Iomega ix4-200d data reconstruction, ssh and more!

December 17th, 2009
by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild)

So for those of you who know me, you know I initially complained about a data reconstruction problem with my ix4-200d! I accidently pulled the power cable out (doh!) and then my system came up JUST fine, and said “Data reconstruction, 2%” Yea, it said that FOREVER – And it did nothing and got nowhere! Regardless of how many reboots I made! (Though my data access was fine!)

ix4-200d !

And even going to the “Update Device Software” tab, it always reported “The device software is up to date” Which I now know is a LIE! LIES I SAY! :)

I did a little searching and came across an updated firmware! (oh my!) however it didn’t say it’d do anything about data reconstruction problems! But hey, I always like to be running the latest/greatest, so I downloaded and installed the latest firmware! StorCenter ix4-200d Firmware Version 2.1.25.229: Read First (You’ll find this to be quick and painless!)

Well, some minutes passed and all of a sudden the system was all “DATA RECONSTRUCTION IS HAPPENING IN THE HIZZY!” Okay, not in those exact words.. but I don’t feel like pulling my power to try to reproduce the problem – needless to say, my data reconstruction resumed and finished in short order! Score one for the bucko! (dated reference much?!)

So I deep dove into the system to see what else had changed! (nothing consequential that I could find) but my journey to find a way to ssh this box had not ended! I was determined! I must.. I must.. I must increase my SSH ability! And while searching I came across not only this webpage SSH/Shell access to iomega StorCenter ix2 but that little gem of a webpage included this little link at the bottom! http://ip-of-nas/support.html – Which when you browse to it on your ix4, you end up seeing a page which looks like… this!

Support Page to enable SSH on ix4-200d /support.html

This has a few little gems, only two of which will I look at in any detail – Support Access and Recover Disks

Support Access to enable SSH Storage Recovery Verification - Force Disk data reconstruction maybe?

Well, Support Access looks pretty damn straight forward! Check the box, reboot, and SSH will be enabled (permanently!)

The Storage Recovery Verification is a bit more interesting – my “guess” is that it allows you the ability to force the data reconstruction many of us complain of! Again, I have no intention of forcing the deal to try to see what happens if I fail my system – You simply let me know if this works for you – with data reconstruction woes :)

Getting Shell (ssh) access to the ix4-200d!

Sweet, eh! So, I feel comfortable sharing the process on how to do this.. because frankly, I had to find it from the outside looking in! So I definitely grant you good luck on solving your data reconstruction, firmware updating, and enabling SSH on your NAS!   Until I find an externally cited source though.. I cannot share with you my passwd I used to log in to my ix4 ;)

As promised!  Shell access to your ix2/ix4 exposed! “Get yer red hot ssh here!”

If you come across a site referencing it though, I’d be glad to add it to the mix!  Thanks for your patience.. and look forward to a future post around getting my ‘gigabit runs at 100mb’ problem :)

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Posted in Iomega, NAS, Storage | Comments (61)

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  • Bichofeo

    Hi,nI really need some help with my ix4-200d. Few days ago I noticed that the box was allowing me to browse my files but I could not open any of them. Went to look at it and the display was off, no response from the menu buttons or power button.nI turned it of by pulling the plug and then I turned it back on. nCame back saying that it was shutdown improperly and some reconstruction was needed – but the data was all there and available. Until now, all good.nThe morning after I check if the reconstruction ended and what I see is that the array is offline and the dashboard says there are 4 new disks with data that need to be overwritten to add them to a volume. OVERWRITTEN??!nNo way I’m doing it! I checked in the support.HTML page and there’s the option to recover the volume, but it’s not working – nothing happens. Looking at the log files seems that 2 disks are not available so no reconstruction possible – but the device spins up 4 drives (i can hear it) and shows 4 drives available.nUntil now the Iomega support has been “unsupportive” so I am wandering if anybody here has the same experience or a suggestion on how to proceed – priority of course is to recuperate my data…nnI did ssh’d to my box so anything you need me to run, I can – and the device fw is the last available one from Iomega support site.nThanks!

  • Bichofeo

    Hi,nI really need some help with my ix4-200d. Few days ago I noticed that the box was allowing me to browse my files but I could not open any of them. Went to look at it and the display was off, no response from the menu buttons or power button.nI turned it of by pulling the plug and then I turned it back on. nCame back saying that it was shutdown improperly and some reconstruction was needed – but the data was all there and available. Until now, all good.nThe morning after I check if the reconstruction ended and what I see is that the array is offline and the dashboard says there are 4 new disks with data that need to be overwritten to add them to a volume. OVERWRITTEN??!nNo way I’m doing it! I checked in the support.HTML page and there’s the option to recover the volume, but it’s not working – nothing happens. Looking at the log files seems that 2 disks are not available so no reconstruction possible – but the device spins up 4 drives (i can hear it) and shows 4 drives available.nUntil now the Iomega support has been “unsupportive” so I am wandering if anybody here has the same experience or a suggestion on how to proceed – priority of course is to recuperate my data…nnI did ssh’d to my box so anything you need me to run, I can – and the device fw is the last available one from Iomega support site.nThanks!

