New Dockstar: Orange/Amber light flickers, no sign of the device in the network

I bought a Dockstar earlier today and had no success getting it to work. I am posting here because it took much longer than needed to find the "solution". Hopefully other affected customers will find this earlier.

My problem:
Once I plug it into power, the green light flashes for a while, then it changes to orange/amber in the same rhythm. Whatever I do, the device does not do things in the network. I tried letting my router giving it an IP, I tried connecting it directly without serving DHCP on my system (so it chooses an IP from 169.254.*.*), I connected it to a Windows XP installation with tinydhcp. It never showed up, was not in the 169.254.0.0/16 range, never asked for an IP. i also tried letting it access the internet but obviously that could not work (and did not).

I went through several forums (the german http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f101/der-20-server-735098.html being of great help) and blogs with no easy solution (apparently the NAND is corrupted, so the boot process hangs on a bad checksum. You could reflash it according to http://plugapps.com/index.php5?title=Hardware:_Seagate_DockStar_Reflashing ).

Then I found the Seagate help sites and they agree that the unit needs to be replaced (since the reflashing/opening voids warranty):
"Yellow blinking: The Dockstar network adapter failed to boot up accurately."
"Yellow/amber blinking: The Seagate FreeAgent Dockstar failed to boot up normally."

The suggested troubleshooting basically is "have you tried turning it off and on again". :-)

My serial number is 2GEP1G6_, someone in the german forum had 2GEP1H8_, another user said he had a very different one. There were 4-5 faulty units in that forum thread.


And appended some things that confused me.

a) According to http://ahsoftware.de/dockstar/#installation (bad anchor, scroll up a bit) "there are devices with a new firmware" on which you have to enabled the SSH access through the Pogoplug software(?). That sounds like you can skip all the "don't let it phone home" fear because you have to let it do so. Can someone confirm this? Maybe we can find visible differences of the units so one does not have to guess?

b) Some comments suggested that the device will boot anything bootable plugged into its USB ports, that surely is only true for units that already got the new boot manager installed by the user, correct?

Forgot to include this link.

Here is a indepth look at the error that makes it hang, the user was able to use the serial port for recovery:
http://www.sheevaplug.de/component/kunena/38-software/2315-dockstar-will-nicht-blinkende-orange-led.html

When I got a new device and disabled the auto update feature (first pulling out WAN cable then editing the rcS init file), this was what exactly (should) happen. This just meant that the device tried but failed logged into Pogo service. However, I can always find its IP address by using nmap or looking into the router network set up. In this case, I could log into it through ssh. If you cannot find its ip address, then I am not sure what has happened.

Nope, according to the Seagate sites, a flashing/blinking orange light indicates a boot error: "The Seagate FreeAgent Dockstar failed to boot up normally.".

A steady orange would be what you mean. Maybe they changed behaviour with the new firmware (me probably having a new one)?

Anyways, I will try to get a replacement.

I have nearly the exact same problem. first green light blinking, switching to orange, than nothing and so on.

I got a replacement and now it works. I was scared at first, because at first it went flashing orange again, but shortly after it became steady orange.

I then edited the /etc/init.d/rcS and uncommented the update thing. It got scary again because now it is back at flashing orange all the time! But it works. It got an IP via DHCP from my router.

So apparently the Seagate docs are not very true. :)

My new serial is 2GEP1HY_

@Hannes: is it stable? i mean, did you try to reboot?

Btw: did you add the rC hack which circumvents the switching boot (one time boot nand other time boot flash-drive)?
And what do you do with your bricked one?

The new one is happily running Archlinux (Plugbox) now. :-)
Yes, I did not let it access the internet at first and removed that bit in the rcS file.

The bricked one was exchanged for this new one in the store I bought it in, it was a warranty issue after all (since it simply did not work).

hmmm, i guess i have to give mine back too. i just ordered a new one plus a serial cable, to try to reanimate it, but i don't give it any good chance.

Hannes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nope, according to the Seagate sites, a
> flashing/blinking orange light indicates a boot
> error: "The Seagate FreeAgent Dockstar failed to
> boot up normally.".
>
> A steady orange would be what you mean. Maybe they
> changed behaviour with the new firmware (me
> probably having a new one)?
>
> Anyways, I will try to get a replacement.

Flashing orange means it cannot log into Pogo but that is just what we want. I always has flashing orange and never had any problem.

hey

how are guys able to find the ip address of the dockstar.?i have a netgear router.were it will be in the router settings. Kindly help

I used the Linux tool nmap. "nmap 192.168.0.*" for example.

Your router might have a list of "connected devices".

I just got five fresh dockstars to set up a demo network.

Two out of them had the same problem. Untouched out of the factory/store. Returned, replaced. Five working now.

Hi,

i had the same surprise... new dockstar, DOA. RMA then i received a new one. Worked ok.

Sorry.. but RMA is the only way.

My experience was the same, out of the box flashing amber light, could not detect it on the network. Returned it back to store and got replacement unit which is working fine.

I use Advanced IP Scanner from Radmin to find IP addresses on my home network.

Also, method recommended by Alexander Hollner on his web site worked on my Dockstar. Last two octets of MAC address were last two octets of the IP address 169.254.XXX.XXX
It just needs to be converted from hex to decimal.

Of course, if you have DHCP on your network, Dockstar will get address from DHCP server, I use static addresses, in which case above method works.

Roman

I had the same problem as OP, I ended up ordering a second Dockstar which I had zero problem finding and setting up Arch on. The original one I have recently interfaced via serial port and now have the read out to debug with which appears to be a uboot issue.

Yep, I had a DOA from CompUSA (via Amazon). Goes straight from green to blinking amber, never gets to solid amber. Fresh out of the box. I let it sit overnight, never showed up.

I also used tcpdump on my dhcp server and never saw any packets from the device. It's definitely not even getting to the DHCP phase of booting