Fix WD My Cloud 2T through UART TTL serial interface

[haiyeong]

After upgrade and downgrade debian, my cloud is bricked finanlly. Want to try the steps in Bricked my EX2. <Also how I unbricked it>

First thing is to find serial console port on the PCB. My cloud 2T, purchased around 2014.

[Bennor]

@haiyeong

First thing is to find serial console port on the PCB.

If one does a subforum search, magnifying glass icon upper right, they’ll find this prior discussion that may be relevant to your question.

https://community.wd.com/t/rs232-to-usb/190999

[haiyeong]

Bricked my EX2. <Also how I unbricked it>

Hi, I have been playing around trying to get openvpn to work on the NAS with iptables, but it required some kernel modules that were not enabled, so I embarked on recompiling the firmware from the WD GPL source. It seems though I must have missed something as now the EX2 won’t finish booting (power light just sits there blinking and there it doesn’t appear on the network). Does anyone know of a way of unbricking these? I saw that for the original My Cloud it was possible to use dd to reformat …

I think this is serial port that can be connected to.

I am more confident after see another photo posted in RS232 to USB - #9 by Fox_exe

[Fox_exe]

Note: Its not RS232, its “UART” (3.3 volt vs 12 volts in rs232).
For connect it to rs232 need chip-converter (MAX232 for example). Or just buy one of cheap chinese “USB-TTL/UART converters” (Based on FT232xx or CP21xx).
More info in my archives:
http://fox-exe.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Other/Photo/

[haiyeong]

Thanks! Bought a cable Amazon.com

Will see how it works.

[Fox_exe]

I have same, but mine cost 1$ (Aliexpress)

[haiyeong]

Connected UART to USB, using minicom (cutecom is better) on debian, got boot messages. WD MyCloud uses barebox as bootloader. see boot messages below.

[haiyeong]

WDMyCloud boot message:

minicom.log.txt (71.3 KB)

[haiyeong]

The boot messages says inittab file is missing, interesting…

[Fox_exe]

Seems like rootfs empty or damaged. Need reupload 1 and 2 partitions (md raid / rootfs)

[haiyeong]

Fixed. After copying missing files and re-installing firmware, my cloud 2T is back to normal.

Here are steps:

1. bought UART TTL to USB cable, soldering cable to UART TTL serial interface (ports are shown in RS232 to USB - #8 by Bennor) There are videos on YouTube showing how to open up case. Pelase note: solder cables to the side as shown in https://community.wd.com/uploads/short-url/oeq8LfVKP0b2r6U2dd072yQYnVX.jpg, the other side don’t has signals.

2. connect to USB port of computer, power on my cloud, using minicom (cutecom, or others) to show boot messages, e.g. using command line in my linux computer: “sudo minicom -D /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200 -8”. Somehow minicom does not get keyboard input, cutecom does.

3. Fix boot problems. In my case, “/etc/inittab” is missing. On Linux computer, I downloaded product firmware file sq-040405-101-20161110.zip from official web site Software and Firmware Downloads | WD Support. Unzip, extract files in deb, and mount rootfs.img.

This is unzip fireware file

$ unzip sq-040405-101-20161110.zip

#This is extract files in deb
$ ar p sq-040405-101-20161110.deb data.tar.lzma |unlzma |tar -x -C ./WDMyCloudFirmware

#After extraction, there is rootfs.img file, mount it.
$ sudo mount WDMyCloudFirmware/CacheVolume/upgrade/rootfs.img /media/WDMyCloud

There is full file system

$ ls /media/WDMyCloud/
bin
boot
dev
etc
home
lib
lost+found
media
mnt
opt
proc
root
run
sbin
srv
sys
tmp
usr
var

4. Move out hard drive in My Cloud 2T , connect hard drive to Linux computer, and mount its /dev/md0. Copying missing files from /media/WDMyCloud/ to /media/md0/. Also copy deb file (sq-040405-101-20161110.deb) to /dev/md0/, which will be used in re-install. Note: after install mdadm package, simple invoking “mount /dev/md0 /media/md0” should be able to mount it. You will be able to see same file structure as above.

In theory, you can interrupt booting sequence using “Ctrl-C” to enter barebox environment, and using tftp to transfer missing file from Linux computer. Therefore, don’t need plug/unplug hard drive to/from computer. But the “dhcp” command in barebox does not work on my WD My Cloud 2T, “devinfo eth0” show driver is “none”.

5. Boot My Cloud, see booting messages in minicom (or cutecom, etc.) Hopefully, you are able to see login shell. Login as root, default password is “welc0me”.

6. Now you can install official firmware using “dpkg -i sq-040405-101-20161110.deb”. Note, at first, mount /dev/sda4 to somewhere, e.g. /mnt/sda4, and rename original /CacheVolume to /CacheVolume.bak, then make a soft link /CacheVolume → /dev/sda4/cache/. Otherwise, you may encounter insufficient hard drive space during installation.

7. Re-installation will reboot itself. After several minutes (~5-10 minutes), you will be able to get your My Cloud back. Note: during reboot, you may notice the LED light flashing white for long time. This is because My Cloud is checking hard drive data volume, which takes 333 seconds. This is from cutecom log:
   [ 71.718601] initcall init_module…
   /dev/sda4 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
   [ 405.785018] EXT4-fs (sda4): …

Now, I de-bricked My Cloud 2T using official firmware. All my backup photos and videos are untouched. No disk partition needed. Thanks to members Fox_exe and Bennor, I read many helpful posts from you.

[Fox_exe]

For unpack .deb file you can use tar -xvf package.deb or this: dpkg -x package.deb output_folder (And -e key for extract package info)

Note: mdadm sometime mount raid as /dev/md127 instead of md0 (or md1). Need stop this raid and assembly “by hands”:
mdadm -s /dev/md127 mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2

For boot via barebox - use this archive: (Include tftp server)
https://ftp.anionix.ru/WDMyCloud/WDMyCloud-Gen1/Recovery
Note: By default - IP of tftp server = ip of dhcp server)
Note2: Barebox can’t detect net link speed, so he can’t work on 100mb network, only in 1gb.