TerraMaster Forum

I have an F5-221 which has been set up and working for about 3 years, but I had a power failure and can no longer access it. The power light and all 5 hard drive lights on the front panel are on, the LAN light is flashing as if data is going through, and even the indicator light on the port of the switch it is plugged into is lit, which would seem to indicate it is connected correctly. But none of the computers that had drives mapped to it can access it. The mapped drive in Windoze File Explorer has a red X, and I get "Windows cannot access 192.168.x.x" TNAS PC cannot find it, and neither can Ping or Arp -a. HDCP is running on the router, but the unit does not even show up in the router's network page. All this leads me to believe (in my limited network experience) that something in the power failure caused the F5 to reset its ip address to a different subnet, but is there a way to reset it, short of restarting it with the drives removed and starting over? And can that be done safely without losing my data?

Thanks

Do an install of the current operating system version in use on your device using the '.ins' package, via the 'custom' installation method.

You may have search or ask support for the location of the applicable package due to current TM policy of not making all the packages directly available.

Gremlin, thanks for trying to help, but I am not a Linux guy, I know nothing of the "ins" package or the "custom" install method. I only know how to manage the system through the admin page, which I cannot get to. On some very rare occasions, very far in the past, I have been known to use some terminal process to remotely get int some systems, but how do I even do that when I don't even know what the address of the thing is. (Assuming that I am correct that an IP address change is what caused the problem.) And I would need step-by-step instructions for the commands.

Custom install is part of the installation process provided through TNAS-PC (or mobile) app. It's an option. .ins packages are found on the TM support web site.

But TNAS PC won't connect to the unit. That's the big problem.

I think Gremlin is suggesting that you reinstall the system, which will reset the system configuration. This will allow you to try to fix the problem without having to troubleshoot and fiddle with it. (If you're comfortable with a reset.)
Reinstallation method:
viewtopic.php?t=423
Select the corresponding TOS version according to the initialization page version:
viewtopic.php?t=921

We understand that you think the F5-221 is running normally and it is a network configuration problem.
To confirm this guess, you can plug your HDMI monitor and USB keyboard into the F5-221.
If you can see the system kernel information logging, and you can log in your user via the keyboard, it means your guess may be right. In this case, you can try to check the IP situation or reset the IP by typing the following command. If you can't see anything or can't do anything with the USB keyboard, the system may be damaged. In this case, you can consider reinstalling the system.

That's interesting. I didn't realize I could log in with a monitor and keyboard, there seemed to be no place to plug in a monitor. Only 2 ethernet plugs, 2 USB plugs and a power plug. And no mention it the setup guide of an HDMI plug. I did see a perforated outline of a knock-out plug in the shape of an HDMI plug, which was also shown in the diagram of the back panel in the setup guide. I finally took a very small screwdriver and broke out the knockout plug around the perforations, and shined a flashlight inside and lo and behold, there is an HDMI plug there. Can someone explain to me why Terra Master would go the the trouble of putting in an HDMI plug and leave it covered and put no mention of it in the manual?

At any rate, when I finally got an image to come up on the screen, after several minutes of the monitor telling me "No Signal" it was rebooting. (In the process of opening up the HDMI port I had accidentally bumped the power button.) I watched for several minutes as a long string of Gobbledy-Gook I couldn't read scrolled by, but I did pick out a few lines that I recognized. I saw an IP address go by that was the address I thought the unit should have had, but I had not been able to access it. I also saw something about downloading from terramaster.com, which may mean it was reinstalling TOS even though I had not removed the hard drives before I restarted it. When the scrolling finally stopped I tried to log in, but never could figure out how. As I said in my original post, I know very little of Linux, beyond a brief intro a couple of decades ago, and I have done very little command line work since MickeySoft added the DOSSHELL to DOS 6.0. (Or was it DOS 5.0?) And it didn't help that the image on this monitor was spilling over the edge of the screen, so I couldn't see the first few letters in each line. But I opened a browser on my computer and put in the IP address, and the TOS admin page came up. So then I tried TNAS-PC, and it found the unit and I was able to get to the admin page from there. And the shared drive and all the folders are now showing up in Windows File Explorer.

So the danged thing seems to have repaired itself while I was trying to beat it back into submission. I hate it when a problem gets solved without ever finding out what caused it, because I still don't know anything about the original problem, or the solution. But thanks to those who tried to help me, even though no one ever answered my queries about how to log into Linux if I had been able to get into it.

Here is one possible explanation: The file system on your hard drive was damaged during an unexpected power outage, which prevented the system from starting normally. However, since TOS has a file system check and repair process set up during startup, the file system was not successfully repaired during the initial few startup attempts. This is because sometimes repairing the file system can take a long time. But in later startups, the file system was conditionally repaired, allowing the system to restart. However, this does not mean that the file system has been fully repaired. Based on our experience, a file system that has experienced anomalies due to power outages may encounter failures again in subsequent startups.

Thanks, TMroy. Maybe I will need to do a backup and reinstall after all. And it is still running TOS 4.2.40, so maybe even upgrade to TOS 5? (Or should I just wait for TOS 6?) But it won't happen for a while, since it is running for now, and I'm getting ready to take my camper out for a 2-1/2 week trip.

dclaxon wrote: ↑13 Jul 2024, 12:11

As TOS 4 is not able to directly update to TOS 6, you have to update to TOS 5.1 firstly. And I guess, your system partitions are still on 2GB, there are some works to do on this part before updating.