Terastation FAQ

As I've not yet found the time to set up a mailing list, feel free to ask questions here.

I'll try to answer them and everyone else please try to answer them, too.

Success or Failure with UPS systems?
I'm looking for any help in finding a UPS battery that will shutdown my stock Tera. Anyone know of verified tests of any units? The Tera seems to support APC and some other based on the pin assignment, but between Buffalo and APC, no one has any proof that it works?!? Goat 00:03, 21 June 2006 (CEST)

I am using an APC700 SmartUPS with my Terastation. On mains power failure the UPS switches to battery power and sends a signal to Terastation via serial cable. Terastation then performs a shutdown immediately.--timd 21:01, 29 July 2006 (CEST)

I am using an APC Smart-UPS SC 620VA with my Terastation. It works fine and is able to shutdown the Terastation immediately. A previous test with the "Belkin Superior USV 650 VA" was not successful. The signal sent by the USV via serial cable was not recognized by the Terastation. hansihu 22:48, 19 February 2007 (CEST)

I am using a APC Smart-UPS PRO 650VA. Even though the cable is an APC one, it's not the one that came with the unit. Therefore my Terastation does not shutdown. Bummer. WizardFusion 23:16, 24 February 2007 (CET)

Is the TeraStation very loud?
The temperature regulated fan inside keeps the noise down, but the 4 hard disks produce a lot of vibration. However, it is not any louder than your standard tower case. I cannot hear my TeraStation above the usual office background din. -- Unknown

My Terastation has an oscillating vibration with a 3-second period (sound rises and falls every 3 seconds), probably from a fan inside the device. When I place it on a carpeted floor, the oscillating sound can be heard from ten feet away, however when I place it on a desktop, the sound is muffled, but I can still feel the oscillating vibration. Anyone else notice this? Is this the vibration which is referred to above? I'm a little concerned about the lifespan of the fan, although I suppose it should be replaceable. --Stonedown 19:53, 13 Jan 2006 (CET)

The problem appears to be caused by harmonic resonance of the drives themselves. I thought I had solved the problem by placing styrafoam chips under the device, but the unit started resonating again. --Stonedown 04:51, 16 Jan 2006 (CET)

I tried to eliminate the pulsing sound aswell. I had no success with trying to damp vibrations on the outer metal case. I also tried to damp the cage that is holding all the drives. I used gum mat for damping. Maybe cork might help but I dont think so. Best thing is to store the whole thing in a different room. --rhoenie 18:51, 17 Apr 2006 (CEST)

I also have the same oscillating noise. My Terastation is in a cupboard in an upstairs room, and the noise could be heard from downstairs. I have successfully eliminated the noise by fitting acoustifeet to the terastation. (I actually have acoustifeet on the bottom of a tile which sits on the cupboard floor, then the terastation has its own acoustifeet and sits on the tile, so there is a double layer of noise insulation). --timd 21:09, 29 July 2006 (CEST)

Same here, my Terastation also has an oscillating vibration/noise...I tried all sorts to emlimate the noise without success... now the terastation case sports four indents in the side...These appear to match my fist...Noise still present...;-)

Yes, I have noticed a humming noise that comes and goes every few seconds, but otherwise the unit is very quiet. Humming noise isn't very annoying. - Tony 13 Nov 2005

I resolved the periodic noise on mine by placing it on top of some gel-filled keyboard wrist rests and placing a moderately heavy (maybe 5-6 kg; 10-15lb) polystone gargoyle statue on top. It's worked well, and is even mildly attractive! After a year plus, the case has not obviously deformed... and there's even a clean spot on it! The noise returned momentarily when I lifted the statue to gauge its weight - Dave (davidhbrown)

Are there any throughput specs (e.g., how fast can files be ftp'd in and out)?
Informally, it takes about 10 minutes to copy 5 gigabytes of files from my PowerBook G4 to my TeraStation using 1000Base-T transmission and 4,100 byte jumbo packets and CFIS/SMB file serving. This calculates to about 9 megabytes a second or 70 mbps. --Unknown

I have similar results.... Im only able to get approx 60mbit write, and 80mbit read speed, on a 1000mbit network, with no other traffic..

Ive written Buffalotech... I mean... whats the point in 1000mbit network support, if the box can even match 100mbit ?

kurgan

Well, general lore has it that, effectivly, network max out at about 40% of their maximum capacity, due to increased packet-collisions. This means that the maximum effective throughput of an 100 mbps network is 40 mbps, well below the observed 80mbit read speed. --Rik 09:15, 13 june 2007 (CET)

Anyone had their Terastation scrub attached USB drives?
First, one drive started losing data and now it is though it was never formatted;i.e. the TS 'sees' the drive, but shows it as unformatted. I assumed the drive went bad, but a few days later a second USB drive failed in exactly the same way. Now what? If there is any chance of retrieving my data I don't want to reformat. I don't have any other hardware capable of reading the Linux (XFS) file structure so no independent way to test the drives. Help! --Unknown


 * This may be of some help, this may not:


 * I attached a Freecom USB drive and, on reconnecting it to my Windows PC, discovered that the partition had been marked inactive and no drive letter was being assigned on USB hookup. I opened the Windows Disk Management MMC, then right-clicked the drive, activated the partition, and reassigned a free drive letter. Everything was back to normal from that point.


 * I'm now attempting to update the TeraStation's firmware in order to make it perform better (it's painfully slow), but the updater won't find the device on the network. If you're reading this and thinking about buying one, the TeraStation feels like an unfinished project and unless you're technically minded is best left on the shelf. You have been warned.