  • Bichofeo

    Hi,nI really need some help with my ix4-200d. Few days ago I noticed that the box was allowing me to browse my files but I could not open any of them. Went to look at it and the display was off, no response from the menu buttons or power button.nI turned it of by pulling the plug and then I turned it back on. nCame back saying that it was shutdown improperly and some reconstruction was needed – but the data was all there and available. Until now, all good.nThe morning after I check if the reconstruction ended and what I see is that the array is offline and the dashboard says there are 4 new disks with data that need to be overwritten to add them to a volume. OVERWRITTEN??!nNo way I’m doing it! I checked in the support.HTML page and there’s the option to recover the volume, but it’s not working – nothing happens. Looking at the log files seems that 2 disks are not available so no reconstruction possible – but the device spins up 4 drives (i can hear it) and shows 4 drives available.nUntil now the Iomega support has been “unsupportive” so I am wandering if anybody here has the same experience or a suggestion on how to proceed – priority of course is to recuperate my data…nnI did ssh’d to my box so anything you need me to run, I can – and the device fw is the last available one from Iomega support site.nThanks!

  • Bichofeo

    Hi,nI really need some help with my ix4-200d. Few days ago I noticed that the box was allowing me to browse my files but I could not open any of them. Went to look at it and the display was off, no response from the menu buttons or power button.nI turned it of by pulling the plug and then I turned it back on. nCame back saying that it was shutdown improperly and some reconstruction was needed – but the data was all there and available. Until now, all good.nThe morning after I check if the reconstruction ended and what I see is that the array is offline and the dashboard says there are 4 new disks with data that need to be overwritten to add them to a volume. OVERWRITTEN??!nNo way I’m doing it! I checked in the support.HTML page and there’s the option to recover the volume, but it’s not working – nothing happens. Looking at the log files seems that 2 disks are not available so no reconstruction possible – but the device spins up 4 drives (i can hear it) and shows 4 drives available.nUntil now the Iomega support has been “unsupportive” so I am wandering if anybody here has the same experience or a suggestion on how to proceed – priority of course is to recuperate my data…nnI did ssh’d to my box so anything you need me to run, I can – and the device fw is the last available one from Iomega support site.nThanks!

  • Gsborn

    Did you solved the crontab problem ? If yes How to, because i like to make a cronjob for shutting down the storecenter.
    greetings from denmark

  • somebody

    I had a trouble with fullfilled ix4 disc space by automated backup script.

    After that ix4 was not working, file share was unavailable, web gui not possible to log with domain account, no way to connect it. SSH was not started before from WebGui and after a collapse not possible to start. So I decided to connect discs to linux desktop.
    (my firmware was 2.1.30.10908)

    You have to connect all four discs (otherwise raid synchonization troubles begin) with 4 sata cables and modify samba volume content to release some space.

    boot some linux live cd – for example ubuntu live
    open shell as root – ubuntu works with:
    sudo bash
    install raid and logical volume manager support:
    apt-get install mdadm
    apt-get install lvm2
    modprobe dm-mod
    vgchange -a y

    // I’m not sure, if this works without the VMFS supoort, I installed it before, you must download vmfs-tools …deb package from internet:
    dpkg -i vmfs-tools_0.2.1-1_i386.deb

    look at the recognized partitions:
    cat /proc/partitions

    I disconnected all desktop discs before this operation, so situation was:
    /dev/sda
    /dev/sda1
    /dev/sda2
    /dev/sdb
    /dev/sdb1
    /dev/sdb2
    /dev/sdc
    /dev/sdc1
    /dev/sdc2
    /dev/sdd
    /dev/sdd1
    /dev/sdd2

    /dev/sd*1 are partitions for ix4 operating system, it’s almost 2GB reserved space.

    so you can now join the discs into one raid device named for.ex. /dev/md0:
    mdadm –assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 –force

    now list the logical volumes:
    pvs
    it listed me available logical volume group: md1_vg:
    lvdisplay /dev/md1_vg
    it listed me: md1_vg-md1vol1, so now you can prepare mount point for logical raid volume:
    mkdir /mnt/ix4volume

    and now you can test if it will works normally in readonly mode first:
    mount /dev/mapper/md1_vg-md1vol1 /mnt/ix4volume -o ro

    if you can see content of /mnt/ix4volume/
    especially ./samba folder
    you can see folder with the same name as the name of your share was

    if you can see it

    just umount /dev/mapper/md1_vg-md1vol1
    and mount it again in read write mode:
    mount /dev/mapper/md1_vg-md1vol1 /mnt/ix4volume

    avoid to modify other than samba/your_share_name folder !!!

    shutdown your linux desktop
    return discs back to ix4 and boot
    now it should work.

    (now 2.1.38 firmware is available, but I’m not sure if the bug is resolved.)

  • Roo

    Have you resolved this? I have cronjobs running using files in cron.d – just be aware that the syntax is slightly different than editing with crontab -e; you need a username (?root?) before the command.

  • MisterBombastic

    Hi,
    did you try to mod You ix4 to a MailServer? for Office internal Communication?

  • Denys

    crontab-e in this model is not working. has to be done anything? example 1 * * root / home / scripts / rsync.sh

  • http://pkguild.com Christopher Kusek

    What you’ve all been waiting for! My good friend Chris Colotti brings us:

    How To: Convert an Iomega IX4-200D to an IX4-200D “Cloud Edition” bit.ly/vMbkWU (by @ccolotti)

    http://www.chriscolotti.us/technology/how-to-convert-an-iomega-ix4-200d-to-an-ix4-200d-cloud-edition/

  • Kaygeear

    Hi, I am having the same problem. Did you manage to fix it? Please advise.

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