely recall having trouble getting thing to run on Ext4 on a Pogo in the past (despite thinking it should work). Maybe I'll see if I can boot from an Ext3 drive.

I know I never would have followed instructions to try to preserve the original uBoot.

Sorry to jump in here, but I wanted to share that I have had the same experience and have never been able to boot my Pogoplug Pro Oxnas beyond 4.14.198-oxnas-tld-1. Once you go to 5.x.x it just won't work. I believe there's a few posts here where we attempted to get it to work, but I never was able to get it working. I've just stayed at 4.14.198-oxnas-tld-1 so I can use it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2024 08:38AM by bluzfanmr1.

cdlenfert,

You can solve it with serial console.

-bodhi
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bluzfanmr1,

>I believe there's a few posts here
> where we attempted to get it to work, but I never
> was able to get it working. I've just stayed at
> 4.14.198-oxnas-tld-1 so I can use it.

I probably forgot all about those posts, must have been while I was very busy :) If you want to try again, please do so.

I always boot and run new kernel and rootfs for a few times and let it run for a few days before releasing them. And my Pogo Pro rootfs has always been USB 2.0, and EXT3.

-bodhi
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Using an Ext3 formatted drive worked for booting. I'm probably OK sticking with this, but any ideas why Ext4 would fail when Ext3 works. I also used a different device and tool to format as Ext4, but the same tool made a bootable Ext4 drive for my Pogo V4.

cdlenfert,

> Using an Ext3 formatted drive worked for booting.

Cool!

> I'm probably OK sticking with this, but any ideas
> why Ext4 would fail when Ext3 works. I also used a
> different device and tool to format as Ext4, but
> the same tool made a bootable Ext4 drive for my
> Pogo V4.

Hard to tell why withthout serial console.

-bodhi
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bodhi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> bluzfanmr1,
>
> >I believe there's a few posts here
> > where we attempted to get it to work, but I
> never
> > was able to get it working. I've just stayed at
> > 4.14.198-oxnas-tld-1 so I can use it.
>
> I probably forgot all about those posts, must have
> been while I was very busy :) If you want to try
> again, please do so.
>
> I always boot and run new kernel and rootfs for a
> few times and let it run for a few days before
> releasing them. And my Pogo Pro rootfs has always
> been USB 2.0, and EXT3.

It was 100% my issue and nothing where you stopped helping or forgot anything and I didn't mean to imply that and I'm sorry if it sounded that way.. I stopped posting about being unable to ever get it working with 5 and beyond. Obviously if others have it working, it's my issue or the hardware.

bluzfanmr1,

> It was 100% my issue and nothing where you stopped
> helping or forgot anything and I didn't mean to
> imply that and I'm sorry if it sounded that way..

Oh, no worries, I did not take it that way at all! In fact, there was a recent period when I was very busy so I just gloss over a lot of posts, and only payed attention to the hard ones (eg. bricked boxes).

The Pogo Pro USB ports are flaky. I had never been able to use USB 3.0 drive for rootfs consistently. Also, the Ext4 driver in the latest u-boot for this box is buggy.

-bodhi
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