 * ThwartedEfforts 14:05, 13 December 2006 (CET)

There is a minor periodical noise from the disk
I guess it should be a system daemon checking something periodically. Is there any method to find or stop it? --jones 22:49, 22 Dec 2005 (CET) ===

My System Crashed
Once the system crash, not the disk crash, how can I recover my data (RAID5) in case the warranty has been expired or void (maybe you hacked the system)? If the answer is to attach the four disks on a linux OS by establishing a RAID 5 array, does it work? --jones 22:50, 22 Dec 2005 (CET)

Yes. Talking the disk-cage out of the TeraStation and attaching it to a Mac mini with 4 USB-IDE adapters works find. Please keep in mind that the Linux softraid (MD) needs a big-endian (e.g. PowerPC) system to be able to detect and activate the RAID. I've already recovered one TeraStation this way. --bg

It did not work as I attached the Raid5 disks to the i386 Dabian linux because the superblock can't be recognized. Is there no any method to rebuild the raid under an i386 machine? --jones 17:04, 28 Dec 2005 (CET)

You should be able to do that even on an i386 system, although it may take a bit of work. The Tivo-hacking community has modified Linux images that can handle big-endian Linux filesystems on an x86 platform. They may not have the RAID tools and XFS but there is likely enough information around the net to get those working as well. I'm not sure I'd want to be the guinea pig, though! --Dotorg 13:42, 22 Feb 2006 (CET)

More details on how to recover a RAID 5 array with a PPC Mac
Moved to Data Recovery -- WizardFusion 17:05, 14 December 2006 (CET)

More details on how to recover a Mac
mac hard drive recovery 13:25, 10 August 2010

My Terastation has died
and I think it's the power supply. Buffalo won't fix it, so before I say goodbye to my data, I'd like to see if I can replace it. Anybody got a spare one I can buy or know of somewhere that I can get one? --Rucantor 18:51, 3 Jan 2006 (CET)

Is it imperative that a replaced disk be exactly the same type?
We ordered a spare disk to be prepared for a potential disk crash; the only difference between the original disk and the replacement is that the replacement disk has 8 MB of cache instead of 2 MB (original was a WD2500BB, replacement is a WD2500JB) --dummy.user 17:54, 31 Jan 2006 (CET)

No. It just must be exactly the same size or larger. Any smaller even by a couple of MB won't work. --Tman 20:53, 31 Jan 2006 (CET)

That is exactly what we expected. But it didn't work! My collegue tried several time; as soon as he accesses the raid status webpage, the whole system crashes :-( --dummy.user 15:05, 3 Feb 2006 (CET)

Lost entire TeraStation
I think we just lost our entire TeraStation (Disc 2 is not detected). When we go into the console it says it is disconnected? We are/were unfortunately in spanning mode. Have we lost everything...is there a recovery? Ironically we just bought a second TeraStation and were going to mirror it to this one this week! --Unknown

Hard to say. If it is spanning, than you should be able to recover the data from the remaining disks. If it is striping than all you data is lost. Depending on how valuable your data is, this might be a good time to get a quote from someone like Ontrack. As you already have console access, I would try to caputre the outbut of dmesg, have a look at /proc/mdstats, check what mdadm tells me. Powerdown the TeraStation, check if, maybe, the disk is realy disconnected. --Bg 22:37, 24 April 2006 (CEST)

RAID Configuration
Does anyone know the proper RAID configuration used by the Terastation? I think I may have changed the RAID superblock unintentionally... I realise this has probably screwed up the partitions, but I'd like to set it back to how it was. --Luminaire 17:40, 12 June 2006 (CEST)

Are there any firmware updates?
Yes. The firmware updates usually get released first on the Buffalo Japan support site then the Buffalo US support site and finally will filter down to the other country specific sites.

Please see the firmware update page for more details

Does anyone know how to update the firmware from Linux/outside Windows?
-- Bluefedora 01:49, 26 Nov 2005 (CET)

Unable to access Browser Management on Terastation Pro after Firmware Update
I applied the 1.01-0.51 Bufalo update to try to get Active Directory support. After applying the update, the browser management (which worked before) fails to respond. I can see/access the shares and control the device via the client utility. I've tried re-applying the update with no success. Any ideas (ideally that don't involve breaching the warranty) - bufalo support insist it is a browser problem even though browser settings haven't changed and I've even tried from a new machine. Thanks ,Jon - 6 July 2006--Jexell 13:04, 6 July 2006 (CEST)

How do I change the web interface from Japanese to English?
If you have telent+root access then you can edit the file /etc/melco/info and make sure that there is a line that reads:
 *  lang=english

You can also change it via the web interface by carrying out the following steps:
 * 1) Connect to the TeraStation via your browser
 * 2) Select the second option from the left hand pane (corresponds to "Basic" in English menu)"
 * 3) Go to the 4th section on the page. The first drop-down is the language option - select the second option in the dropdown list.
 * 4) Go to the bottom of the page and press the button (the Apply button).
 * 5) Disconnect the web interface and then reconnect - it should now be in english!

Changing the language from within the WebUI
 * 1) Open the WebUI of the TeraStation, even if it comes up with Japanese language.
 * 2) Click the second entry from above in the navigation pane, the line with the paper icon left.
 * 3) Scroll down to the block where you can read "Windows" in english. There we have a small dropdown and below a wide dropdown.
 * 4) In the small dropdown choose the second entry, the one with only 2 signs inside.
 * 5) In the wide dropdown below choose a character code (CP850 or ISO8859-15).
 * 6) At the end of the webpage click the botton and restart your browser.

If this does NOT change the language from japanese to english please take a look at the following settings: In the field for TeraStation Description (under the name of TeraStation) there must be a description, e. g. TeraStation. The status of NTP server must be set, no matter enabled or disabled but there must be a choice. The same must be set for AppleTalk and FTP server at the end of the site, enabled or disabled. There is a cgi-script running in the background which checks these settings. Sometimes there is a bug that causes option boxes of NTP server and AppleTalk / FTP server are not set. And therefore the change of the language will not be completed.

Which raises the following question: I´ve recently bought a TeraStation Pro II 1.0TB with 1.05 firmware. It probably has the cgi bug. The only configuration page affected is the Basic configuration. This means that the Name, date, time, use of NTP, NTP server, language and codepage cannot be configured (which is a bummer, as the clock is about 3.5 days late). On this page the normal menu on the left side is not displayed. Clicking the "Apply" button has no effect. On the European website there is a 1.05 firmware update. Would applying this solve the cgi problem? Looking on the Firmware hacking pages it is stated that for the TeraStation Pro II, on account of having an ARM processor, there is currently no way of getting telnet access. Anyone working on that (my experience with linux is too shallow to take the risk of trying this myself)? AD support works like a charm, by the way. --Rik 08:45, 13 june 2007 (CET)

Well, this turned out to be easier than I thought: APC Commander gave me telnet access as root, without password. I've changed the date and time. I'm still trying to find out how to start the ntp deamon (and how to get it to start automaticaly after a reboot). --Rik 22:00, 13 june 2007 (CET)

How do I delete a share or array? When I try, I get a load of gibberish!
See Delete Array Confirmation.

