Hi,

I'm at my wits end here, with a completely unresponsive STAK100.

I originally installed the improved uBoot, following Jeff's instructions from here:

http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/

I then tried to install Debian Squeeze, following his instructions here:

http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/

This failed, due the problem discussed here:

http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,4323

I then tried to install Debian Lenny, following Jeff's instructions from here:

http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/install_lenny.htm

This seemed to work fine; I installed to a HDD plugged into one of the unit's SATA ports, instead of an external USB drive (it showed up as the standard /dev/sda) - I hope this was not a fatal mistake?

The installation apparently went fine, but the unit would not reboot into Debian. Now, I cannot access the device no matter what I try:

* Power up without any disk attached - light flashes green, then after a few seconds begins to flash amber and remains that way indefinitely

* Power up with the HDD inserted - same thing

* I tried to unzip a Doozan tarball of a Lenny install (from this thread - http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,5221) onto a USB flash drive - when I boot with this drive attached to a USB port, the light flashes green, then goes dark, and remains that way indefinitely

In any of these cases, I can't login via ssh (no route to host), don't get any response to pings, and the router / DHCP doesn't see any connection attempts. I even tried editing the /etc/network/interfaces (by plugging the flash drive into another system) to set a static IP address, but still no luck. [I can't figure out how to setup netconsole with no access to the unit.]

Anything I can do to bring this thing back to life? Any idea what went wrong? I thought Jeff was pretty clear that any Debian installation wouldn't affect the basic ability to ssh into the device when started without any external drives attached?

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This seemed to work fine; I installed to a HDD plugged into one of the unit's SATA ports, instead of an external USB drive (it showed up as the standard /dev/sda) - I hope this was not a fatal mistake?

Yep. The default kernel and the uboot environment settings does not allow booting from a sata disk. It has to be a USB drive.

I had written a small how-to on how to make it boot from SATA on my blog, here.

Anyways, on the GoFlex Net once you install the new uboot the original pogoplug os fails to load so now your best option is to attach a *known* working USB drive with debian already in it and it should work. After that setup the rescue system and then you can go and update the kernel etc to make it boot from SATA.

Or if you can get a serial access it would make everything much easier. :)

And once you have installed the rescue system make sure you do this else it won't work.

Thanks much for the hints. Can you be a bit more specific about exactly what I need to do in terms of installing Debian on a known working USB drive? I assume that I use debootstrap to cross-install an armel system onto the disk, but do I need to make any modifications to the basic install? What about naming and placing the kernel / initrd?

What I meant was to use a usb stick with debian already installed, maybe from a Dockstar, but then if this is your first install, that won't work.

If you can get serial access then you can fix it easily. You can then load the rescue system and run the installer again.

Thanks for the help - I'll have to look into your suggestions. I usually avoid hardware hacking, since I have no experience with soldering - does your method, involving wire hooks, require any particular skill, or can a complete novice manage it?

You don't have to do any soldering to attach the wires. Its very easy to attach it using the hooks.

Btw I forgot that you already installed debian to the sata disk, did you try connecting the hard disk using USB?

Thanks - I'll buy the adapter and hooks. I notice, btw, on Ebay, adapters that seem to include thingys that seem like they're designed to connect to pins, e.g.:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230646566597

I don't currently have a SATA / USB adapter handy, so I haven't tried attaching the drive via USB. I did try installing the rescue system to a couple of spare USB flash drives, but that didn't work (green, then flashing amber, indefinitely). I tried the procedure described by Johannes here, copying uImage and uInitrd to the root of an ext2 formatted partition, but it did not work.:

http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?4,1871,1871#msg-1871

I recently came into two Sheevaplugs (the original thing all the Seagate NAS devices are based on) and serial console restoration is painfully simple and easy. Just follow the directions exactly. Even if uBoot is hosed, you'll be able to reflash the NAND so that you can get a proper prompt again.

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I notice, btw, on Ebay, adapters that seem to include thingys that seem like they're designed to connect to pins, e.g.:

Yes, but it won't fit the pins on the GoFlex as the pitch is different. Atleast the one that came with my adapter didn't work.

And the rescue system should have booted from the USB drive on a Dockstar but on the GoFlex there seems to be some issue with the memory address 0x80000 where the kernel is loaded by default as even if you install Jeff's Rescue System to the NAND, it will not boot unless you change the memory address as mentioned in my other post.

Ok, thanks to both of you. I'll get a hold of a serial adapter, and see what I can do.

I obtained a USB / SATA adaptor, and now everything works fine! The system booted, and I upgraded to Squeeze. Now I just need to figure out how to configure the thing to boot from SATA. Thanks for your help.

I have bricked my goflex net exactly the same way as Atrocia did.

I established a serial connection. In OS X i typed screen /dev/tty.PL2303-1B1 115200
and all I get is:


�k533�w!!=#��_55�y=/=5'����Y!y����i-!!7���s����A}���w[}e�������e-{�����-���V6�+��!�!�=!;!!�������￟���YO����҃�5'��������MLKLOy=�u����m#--='-57�!#�51-1=�������j�)5

What can I do?

Check the serial adapter with a loopback test first to confirm it is working.

dpffan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Check the serial adapter with a loopback test
> first to confirm it is working.


I'm a newbie, how do I do that?