Hello,
I recently found an old Seagate Dockstar which I would like to re-use as a network backup & monitoring server (since it is such a neat compact low-power unit), and would appreciate your advice on how feasible it would be to get it loaded with Debian or similar, given its current behaviour, outlined below :-
I bought the unit new about 10 years ago, registered it on pogoplug.com, and used it for about 6 months or so. Since then it has been sitting unused in a cupboard.
When it powers on, the LED flashes green for 10 seconds, then flashes amber indefinitely , which I understand means it failed to boot.
I connected it to my home network to see if it got an IP address from my broadband router, but it didn't appear to : an nmap -sP of my 192.168.10.0/24 showed no new hosts.
Then I read online that it was a good idea to prevent the dockstar from 'phoning home' to prevent firmware updates .. woops, too late..!
I made a wee cable to connect my raspberry Pi GPIO UART pins to the Dockstar's serial pins, and used 'screen /dev/serial0 115200' to see if there was any serial output when booting the Dockstar, but see none. I tried swapping the TX and RX connections in case I got that wrong, but still no output visible when booting.
Next I tried to snoop the network to see if there was any evidence of the Dockstar trying to do DHCP : I connected it directly to an isolated raspberry Pi which is running a DHCP server (dnsmasq) on its wired LAN interface. I could see a flurry of packets when the Dockstar was switched on , which looked promising: ICMP6 neighbour solicitations, multicast DNS and even a few BOOTP/DHCP Request packets. -see attached
However on closer inspection these packets all had a source MAC address of the rasp Pi: there appeared to be no other MAC address sending out packets.
So probably the packets were just a by-product of the Pi's LAN interface coming up when the Dockstar is powered on and the link-level connectivity comes up..
Incidentally the amber LED on the Pi's LAN interface flashes during boot of the Dockstar, then stays on solid. The green LED on the Pi's LAN stays off - I understand this is normal for a Pi 3B+ and shows it has made a gigabit link rather than 10/100M.
So my questions for you experts are:
1. From the above info, are you able to judge whether the unit might still be hackable, or is likely dead ?
2. does the fact that it has 'phoned home' in the past mean that it may now have a more bullet-proof firmware on it which intentionally disables serial output & SSH etc?
3. would my only option now be to get hold of a JTAG board/kit and see if I can try to re-enable serial output / re-flash it ?
I have not used JTAG before - it sounds interesting and could be a good lockdown project. However the £30 or so I spend on JTAG kit might be better spent on purchasing a new mini ARM device .. I do like the Dockstar's design though and reluctant to throw it away unless it is really dead .!
Thanks for your patience for the lengthy newbie post
Rob
I recently found an old Seagate Dockstar which I would like to re-use as a network backup & monitoring server (since it is such a neat compact low-power unit), and would appreciate your advice on how feasible it would be to get it loaded with Debian or similar, given its current behaviour, outlined below :-
I bought the unit new about 10 years ago, registered it on pogoplug.com, and used it for about 6 months or so. Since then it has been sitting unused in a cupboard.
When it powers on, the LED flashes green for 10 seconds, then flashes amber indefinitely , which I understand means it failed to boot.
I connected it to my home network to see if it got an IP address from my broadband router, but it didn't appear to : an nmap -sP of my 192.168.10.0/24 showed no new hosts.
Then I read online that it was a good idea to prevent the dockstar from 'phoning home' to prevent firmware updates .. woops, too late..!
I made a wee cable to connect my raspberry Pi GPIO UART pins to the Dockstar's serial pins, and used 'screen /dev/serial0 115200' to see if there was any serial output when booting the Dockstar, but see none. I tried swapping the TX and RX connections in case I got that wrong, but still no output visible when booting.
Next I tried to snoop the network to see if there was any evidence of the Dockstar trying to do DHCP : I connected it directly to an isolated raspberry Pi which is running a DHCP server (dnsmasq) on its wired LAN interface. I could see a flurry of packets when the Dockstar was switched on , which looked promising: ICMP6 neighbour solicitations, multicast DNS and even a few BOOTP/DHCP Request packets. -see attached
However on closer inspection these packets all had a source MAC address of the rasp Pi: there appeared to be no other MAC address sending out packets.
So probably the packets were just a by-product of the Pi's LAN interface coming up when the Dockstar is powered on and the link-level connectivity comes up..
Incidentally the amber LED on the Pi's LAN interface flashes during boot of the Dockstar, then stays on solid. The green LED on the Pi's LAN stays off - I understand this is normal for a Pi 3B+ and shows it has made a gigabit link rather than 10/100M.
So my questions for you experts are:
1. From the above info, are you able to judge whether the unit might still be hackable, or is likely dead ?
2. does the fact that it has 'phoned home' in the past mean that it may now have a more bullet-proof firmware on it which intentionally disables serial output & SSH etc?
3. would my only option now be to get hold of a JTAG board/kit and see if I can try to re-enable serial output / re-flash it ?
I have not used JTAG before - it sounds interesting and could be a good lockdown project. However the £30 or so I spend on JTAG kit might be better spent on purchasing a new mini ARM device .. I do like the Dockstar's design though and reluctant to throw it away unless it is really dead .!
Thanks for your patience for the lengthy newbie post
Rob