Lost Admin Password?
I apologize, I stumbled on this page in a frantic search for a solution, so please excuse me if I'm going about this the wrong way. I have a terastation 1.0 that I had this company purchase for multiple reasons. I changed the admin pass and disabled the restore admin pass option upon a restore settings function, not really thinking it would be a huge problem. Long story short, I lost the pass. Buffalo told me i'm out $400 if I want them to look at it. I've been running Brutus (brute forcer) against it, but I'm about 3 millenia away from a solution. Anyone who has any sort of solution or idea, please drop me a line. I'll appreciate it more that I can tell you. (mwaahahahaha@comcast.net if email is more efficient) --Mwaahahahaha 22:42, 24 Jan 2006 (CET)

This is probably way too late for you, but - you can apply the "myroot" firmware update (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/itimpi/buffalo.htm#TERA_PRO), which adds telnet access, and a myroot user with a blank password. You can then telnet to the box and change the admin password to whatever you like with the passwd command on the unix commandline.. --Robert 00:28, 20 January 2007 (CET)

I think you can also just press the INIT button: http://forum.linkstationwiki.net/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=1882 The Maintenance menu in the admin web UI has a subsection called Initialization, and there's an "INIT Button Option" setting there, which controls whether the button resets the admin password or not. The default seems to be that it does. I haven't tested this yet though... --Aspiers 12:41, 2 July 2007 (CEST)

---

If the above has failed, you can try the method here. Please note that this method is not guaranteed, but it worked for me.

If you have an original TeraStation for which you have lost the admin password and can no longer access the http admin utility and/or your file shares, and the INIT button does not reset the admin password, you might still be able to get back into the admin interface if you haven't yet applied modified firmware.

The way to do it:

1) Take apart the TeraStation to get physical access to the hard drives. To do this, you've got to follow the instructions in the TeraStation manual to take the unit apart.  (Be sure to make note of which screws go where; there are quite a few.)

The manual: http://www.buffalotech.com/support/getfile/?TeraStation-Manual-v5.5-web.pdf

2) Mount each of the four hard drives, one at a time, to a system that can read a Unix filesystem. Remove all files and folders from partition 1 on each drive, then reassemble the TeraStation.  Be sure to ONLY remove the files and folders from partition 1; partition 3 contains the your actual data from the RAID.  Partition 1 contains some system files and folders.  If you see folders like /usr and /lib, you know you're in the right place.

Deleting these files and folders on all four drives and then restarting the TeraStation should force the TeraStation into Emergency Mode. You'll know you're in Emergency Mode because the hostname of the TeraStation will have "EM" attached to it. In normal operation, if you don't have your admin password, you can't update the system firmware with standard or modified firmware. In Emergency Mode, you will be able to apply modified firmware without the password.

Tips for this step: If you don't have a Unix based system handy, try booting a LiveCD from a distribution like Ubuntu. And if you don't want to mount the hard drives to your IDE controller, try using an external hard drive enclosure that connects via USB.

3) Turn on the reassembled TeraStation.

4) Download modified firmware, available here; scroll down to Terastation (Original): http://homepage.ntlworld.com/itimpi/buffalo.htm#TERA_TELNET

5) Install the modified firmware. Do not enter an admin password!

6) With the new firmware, two things should now be true. You should now be able to telnet into the TeraStation, and there should be an account on the system called "myroot" (without a password).  Use that account to log in to telnet.

7) You can now manually edit the /etc/passwd file and restore your admin password. --ydeologi 21:48, 14 Sep 2007 (EDT)

Do you need a Windows PC to configure the TeraStation?
No, all of the major and minor settings can be made through a web browser. The administration page is quite detailed. I have not found any necessity to find a Windows PC to use the utility software. The TeraStation will boot up in DHCP mode by default. It's simple to either guess or query your router for its DHCP address, then you can connect directly to it using any browser software. --Unknown

I want to avoid soldering. Is is possible to become root without serial console?
Creating your own firmware image with SSH installed and a known root password is possible. See here for a guide to extracting the firmware. Another method would be to remove the disks and modify them directly.

I don't want to open my TeraStation. Is it still possible to become root?
Yes. See the previous question regarding modifying a firmware image and applying it.

As it's possible to make your own (hacked) firmware, the old answers have been removed. On some firmware versions you can exploit loopholes in the software to become root.

On the TeraStation Pro II it´s just a matter of running ACP Commander. After that you have telnet running and you can connect as root, with no password. --Rik 07:38, 19 june 2007 (CET)

Has anyone successfully replaced the TeraStation's firmware with a different Linux system?
I've chrooted into a Debian/PPC. That works fine once you're root. --bg

I have successfully installed Gentoo Linux on TeraStation. See Real NAS for details. --Yvasilev 20:49, 25 Jul 2005 (CEST)

Has anyone successfully recompiled the stock 2.4.20 or any 2.6.x series kernel?
No. I've had a look into the sources Buffalo provides, but they lack a proper kernel configuration. The chances were too high (IMHO) to brick the TeraStation and I did not build my own kernel ... yet. --Bg 18:34, 18 Jul 2005 (CEST)

The kernel loader module made for the kuro box (http://www.kurobox.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=277) works fine to boot into the same kernel, so this presents a safe way to test new kernel configurations. (The problem is that I still don't have a serial console and was unable to configure a working kernel blindfolded.) --Yvasilev 19:17, 19 Jul 2005 (CEST)

Sylver already loaded a custom 2.4.20-kernel on his Terastation Pro. [http://forum.linkstationwiki.net/index.php?action=vthread&forum=15&topic=1302&page=0#msg16821 The Linkstation Community Forum / Terastation Pro (ppc) / Successfuly booted a 2.4 kernel using loader.o module !!! Next step -> Kernel 2.6 for TsP] i see no reason why it should not work on the Terastation as well. --Mindbender 10:40, 28 November 2006 (CET)

Yes I've successfuly booted the 2.4 kernel for the TsP using the kernel given by buffalo. I've modified the kernel loader to boot the new kernel in a better way (to prevent a RAID array checking after each try). I'm having a problem booting the 2.6 kernel : the problem is related to the S-ATA controler. Once this will be solved, I'll still have to solve some issues with the AVR chip driver and then the kernel 2.6 will run on the TsP ;) --Sylver 16:35, 28 November 2006 (CET)

Can I install or replace Linux applications on the TeraStation?
No problem, once you're root.

