In the absence of any replies, I’ve done some searching on Google, and found this post - http://community.wd.com/t/mycloud-solid-red-light/134797/4 on the support forums, essentially saying that I should use the e2fsck command to restore my corrupted primary superblock from a backup… ok cool. So I followed the instructions and did the following:
-
Ran parted -l to find out that my main partition is on /dev/sda4:
WDMyCloud:~# parted -l
Model: ATA WDC WD30EZRX-00D (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gptNumber Start End Size File system Name Flags
3 15.7MB 528MB 513MB linux-swap(v1) primary
1 528MB 2576MB 2048MB ext3 primary raid
2 2576MB 4624MB 2048MB ext3 primary raid
5 4624MB 4724MB 99.6MB primary
6 4724MB 4824MB 101MB primary
7 4824MB 4826MB 1049kB primary
8 4826MB 4828MB 2097kB primary
4 4828MB 3001GB 2996GB ext4 primary <---- This is the one, note number 4 -
Ran mke2fs -n /dev/sda4 to find out where my superblock backups are kept
WDMyCloud:~# mke2fs -n /dev/sda4
mke2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
182853632 inodes, 731387904 blocks
36569395 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
22321 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
102400000, 214990848, 512000000, 550731776, 644972544 <---- they are kept on these blocks -
Then picked the first backup on block 32768 and used that with e2fsck in an attempt to fix it - it found an error, which I have omitted from the below screencap, just answer yes to clear it all:
WDMyCloud:~# e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/sda4
e2fsck 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
/dev/sda4 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Killed
As you can see it ended with “killed”, the post where I got this idea from suggests to reboot the hard drive after it’s either killed or it displays a summary … since it was killed I decided to look at /var/log/messages instead to see why it was killed - turns out the ‘out of memory killer’ killed my e2fsck process before it could complete, because it was consuming too much memory (there is only around 230MB of RAM in this thing). Since I must have too many files on my hard drive I need more memory for e2fsck to complete the restore of my corrupted superblock. So this plan didn’t work … it might for others, but unfortunately no luck for me.
So with my limited knowledge of Linux, I’m going to try plugging in a USB stick into the back of my WD My Cloud, create an additional swap file on the USB to help supplement the swap space of the system, re-run e2fsck and see if it works.
Hope someone else has another idea, if not I’ll let you know how I go.
Also, is there anyone from WD Support roaming these forums who can help with this issue?