seems I bricked the EX2 with a wrong network configuration. The device is not available via network anymore, neither webinterface nor ssh. Also the router doesn’t show it as connected to the network. I tried to reset the EX2 pressing the reset button on its back (5s and 40s, as somewhere recommended in the forum), but it doesn’t help either. Is there any other way to restore the factory firmware?
Anyway, I tried some things on my own: I removed the hard disks from the EX2 and put it into my PC. I managed to create the RAID and mount the second raid (data) partition, it looks well. However, I wasn’t able to mount the first raid partition. I think the filesystem isn’t recognized properly. What kind of filesystem is it, is there a proprietary filesystem used? As far as I understood, this partition contains the system partition. In other threads [1] I read it is possible to restore the original firmware by pasting the firmware image into the first partition using dd. But this hint refers mainly to the MBL, whose firmware really contains a disk image (i.e. rootfs.img) with a size of ~2GB. Unfortunately the EX2 firmware available for download doesn’t contain such an image, since it contains just a single big executable/binary.
Next thing I tried was to build the EX2 firmware from source [2] by myself: (of course) it doesn’t build an image of the partition but a ‘WD-NAS-firmware’ executable, and (!) an ‘image.cfs’ file. Is it possible to restore the factory firmware by dd’ing this image.cfs on the first partition? As image is too small for the original partition image (~93M vs. ~2GB), can someone tell how to make this thing ‘fitting’.
Another alternative is to use the very original EX2 firmware image for dd. Maybe someone can point me to the place where I can get such an image from, or provide one? Or, at least tell me I’m totally off the track… Any help is really appreciated!
I want to reactive the EX2 as NAS again, as it is bricked for the moment. I’m looking for a way to reset the device to factory defaults. I’m able to access the partitions and the data stored in the data partition when I connect the hard disks with another computer, so I have no need for a data recovery.
seems I bricked the EX2 with a wrong network configuration.
Proceed with the following info ONLY IF you are sure your unit is bricked and the factory reset instructions as mentioned in the manual is not working.
My one and only question to you…have you uploaded any modified firmware to your device? IF not you should be able to boot up fine as long as you put in a blank drive in it.
As for data on your exisitng drives, EX2 uses Linux so of course it uses a Lninux-native filesystem, in this case specifically it is ext4. I think if you put those drives in a dock and boot a laptop from a Linux live disk, especially one geared towards disk partitioning (e.g. PartedMagic) you’ll probably be able to see the partitions and mount them and copy the data off to another drive. If you cannot get the EX2’s OS to boot up that would be your best bet. Once you get that data off, you could get use gparted (in PartedMagic’s GUI I think it’s called Partition Editior) to remove all partitions from the drives and basically have unallocated data. You can even put those same drives back into EX2 after that and the firmware will self install on the drives and boot up.
Keep in mind, you are most likely in unsupported territory at this point, so anything you do is mostly at your own risk…but then again, what have you go to lose, right?
My one and only question to you…have you uploaded any modified firmware to your device?
Nope, it’s still the original, or at least, an updated original WD firmware.
[…] remove all partitions from the drives and […] put those same drives back into EX2 after that and the firmware will self install on the drives and boot up.
Actually, I had the same idea, because the EX2 is also available w/o hard disks. In the manual this it the described way to prepare the device when inserting new drives.
As for data on your exisitng drives, EX2 uses Linux so of course it uses a Lninux-native filesystem, in this case specifically it is ext4. I think if you put those drives in a dock and boot a laptop from a Linux live disk, especially one geared towards disk partitioning (e.g. PartedMagic) you’ll probably be able to see the partitions and mount them and copy the data off to another drive.
As I already mentioned, I am able to mount the partitions on my linux pc, even the raid’ed data partition. But I am not able to mount the the first raid partition (md0 if I remember correctly, but this may differ on different setups). Is this the system partition? If so, it seems this is not any native linux filesystem, as it doesn’t mount properly. (Somewhere I read the EX2 system partition is headed by the MBR what prevents it from normal mounting, is that true? In this case, there absolutely may be an ext filesystem.)
As I am very busy the next days, I hope to give your approach a try asap.
Nope, it’s still the original, or at least, an updated original WD firmware.
Yes, then you should definitely be fine.
Actually, I had the same idea, because the EX2 is also available w/o hard disks. In the manual this it the described way to prepare the device when inserting new drives.
Precisely so. In fact, my EX2 was bought as a diskless version. That’s why I know (besides from digging into EX2’s internals) that the firmware is loaded into theROM of the device…when we update the firmware, we essentially update the firmware on the ROM. After very first boot or after a device reset or after a firmware update, the firmware then gets copied from the ROM onto the drive. And then it boots from the drive.
I can’t comment to your questions about the RAID partitions unfortunately since I use JBOD on my single drive in there…but here’s what my mtab looks like…which of course will vary from a RAID configured system’s mtab (and the final four lines below are of course unque to my setup as I attached couple external USB drives and also use EX2’s ISO mount feature (a very handy feature in my opinion to keep the installers of many of my commonly used apps in an iso and always-accessible over the network…so I dont have to go digging for the discs when I need those app installers):
Precisely so. In fact, my EX2 was bought as a diskless version. That’s why I know (besides from digging into EX2’s internals) that the firmware is loaded into theROM of the device…when we update the firmware, we essentially update the firmware on the ROM. After very first boot or after a device reset or after a firmware update, the firmware then gets copied from the ROM onto the drive. And then it boots from the drive.
Ahh, thanks for this clarification! Actually I wondered about how provisioning of new disks works, and this was the only obvious (but unconfirmed) explanation to me.
Nonetheless there pops up just another question in my head, as you were so afraid of a custom firmware installed. Doesn’t this provisioning work with a non-original firmware anymore? And if so, what would then be the preferred way to go?
By non-original firmware, I meant, firmware that’s compiled by you.
All firmware updates work the same way, be it for WD’s firmware or one’s custom-compiled firmware. But the reason I asked you that in the beginning is because I wanted to be certain the bricking wasn’t brought about by you trying to flash a custom firmware and then this started happening. I mean, if you know what you are doing and compile your custom firmware (which from your first post it seems you do know) then you should be fine…but if you inadvertently leave something out or write something wrong that could cause the firmware to not be bootable, THEN your device could be permanently hosed. So to be safe before offering any advice, I just gave that condition as a disclaimer. I have custom compiled my firmware since last March, days after the product was launched and I got it in my hands…and I have had no problems. But I never had a situation where it was bricked network wise. It was always reachable via the browser. So when you said it is bricked and unreachable, I just didn’t know how that happened or what state it was in. But if you have a genuine WD firmware loaded on the ROM and it’s not a custom-compiled firmware, then you should be fine. Putting a blank drive in will get your new drive drive to be used.
Thanks again for your elaborate explanation. Then I should definitely be on the safe side. Currently I’m creating images of the drives, just to be on the even more safe side. As there is not that much data stored on the drives, the compressed images will not be that large, but nonetheless it takes its time to complete. We will go on vacation tomorrow for one week, so I think I will come back to this issue afterwards and report.
As I am also interested in experiences with custom firmwares, you seem to be one of the right guys to talk to. But I think this is worth a new thread to discuss when I got my EX2 working again.
just reporting back as promised long ago. Not just had a snowy holiday but also a subsequent disease, but now everything is good again, which refers to my health as well as the EX2. As advised, I dropped all the partitions from both hard disks and started the EX2 with these empty disks. A few minutes later the EX2 felt like a new born baby presenting me a virgin OS, configuration and web-interface.