What type of drives are in the TeraStation?
The Terastations use Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital hard drives.

It's not known if you have to replace them with identical size and manufacturer drives when operating in a Raid 5 configuration if one of them fails.

The hard drives do not need to be replaced with the same manufacturer, but do need to be as large or larger than the original hard drive.

Can I replace my existing hard drives with larger ones?
YES... there are several methods:

1) Tedious Method (but it works): You should be able to follow the instructions on replacing a broken drive in the manual. Replace one drive at a time. You should end up with 4 new drives.

This method was validated with HD-H0.6TGL/R5 US firmware 1.12. Drives replaced were Samsung SP1604N (160GBx4) with Seagate ST3400632A (400GBx4). --kdmackey 12:40 AM, 07 May 2007 (AEST) -- IF YOU USE THIS METHOD IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU TAKE THE FOLLOWING STEPS BEFORE REPLACING ANY DRIVES.

- backup up your data and get it off Terastation

- double check your firmware version and make sure it's 1.12 or later.

- change your RAID configuration from 0/1/5 ->> to STANDARD MODE (Raid DISABLED). Essentially, this means deleting your RAID config. Again, hope you're backed up BEFORE doing this. After you have completed the above you will now:

1.1 Disassemble case per the user manual taking care to make sure you keep track of where all the screws go.

1.2 Disconnect the FIRST drive (of the four that you are replacing) and put your new drive in.

1.3 Re-assemble just enough to put on front panel

1.4 power up and note that the RED led comes on for the new drive that you have just put in.

1.5 make sure that you can connect through HTTP by putting ip address of TS in browser - login as admin.

1.6 Go into 'Drive Management' and 'Disk Format' format the drive corresponding to the disk that is showing up with RED led (eg. the new drive). CAREFUL NOT TO FORMAT ONE OF THE OLD DRIVES - If you are unsure about new drive number check in 'Drive Properties' and look at status.

1.7 After drive is formatted power down Terastation.

1.8 Repeat steps 1.2 thru 1.8 for each of the OLD/NEW drives that you are replacing.

1.9 When you've got all 4 new drives in... (about 4 disassemblies/reassemblies later) make sure all screws are tight and you can complete reassembly of the full case. On final power up you should have four new drives (ALL SAME CAPACITY).

2.0 Re-create RAID (RAID 5) recommended. This will result in a Disk Check process (with 400GB drives) of about 7.5 hours.

This method DEFINITELY works - however - it is very tedious with disassembly/reassebly

The key to this working is that you can only ever have 1 drive that is not formatted in the system at any given time (otherwise your system will appear to boot correctly, but you won't be able to get into HTTP mode and it will revert to DHCP. This is what happens when there is no firmware/software visible on hard drive(s).  --kdmackey 12:40 AM, 07 May 2007 (AEST)

2) Hybrid Method using Linux: Kind of. You need some knowledge of how Linux software RAID works.

To move to larger drives you will have to repartition all 4 new drives in a similar fashion to the existing drives and then copy everything over.

To get the additional space, you need to log in as root, repartition the disks to use all available space and regenerate the data partition RAID. You will lose all your data, but you could use the old disks to make a backup...

UNKNOWN if this method has for sure worked for anyone??

3) Linux Method but faster: A quicker method would be to use a Linux PC and connect all 4 new drives to it when recreating the drive structure along with copying the firmware files.

It might just work with the rescue mode of the 1.07&beta; and newer firmware but I don't have that firmware on my TeraStation, nor do I have enough money to get 4 bigger hard drives to give it a try.

UNKNOWN if this method has for sure worked for anyone??

4) Upgrading firmware Method (validated by Clovis: --ClovisB 2:18 PM, 07 Oct 2006 (CDT))

Managed to replace all drives on a 0.6TB without using hacked firmware. Details on Replacing all drives in 06TB. --ClovisB 2:18 PM, 07 Oct 2006 (CDT)

This method should work - however Do you really need Japanese firmware?

Why should I add a sudoers file, can't I just change the root password?
No, the passwd file is saved and restored during firmware update, so there is no point in changing the root password in a firmware update image as the changes will be ignored.

The sudoers file is not saved and restored, so you can become root this way.

Has anyone tried to use cryptoloop or the like for filesystem encryption? Is the CPU even fast enough for on-the-fly encryption?
It will not work. The CPU is unable to handle the regular fileserver stuff already. And you'd have to compile a new kernel, what noone has been able to do.

It should work, the kernel part can be compiled as modules, so you'll just have to insmod them and openssl speed test reports speeds of about 9 Mbps in blowfish and 7 Mbps in aes-128. So it'll slow things, but the TeraStation should quite be able to handle this. --Yvasilev 16:28, 18 Aug 2005 (CEST)

BTW, we're talking Mbps (that's mega bits per seccond) not MBps (what would be byte). So the terastation would en/decrypt at about 1MBps. While that's OK for internet access, it's not for a NSA. --Bg 22:37, 24 April 2006 (CEST)

I somehow got into 'EM' mode after a firmware upgrade attempt.
Does anyone know how to get out of it? I didn't see anything about this EM mode in the documentation. --Unknown

A reboot should do the trick. Unless you messed up the Terastation's OS. --Bg 19:53, 22 Nov 2005 (CET)

Just update the firmware one more time. Remember change the version value in linkstation_version.txt more than the version shown on firmware update menu. --jones 16:45, 24 Nov 2005 (CET)

Thanks. Reinstalling the firmware did the trick. I was able to recreate array1 afterwards. -- Bluefedora 12:50, 26 Nov 2005 (CET)

Is there any method to recover the system in case it crashes in hacking?
I didn't make backup for the Raid1 OS partition. --Unknown

EM-mode could help, if we would only know the root password. So on seccond thought it might not help you.

