Iomega P405m NAS

[nevthebluebear]

Hi All,

Been registered on here a while, learning from posts that other people have written!. - Now it's time for me to throw a problem out there.

Ive got an old Iomega P405m NAS in my home rack. Its running Win Server 2000 but who knows what the password is!

It hasn't got any USBs, CD drives. only a NIC and a PS2 for a keyboard.

So PXE boot is the only option for OS install. I want to stick NAS4free on it. My problem is, how do I deploy something like this through WDS?

Sorry if home related network posts aren't allowed on here, I feel i'd get more help here than I would on any other forums

 

Thanks,

Steve

[TRC_MA]

I don't know if this will help you but I have used it to PXE boot Linux live CD/USB images - WDSLINUX - Syslinux Wiki

 

NAS4Free is FreeBSD, not Linux, so I don't promise this will work for you but should you run out of options and go for a Linux NAS it may do what you need.

 

Do you know if the NAS itself is capable of PXE?

[nevthebluebear]

I'm pretty sure the NAS supports PXE as it has an option for it in the BIOS, and ive enabled it and set LAN as first boot device.

So, I'll have a look at sticking syslinux on my WDS server and try that.

 

However, the problem now is the NAS isn't booting. To get it to boot before I had to press the power button rather rapidly and not hold it town for too long and then "bleep" noise would sound, then bios screens etc and normal booting.

Now, I boot it the same as before, all of the drive lights and power lights come on but I'm not getting the "bleep" or anything on the monitor??

So, that problem needs to be solved now before getting a new OS on it

 

Thanks for the reply.

[TRC_MA]

I just remembered the last time I tried this the documentation hadn't been updated to match the syslinux downloaded files. If you go through the notes there you will probably find the PXE client fails to boot and will say "could not find file abc.xyz" (a bunch of C32 something something files if I recall correctly), and possibly a path too.

 

Unzip the download, search for the file that the client says is missing and copy the version of the file for the correct architecture for your PXE boot, and to the equivalent path. For example:

 

32bit PXE client wants "abc.xyz", copy syslinux\....\x86\....\abc.xyz to ....\Boot\x86\ on your WDS server.

64bit PXE client wants "123\abc.xyz", copy syslinux\...\x64\...\abc.xyz to ....\Boot\x64\123\ on your WDS server.

 

Repeat as necessary, I think I needed 3 reboots to find the paths and names of the files that were missing.

[nevthebluebear]

Ok, Thanks. Have you got any suggestions for NAS OSs to stick on there, Its a fairly old NAS, I think it either has 512mb, or 1gig of RAM.

I just need to get it to boot now!, Its a bit of a pain, its booting normally, its just not displaying anything on the monitor, or powering the keyboard. - its almost like its booted but not loading into the BIOS!

[TRC_MA]

Not from experience, sorry. My first step would be to do a search of Distrowatch for NAS category distros - DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

 

It looks like of the four results one is NAS4Free, a fork of the FreeNAS project, a third is 64bit only, leaving DistroWatch.com: OpenMediaVault as your only option?

[nevthebluebear]

ok, Thanks!, there are some old versions OpenMediaVault that look like they support 32 bit, so I'll try them!.

Now, just to get the NAS to boot!, Have you got any ideas why its not booting properly?

[TRC_MA]

I don't know how accessible the insides are in terms of treating it like a PC and swapping RAM etc to diagnose but perhaps start there? Also if it has a serial port it may have been set to output to a console rather than VGA display (you would need a PC with PuTTY or similar to connect to it) but I am just guessing here.

[nevthebluebear]

Its built almost identically to a PC, only difference is that it has no USBs, optical drives, and only a keyboard ps2 port. The only other connectors are dual NICs, VGA, console and power!

When I got it to boot last week it was running Windows 2000 Server Advanced so I presume it is designed to be managed with a web interface or over remote desktop.

The problem is at the moment I don't think its actually booting as its not showing up on my router. Ive been leaving it for 10 - 20 mins to boot as well, still not showing up on the network. So I know its not getting past the bios stage.

When I got it to boot last week I pressed the power button really quickly and it went "bleep" and booted. I set the bios to LAN boot and I havent been able to get the machine on since!

[TRC_MA]

Normally I might also suggest a factory reset or similar but I would hate for you to lose data, RAID config, etc. as a result.

[nevthebluebear]

Thanks for the replies. Sadly im unable to find a way of factory resetting. It runs like a pc, so it needs a fresh OS install like a normal server. However i cant seem to get to boot. I have no worries of loosing data as all of the drives are empty anyway, apart from the os of course!