Greetings all,
after much reading and note taking from this forum, I started on the journey of swapping out the stock Synology OS with Debian. At least, that was the goal. Along the way, it looks like I've bricked the poor thing.
It's a Kirdwood CPU, with 256MB RAM and some SPI flash. (Uncertain of size now)
I'm presuming that it's similar to the DS212, just in a 1ru chassis, rather than a desktop unit. (Is this a correct presumption?)
It was running u-boot 1.1.4 (stock) with a 2.6 kernel and initrd in SPI flash.
I got a tftp server up and running, got the kernel and Debian rootfs from bodhi and ran the 'tftpboot 0x808000 uImage' and 'tftpboot 0x???? uInitrd' commands. (I've lost the details of the memory addresses, since my serial terminal app has ungracefully exited, taking the logs with it).
Unfortunately both loaded the files and then said 'bad magic number'.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , I thought. I'll reset the CPU and try again.
uh… Nothing on the serial port. No messages, nothing.
Maybe the memory addresses are where the images are loaded from, not to, and I just overwrote the flash?
I didn't think that was possible - being memory protected. Did I get that hideously wrong?
At least there's kwboot (which I've used before when recovering my Helios64 device) to recover, right?
No. All I'm getting with that is xmodem protocol errors :/
I tried all the 2017.07 kwboot images and they all gave me xmodem protocol errors.
There's no uboot image in the current Synology OS archive to try with - argh.
The Synology RS212 is listed in both the linux kernel source and the u-boot source, so someone's done something with this device before, but I cannot find any discussions online to confirm other people's experiences with it.
That was yesterday.
I'm going to pull the RS212 out of my rack, drop it on my desk and see if having it separated from the VSphere cluster helps. (I dunno, maybe even sacrificing a goat?) and swap out the USB cable for a shorter one. (5m is convenient, but potentially error-creating)
If that doesn't work, then I'll have run out of things I can try on my own.
Can I ask for advice on how to build a uboot image that is appropriate for both kwboot and tftpboot?
I have a surfeit of functional hardware (x86, ARM & ARM64) so can easily put together a build environment.
That'll at least get the device alive again, after which I can map out the flash, maybe get an upgraded uboot image installed, and then boot the kernel and initrd from USB.
after much reading and note taking from this forum, I started on the journey of swapping out the stock Synology OS with Debian. At least, that was the goal. Along the way, it looks like I've bricked the poor thing.
It's a Kirdwood CPU, with 256MB RAM and some SPI flash. (Uncertain of size now)
I'm presuming that it's similar to the DS212, just in a 1ru chassis, rather than a desktop unit. (Is this a correct presumption?)
It was running u-boot 1.1.4 (stock) with a 2.6 kernel and initrd in SPI flash.
I got a tftp server up and running, got the kernel and Debian rootfs from bodhi and ran the 'tftpboot 0x808000 uImage' and 'tftpboot 0x???? uInitrd' commands. (I've lost the details of the memory addresses, since my serial terminal app has ungracefully exited, taking the logs with it).
Unfortunately both loaded the files and then said 'bad magic number'.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , I thought. I'll reset the CPU and try again.
uh… Nothing on the serial port. No messages, nothing.
Maybe the memory addresses are where the images are loaded from, not to, and I just overwrote the flash?
I didn't think that was possible - being memory protected. Did I get that hideously wrong?
At least there's kwboot (which I've used before when recovering my Helios64 device) to recover, right?
No. All I'm getting with that is xmodem protocol errors :/
I tried all the 2017.07 kwboot images and they all gave me xmodem protocol errors.
There's no uboot image in the current Synology OS archive to try with - argh.
The Synology RS212 is listed in both the linux kernel source and the u-boot source, so someone's done something with this device before, but I cannot find any discussions online to confirm other people's experiences with it.
That was yesterday.
I'm going to pull the RS212 out of my rack, drop it on my desk and see if having it separated from the VSphere cluster helps. (I dunno, maybe even sacrificing a goat?) and swap out the USB cable for a shorter one. (5m is convenient, but potentially error-creating)
If that doesn't work, then I'll have run out of things I can try on my own.
Can I ask for advice on how to build a uboot image that is appropriate for both kwboot and tftpboot?
I have a surfeit of functional hardware (x86, ARM & ARM64) so can easily put together a build environment.
That'll at least get the device alive again, after which I can map out the flash, maybe get an upgraded uboot image installed, and then boot the kernel and initrd from USB.