The usual trick: move the disks to a differen system will work, but who has a PPC system that can handle 4 additional disks ...

After updating the Firmware the TS does not respond
I have a TS with Firmwareversion 1.12. I have downloaded the official Firmwareversion 1.12 and added Dropbear and NFS by using the links and steps provided here. The update was successfull from what the Firmware-Updater tells. But the TS does not respond. Only the DIAG LED is continous blinking (about 4 times a second or so) and the Power LED is off. Also the Firmware Updater is now unable to detect the TS anymore. Now I have one disk conntected to a x86-GNU/Linux. The mdadm utility does not detect the magic number. But the number is correct, it is a problem of the endian, of course. Also the simple mount (like written above by someone) does not work. The system always responds with "already mounted or busy". Does anybody know some way (hopefully a safeway ;) ) to go back to a working state? --TS 00:22, 10 Jan 2006 (CET)


 * OK, I've got access to one disk using an PowerMac G4 with an Ubuntu Live-CD. It even detected and configured automatically the md0 device. I only had to mount it. Please, any suggestion to restore a working copy is welcome. Shall I just delete everything and copy the original image.dat/tmpimage.tgz all over? Thank you.

--TS 14:33, 10 Jan 2006 (CET)


 * OK, I have the TS back with small annoying thing: I can't read Japanese. But I think, I get rid of this as well.
 * It seems to be very easy the get back the TS this way:
 * Use an Apple Macintosh (pre-Intel version ;-))
 * Download a Ubuntu Live-CD (ppc): http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download
 * Connect one of the drives of the TS to the internal IDE of the Apple Macintosh
 * Boot the Live-CD and download the latest Firmware: http://buffalotech.com/support/downloads-product.php?productid=100
 * Mount the TS drive

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo -s root@ubuntu:~$ mount -t xfs /dev/md0 /mnt
 * Copy the drive image from the firmware

root@ubuntu:~$ cp home/ubuntu/TeraStation_112-104/112-104/image.dat /mnt/image.zip
 * Extract the image and just overwrite everything

root@ubuntu:~$ cd /mnt root@ubuntu:/mnt$ unzip image.zip root@ubuntu:/mnt$ tar -xz --numeric-owner -p -f tmpimage.tgz
 * Reattach the drive to the TS, start the TS and rebuild the RAID
 * No next step
 * --TS 10:58, 11 Jan 2006 (CET)

The simplest way is as in "TeraStation Firmware update instructions.htm" describe.
 * Connect the TeraStation directly to your computer via cable.
 * Change the IP address of your computer to 192.168.11.100 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
 * Power down the TeraStation, then turn it back on (or wait until the Diag LED is blinking and push powerbutton).
 * TeraStation have automatically 192.168.11.150.
 * You see after this procedure an established link via Link/Act LED.
 * Rerun the firmware update with "HD-HTGL FWUpdate.exe" and you find your Terastation with your old IP adress (for example 172.16.32.x) and Firmware unknown.
 * Change your IP address on PC back (leaves HD-HTGL FWUpdate.exe open) to your old config (for example 172.16.32.1).
 * Start update process.
 * Done.
 * --marodeur 21:58, 20 Feb 2006 (CET)

I have tried this new way with no success? Do you have any more details? --Dunno 16:58, 21 August 2006 (CEST)

marodeur's way worked fine for me after i trashed the box by installing samba 3.0.23. smb service restarted fine but when rebooted the box just gave the diag light. if you have problems with a direct network cable connection try a crossover cable. my box however lost all config (data was fine though) and browser was in japanese.

Anyone knows how to attach terastation to a solaris 10 sparc workstation?
--Unknown

What is your problem here? --Unknown
 * the web interface should just work
 * as should the ftp and smb servers
 * there is no official NFS server, but the hack seams to work.

I found the four leds (STATUS/FULL) doesn't work after I installed SAMBA 3.0 (Package from Debian).
How do I discover the problem? --Unknown

nmap reported that the rsync port is open
but I can't get a listing of available shares even though rsyncd.conf defines [array1_share]. Anyone try to get this working? --Bluefedora 01:49, 26 Nov 2005 (CET)

This is controlled by tcp wrappers - edit /etc/hosts.allow Unfortunately, this gets reset every boot, so make an rc file that gets run as part of runlevel 3. Here is what I used:

#!/bin/sh # activate rsync TARGET=/etc/hosts.allow if [ ! -x ${TARGET} ] ; then echo "rsync: ALL" > ${TARGET} /bin/cp /mnt/array1/etc/rsyncd.conf /etc fi

-- Hsum 12:37, 2 Feb 2006 (CET)
 * warning: This hack does allow me to moves files back and forth. I don't know if any functionality is lost by using this easily reversable hack.

You need setup inetd to start rsync as needed, edit /etc/inetd.conf to make this available:

rsync  stream  tcp     nowait  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd  /usr/bin/rsync --daemon

I don't recall doing this the last time (see above), but I can't see it working without this.

--Hsum 08:40, 19 July 2007 (CEST)

Slimserver on the TeraStation working?
Anyone get Slimserver working (the rpm package which one can download from Slimserver site)? Need to install Perl to do it. Before I go and attempt to do it I thought I'd check to see if anyone else is/has done it... or would this be too much processing for the box/stock hardware?

It works...I just shut it off on mine a few days ago. The box has enough power for normal operations, but if you have any decent-sized music collection you will have problems when loading large playlists or rescanning the library.

--Scott 19:13, 5 Dec 2005 (CET)

I also successfully install the slimserver on my TeraStation but it seems has unicode problem as showing my chinese songs on Squeezebox. As my tracing with debug mode, it told me the GD module problem. Did anyone solve this issue? Thanks.

--jones 17:45, 17 May 2006 (CEST)

hdparm
Before

root@HD-HTGL313:/etc/init.d# cat hdparm if [ -x /sbin/hdparm ] ; then /sbin/hdparm -S 241 /dev/hda > /dev/null /sbin/hdparm -S 241 /dev/hdc > /dev/null /sbin/hdparm -S 241 /dev/hde > /dev/null /sbin/hdparm -S 241 /dev/hdg > /dev/null fi

After

root@HD-HTGL313:/etc/init.d# cat hdparm if [ -x /sbin/hdparm ] ; then /sbin/hdparm -S 241 -d1 -u1 -m16 -A1 -a255 -c1 -k1 /dev/hda > /dev/null /sbin/hdparm -S 241 -d1 -u1 -m16 -A1 -a255 -c1 -k1 /dev/hdc > /dev/null /sbin/hdparm -S 241 -d1 -u1 -m16 -A1 -a255 -c1 -k1 /dev/hde > /dev/null /sbin/hdparm -S 241 -d1 -u1 -m16 -A1 -a255 -c1 -k1 /dev/hdg > /dev/null fi
 * 1) !/bin/sh
 * 2) set stop time for hdd spindle moter

root@HD-HTGL313:~# hdparm /dev/hda /dev/hda: multcount   = 16 (on) I/O support =  1 (32-bit) unmaskirq   =  1 (on) using_dma   =  1 (on) keepsettings = 1 (on) nowerr      =  0 (off) readonly    =  0 (off) readahead   = 255 (on) geometry    = 30401/255/63, sectors = 488397168, start = 0

The I/O is set to 16bit on hdparm you can change this to 32bit. You can also alter the read ahead & other things, use vi to edit /etc/init.d/hdparm

Do this at your own risk, I'm still playing with it :)

05/1/06 been running this for over week now with no problems whatsoever this also quietens the terastation so its less noisy

This raised the throughput of my TS to 10.42MB/sec for reading (via FTP) and 7.60MB/sec for writing (gigabit network, without jumbo frames). --rhoenie 10:18, 8 Oct 2006 (CEST)

Bootloader
Where is the boot loader held. --Marc 20:14, 18 Dec 2005

The bootloader is contained in Flash --Bg 14:58, 21 Dec 2005 (CET)

how do i dd the flash out of the mtd 1-4 into a file and then back -- Marc?

Simply use dd, to backup dd if=/dev/md4 of=flash.backup to restore dd if=newFlashFile of=/dev/md4 sync --Bg 10:21, 4 December 2006 (CET)

SSH public key authentication
How can I configure my TS with dropbear to allow public key authentication (instead of requiring a password)? The main problem seems to be that TS or dropbear acts like every user's home directory is "/home/." I've tried /home/.ssh/authorized-keys, I've tried adding a user with its own home dir (/home/matt), but I couldn't get it to work. Anybody done this?

I'm also interested in this: anyboy got it running?

Normally the location would be specified in sshd_config for openSSH but unzipping / untaring image.dat and I have not been able to find this file. I am presuming it is hardcoded to look in $HOME/.ssh/authorized keys as per standard. Have you tried echo $HOME as the user you are trying to SSH in as ??

According to wiki.openwrt.org you simply add the keys to /etc/dropbear/authorized_keys and are able to login as root.

I am trying all the above suggestions still no luck? Anyone got it working. Please help.

To use enable key authentication for root, put the public keys in /root/.ssh/authorized_keys. For other users, the home directory is set to /home by default. I changed these using /usr/sbin/usermod -d /home/myuser myuser (and created the corresponding home directories.) Then putting the public keys in /home/myuser/.ssh/authorized_keys seems to work. To disable password authentication, add  DROPBEAR_EXTRA_ARGS=-s to /etc/default/dropbear.--carl 16:44, 6 December 2006 (CET)

Adding Unicode Support
Has anyone been able to enable unicode support on a hacked Terastation? Any help would be appreciated. --jveal 16:20, 24 Apr 2006

I install SAMBA 3.x and it does support unicode. You can get the package from Debian source site with a powerpc version. --jones 17:35, 17 May 2006 (CEST)

Yup. I guess I wasn't sure if by simply installing SAMBA 3.x it would give me the ability to move unicode filenames around from the Terastation to PCs. I guess the filenames continue to be stored in double byte even if the filesystem on the Terrastation doesn't know how to interpret them. Thanks. I'll give it a shot and see what happens. --jveal 12:55, 18 May 2006

This still doesn't give full support for all UTF-8, especially Chinese filenames - has anyone managed to get the Terastation Pro to recognised asian filenames?

Install C/C++ Compiler
Does anyone know how to install a C/C++ compiler on Terastation? --jones 17:49, 17 May 2006 (CEST)

I managed to create a cross compiler, which I then used to compile a native compiler on the Terastation. However, since there are no kernel headers, I wasn't able to compile much. See crosstool for details on how to compile a cross compiler. The target processor is ppc-405. --Luminaire 11:07, 31 May 2006 (CEST)

I started with crosstool aswell. The needed kernel headers are part of the buffalo terastation GPL distribution but you can also find places on the web when you search for these files: kernel-headers-2.4.20_hglan_htgl-2.0.tar.bz2, linux-2.4.20_mvl31_hd-htgl-2.0.2.tar.gz. I was able to compile bigger packages using the crosscompiler build by crosstool on a macintosh. Later I switched to a native compiler on the TS. The root drive has plenty of space and the machine is actually fast enough to do compiles itself - I even translated the linux kernel on the TS. :-) I used the compiler packages from the powerpc debian linux but be aware that the version number doesn't quite match the native GCC of the TS linux distribution. So if you want to have a 100% compatible compiler on your TS you have to get yourself the GPL distribution from buffalo and bootstrap the compiler from its sources in there using the debian compiler. --rhoenie 9:49, 8 Oct 2006 (CEST)

It is possible to use the development tools 2.1 for ppc on the terastation/terastation pro. they just work. Here is the installation guide: Precompiled_C_development_environment Mindbender 21:11, 8 October 2006 (CEST)

IIS and Samba
Samba appears to have a problem with IIS credentials. When a IIS virtual directory point to a Samba share on the teraStation, the directory cannot be reached due to authentication problems. On the windows box the security properties looks odd: Not the AD users that have been given permission thru the web interface are shown, but the user "everyone" and "root (<fill in your teraStation name>\root)" (twice), all without any permission. --Rik 07:38, 19 june 2007 (CET)

I'm seeing this too with Terastation Pro V2 and SBS2003 SP1 SP2 and R2. Any workarounds? - --John, 26 july 2007

Problems joining Active Directory
look here: Joining_Active_Directory

TeraStation plus additional 'home friendly' software
Anyone know anything about this? Is the terastation plus addition 'home friendly' software?

--Bluefedora 03:28, 15 Dec 2005 (CET)

It sounds like the terastation with more home friendly software.


 * "Buffalo and Mediabolic recently announced the availability their Buffalo TeraStation Terabyte Home Server, a Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)-compatible network-attached storage (NAS) device. The new TeraStation Home Server includes media server software from Mediabolic that provides centralized media management and distribution to multiple PCs and connected entertainment products on the home network."

--Hsum 04:40, 27 Dec 2005 (CET)

System Crashing
Every time I perform a copy or move of a small sub-directory the Terastation ceases the copy or move and goes in to a rebuild mode. This occurs repeatedly, usually only after a few files are moved. Then after the rebuild, several hours later, I can start the process all over. Moving even a small directory is very time consuming... any idea what is causing this and how it might be stopped? --Unknown

I would suggest getting help from Buffalo tech. support. --Hsum 04:42, 27 Dec 2005 (CET)

I am having the exact same problem with my 3-day old TS - tech support provided no assistance and suggests I send the entire unit back as soon as I can get my data off of the machine (which will take about a month at this rate - 400 GB and it crashes about every 10 minutes now) I'm wondering if it would be possible to use ssh and get in and see if I can figure out what's happening? What's the logging like in this flavor of Linux? Lots of people on the tech support forum have this problem as well... and the goons at Buffalo don't seem to have a solution. Any other advice? --Disgruntled

I would suggest getting your data off those disks by mounting them on another machine (there is a description on this wiki somewhere) and getting them to replace the terastation. The disk replacement/removal technique is detailed in the manual, which leads me to believe that it doesn't break your warranty. That is the least that any tech. support can do for you.

You can ssh onto it if you "open" your terastation. There is a custom firmware available (again, there is a page on this wiki that describes the process) that will do this for you. Unfortunately, doing this will void your warranty, which technically stops you from getting it serviced under warranty. --Hsum 12:43, 2 Feb 2006 (CET)

I had this same problem. Turns out that deleting the Raid5 partion that came with the device and re-creating it through the web interface fixed the problem for me. Of course, YMMV. --ihgreenman 13:26 2006-02-25 PST

My TB is switching to "Checking raid array" every day, for several hours. During this time, the upload speed is very low (600k/s). Is it the same problem ? --Xxenon 11:01, 19 March 2006 (CET) Reply to myself : yes it was the same problem. Contacted technical support, they asked me to delete and recreate the RAID array. Works fine now.

Well, I have recently bought 2 terrastation 1.0g at the same time. One of them had the same problems as you guys describe while the second never had problems. I have hacked the firmware to gain telnet access and then checked the message log file (dmesg) to find out that the array had some problems which would cause the terastation to unmount the array and force a check which in turn would not fix anything. Fortunatly I had backup of the data and decided to simply REBUILD the array and BINGO problem solve.

Hope this help Andre

Firmware upgrade to 2.08
I have a Terastation 1.6 TB with the 2.03 firmware. I had problems where it would crash when I was copying files onto it, sometimes it would be fine for a few hours of copying, sometimes only a few minutes, then it would crash and start doing a disk check. I tried deleting and rebuilding the array - but that didn't appear to make any difference.

However I then tried upgrading the firmware to 2.08 - and that seems to have done the trick. About 48 hours into the 2.08 firmware and I haven't had any crashes, despite copying about 600 gigabytes of data onto the box. If you experience crashes I would definately recommend upgrading the latest firmware. Grew 16:58, 8 June 2006 (CEST)

Same problem, same solution for me. Frequent crashes with 2.03 firmware, rebuilding the array made no difference. Upgraded to 2.09 (from the Japanese site) and it's worked perfectly ever since. rhughes2832 14 November 2006

I just got a new Terastation Home Server 2Tb (UK model) (preformatted as RAID5) and i left it last night to copy a big folder (>50Gb) from my Windows 2000 machine (through Linksys router). When I looked at it this morning windows reported the file copying failed because the drive no longer exists and it looked like the Terastation was crashed (all lights on - no response to power button). I had no power it off using back switch and when it came back on it reappeared as mapped drive and appeared to have copied about 7Gb to drive before stopping. Also the lights were flashing away on it suggesting it was doing some sort of testing or rebuilding of RAID. From reading above it appears people suggest i get firmware updates but the problem is there doesn't seem to be any available on update site links for Home Server (which appears to be same as original apart from some extra media server software i won't use). Does anyone know if i can use the drivers for non Home Server version? Or where to get Home Server firmware updates? Will this fix copy problem? In its current state it is useless if it can't reliably copy large amounts of data from my machine (which is what i obviously got it for). I can't figure out how to tell what firmware i have either but if i just got it i assume it can't be too old... geogan 27 April 2007

OK it appears the Terastation updater program does not work with the newer Homeserver version - Buffalo put in checks to make sure users do not install wrong versions. Here's two pages I found with links to the correct updater for Homestation (currently 2.11 and they appear to ship with 2.03) Howto Homestation firmware updates geogan 28 April 2007

Data Recovery Methods
see Data Recovery.

Is there a Large File Size Limit?
We're trying to move some large files (>50GB) from a Windows server to the Terastation and we are consistently having our transfers erroring. We're running the factory firmware (1.12). Is there a limit to the size of individual files in that software that we're running into? I will update this with more error information if necessary, but wanted to get the question out there if it was a known issue.

Thanks. --Tocano 14:22, 2006-01-25

I don't have any solid evidence, but I have some indications that there's a problem handling files larger than 2GB. Doing full-drive image backups to the Terastation seems to result in errors, but if I image single partitions and have a compressed size under 2GB, they seem to be OK. I don't know if this is a limitation of the samba version being used or a file-system limitation. For what it's worth, if I telnet to the Terastation and do chown a file over 2GB, I get an error message "Value too large for defined data type". --SKarp 18:50, 2 Feb 2006 (CET)

I hit the 2G file size limit while trying to copy a 6G file over (copying from linux over smb). I then recalled that I had a large backup (>30G) that I had put on the terrastation without problem. I thought it had something to do with the backup flag, but that doesn't seem to matter. The original backup was made from windows so perhaps there is a problem with the linux implementation of smb and >2G files? I'm copying over the file now via FTP and I just passed the 2G barrier without complaint, so it must have soemthing to do with samba... --Thereza 12:06, 20 March 2006 (CET)

It looks like this issue is combined with Samba. Try to use this mount command with LFS (Large File Support):

mount -t smbfs -o username=XYZ/WORKGROUP%password,lfs //<TS-Name>/ /mnt/test<BR>

This solved my problem with the 2 GB limitation. --Joergl 14:51, 21 March 2006 (CET)

Just to make things clear, I'm not talking about problems with the ability to copy the file over to the Terastation -- that is a known problem with samba if you haven't turned on LFS -- I'm talking about the fact that the >2GB files appear to be corrupted once they get to the Terastation. Try, for example, to use your backup program's image validation function on a >2GB backup, or try to unzip a >2GB zip archive.

The problem is not just samba, as I've transferred files from my linux machine to the Terastation via FTP, nfs, and CIFS (which should have large files support by default) and seen problems with > 2GB files in all cases.

One thing I haven't tried yet, but will attempt in the near future is to copy the same > 2GB file via nfs from Linux and via SMB/CIFS from a Windows machine. I'll then run a diff *on the Terastation* and see what happens. --SKarp 18:50, 2 Feb 2006 (CET)

I store multi-gigabyte video images and play them back through multiple sources from the TeraStation (Original 1TB unit, patched firmware 1.12 with Telnet active, raid 5 configuration). I use the PCast native media server, TwonkyVision media server add to the TeraStation as an application, copy files via Windows shares (back an forth), and use 2 different windows based media servers to access files off of a network share from the TeraStation (Windows UPnP & Pinnacle Media Server). All this going out to multiple clients (set top boxes as well as PCs). I have not had any transfer issues to date (about 10 months). Files range from 4-8GB+. Although, higher throughput speed would be my next upgrade criteria. Good luck resolving! --Mkmcgregor 15:24, 29 August 2006 (CEST)

Is FileName/Directory pathname length an issue?
In the "limitations" PDF on the tech support site, it states that the limit for a filename/directory path string is just 120 characters. This would seem to be a bit of a limit, or have I got this out of context?

I certainly have data archived on CD that has paths of over 200 chars long, and I'd want to keep Windows longnames rather than the old DOS 8.3 format.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks. --ThePuss 18:18, 21 Feb 2006 (CET)

--I do believe that the Terastation is Linux based and so therefore follows the Linux limitations. I'm not sure about character length but characters that you should stay away from is the "/" and the "*" and even the "?" since that can be interpreted as an instruction (or something). Other than that, try to stay with alpha-numeric pathnames. The biggest and most common problem that I've come acoss is the forward slash. I'd imagine that the backslash is also problematic. And also, only use one dot. Anything more than that can confuse the file system.

--XFS (the underlying file system) has a limit of 255 character file names, and 4095 character path length. However, I have noticed that the rsync daemon they ship with has a really short path length limit of around 120 characters, and since they use rsync to communicate with other TeraStations this might be the source of the limit (for more on Rsync, see the Hacking section). Given that there is a Japanese version of the system, I would be willing to bet that they are concerned about wide (16-bit) character compatibility (which XFS would limit to 128 "wide characters"), or maybe they just translated the original spec literally. Bunshichi 12 March 2007

I Can't print on USB-Printer from linux (ubuntu) via smb
How can i send jobs to a printer which is connected to the terastation? i can print from windows (vmware) and the gnome-cups-configurator finds the printer, but it tells me, that my printer is "hold". Any ideas?

Thanks -- Marc

How to tune up (network-) performance?
transfering files via smb or rsync is very slow (raid 5 about 4MB/s). How can i tune up tranfsers? i think the cpu is very slow, so i disabled some progs but the performance didn't grow. while tranfering files via smb, the samba-process uses about 40-50% cpu - are there any limitations in the kernel? i think somewhere must be the bottleneck... but where???

Thanks -- Marc


 * That's all you will get. Unless you switch from RAID5 to RAID0/Striping. The other 50% are taken by the IDE driver and the RAID module.
 * My personal maximum with SMB is 5.1MB/s
 * On seccond thought that's probably where the TSpro will be faster. S-ATA is, potentially, less CPU expensive than IDE.
 * --Bg 18:38, 1 May 2006 (CEST)


 * Okay, now I'm able to transfer files via smb with highspeed - about 6-7 MB/s on Gigabit. Now I tried to set up jumbo frames (mtu 4100) and
 * i can get the files from the terastation with about 8-9MB/s! But i can't put any files to the station. Files will be created but with size
 * of zero. Any ideas?
 * With ethereal and transfering files via smb, i can see many TCP-headers with checksum-errors.
 * Thanks again -- Marc
 * Thanks again -- Marc

I tuned Terastaions Performance modify the smb.conf. Just change the Socket-Option to socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_SNDBUF=8192 SO_RCVBUF=8192 insted of socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_SNDBUF=12888 SO_RCVBUF=12888 as mentioned here: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/book/appb_02.html (Just take a look at Figure B.1: SO_SNDBUF size and performance). Performance before: 600MB in 3 Minutes - after 50 Seconds. But don't forget, that Terastation overrides this Values at every Startup. But you can use and modify Aarons Script: http://www.terastation.org/wiki/Hacking#Samba -Sven
 * Thanks. Have you seen a speed increase by changing these values?  Also, my smb.conf files does not have the IPTOS_LOWDELAY entry.  WizardFusion 13:52, 11 October 2006 (CEST)

=Windows Vista=

Authentication
Just a note in case anyone else runs into this problem.


 * Run the Local Security Policy app - secpol.msc</tt>
 * Go to Local Policies | Security Options and choose the Network Security: LAN Manager Authentican Level item
 * Set it to Send LM & NLTM, use NTMLv2 session if negotiated
 * And that should sort you out.

(Taken from ) WizardFusion 18:36, 12 October 2006 (CEST)

For those of you with only Vista Home edition and therefore without secpol.msc</tt> try the following.


 * Start the registry editor - regedit</tt>
 * Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SYSTEM>CurrentControlSet>Control>Lsa
 * Modify the value of the lmcompatibilitylevel setting it to 1
 * You should now be able to connect (don't even need a reboot - for a change!)