My Old POS Episode 10. Installing Linux on the Western Digital DX4000

[@markgulbrandsen8081]

I am going to Raspberry Pi my DX-4000. It's so bloody old that new circuitry is preferred , at least by me. But this was a very well done video!!

[@keldopy]

Please use the serial port on the motherboard to connect a serial terminal (or null modem + pc + putty). The bios is reachable via the serial console, so is the Linux console with some very light mods to the conf files of the installer ...

[@NuclearCouch]

Did this today after trying to follow the video a couple times. Problem with the video I found is, even if ubuntu gets installed, after a reboot the NAS doesn't boot back to Ubuntu. I got the TTL to USB serial convertor off amazon, it came with some cables which I cut and spliced then soldered to 3 of the 4 pads on the front left side of the MoBo. (Side with the drives). Plugged the adapter into my laptop via USB, got the driver and boom COM3 popped up. So I went into Putty, selected serial and put com3 for address. rebooted the nas then in my putty session is as able to see the bios key, delete. Spammed delete which took me into bios, from there you HAVE to disable a setting that forces the nas to boot to WD specific partition. Also had to disable all the other Boot options and only have the ubuntu USB selected. No idea how the video creator got around this, maybe he never actually tested a reboot? Not sure.

[@redwolfastorian2221]

This is awesome :) We have 4 of DX4000 in our company. Since we use DFSR in Microsoft environment we both it specifically with Windows. But i was thinking about installing one with linux just so see how it would perform. I wanted to use DISPLAYLINK USB 2.0 GRAPHICS ADAPTER (or other linux compatible USB graphic adapter) for the install, but your way is much simple! It should also be possible to disconnect the disk raiser from the mother board and use a pci-x video card. Great Job!

[@inthegarage8224]

Thank you kindly. I didn't have a USB video adapter to test but I did already try using a PCI-E video card here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pZrPfmqGhLtghqM and it would not display video during POST so I don't think you'll be able to use a card to do the install. Always love being proved wrong though :)

[@redwolfastorian2221]

I have watched the video and it is a pitty the graphic card dint work. I remember a server that had pcie x1 graphic card. Who knows if the wd pciex port supports a video link .... bios would be nice to check out. I remeber was wondering why the intel chipset does not have vPRO with KVM - that would substitute for a graphic card. DX4200 has a video out already an no KVM. Sometimes i wonder if one of the devices goes broken (out of warranty) and i can stick in a mini ITX board :)

[@redwolfastorian2221]

You could try to plugin the video card after linux install, boot up and run "sudo lshw -C display" to see it it is known by the system ?

[@Grunchy005]

I have two of these DX4000s, seems to be a decent enough computer. I defeated the whitelist drive limitation and installed 4x 4TB WD gold drives in one running Windows server 2008 in Raid 5, it’s a good NAS! One pc keeps failing backup, over wifi, so it constantly reads ‘backup failed’ on its display. For the second unit I got 4x 6TB WD gold drives, and this one I cannot get working. It can operate 1 drive at full 6TB but it can’t build an array from 4 of them, it only recognizes like 2TB (or 3TB?) from each, the resultant volume is always much much smaller. I wonder if Ubuntu server could build a proper-size array from 4x 6TB? Or could it be a hardware limitation of the RAID device on the DX4000, and I may as well stick with WS2008 and use the drives elsewhere?

[@hackatak]

nice video on Ubuntu install. I assume this is the same DX4000 you attempted to re-install windows storage server on in one of your other videos. If it is the same server, have you tried again to re-install it back to factory WINDOWS storage server? I have the same server throwing the same error and have yet to get into it to determine the issue.

[@inthegarage8224]

yeah I got it running with SSDs here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pqu3dHWmh5Jje9k

[@hackatak]

Great, but that youtube link is dead, says there are not videos to be found!

[@inthegarage8224]

Oh LOL crap it's the edit link. This should work: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pqu3dHWmh5Jje9k

[@MartinMeise]

I am making also a video series about installing OpenMediaVault in a DX4000: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l564iZ6afMmWisk Port J23 is a serial port. With that you can edit the bios and do the debian install routine.

[@danialrafiqi9346]

i cant get this thing to work anymore. did my usb and test boot on laptop, boot fine. but when pressing reset button, it wont go to recovery started mode. sigh. loosing my mind here lol

[@zxjason]

Hi, do you think this will works on my cloud ex4100?

[@paulmartin5981]

Hello, I'm trying to install a Linux instead of this trash WS2008 on this NAS... For better performance and stability. I tried what you're showing in this video but I didn't succeed. Actually I've tried to boot on a Linux Mint live for test. But when I press the recovery button I don't get the startup failed message instanltly like you do. It only appear 1 or 2 minutes later waiting for it... And boot on live Linux don't work. Do you have an idea of what could go wrong? I will try the same Ubuntu as you. :)

[@inthegarage8224]

My best guess would be the USB drive you're trying to boot from isn't bootable for some reason? Maybe make sure it boots on another system first if you haven't already? When mine did that it was usually because it wasn't able to boot off the first device it was trying.

[@paulmartin5981]

@@inthegarage8224 Thanks for your reply! I tried different OS on 2 different USB stick in UEFI or BIOS mod. USB stick with UEFI does'nt work on my test PC so I had to check that USB drive is well bootable in classic BIOS => OK I format my disk drive but now I don't get the startup failed anymore... I get "Initializing OK loading recovery". So I tried your method after this message. I have my keyboard plugged on usb1 (and USB bootable drive on usb2). My keyboard seems OK but if I press one touch after few seconds the keyboard shut down. Another problem...!!! The bootable drive is OK, I have the led which is blinking so it's look good. I used an USB HUB but same problem! I think it's over for me. ='(

[@FailLikeAChamp]

@@inthegarage8224 I am having the same issue. The only way I can get the failed boot state to appear is by removing the USB media during its initialization. I tried to load the latest ubuntu which is a lot different than the one in your video too. Any thoughts? I came across this unti for free so figured it would be a fun project to try to get it working on linux for a little nas function.

[@FailLikeAChamp]

@@inthegarage8224 btw, I ran the installer and I can see the device on my network as ubuntu-server and it pings but cannot ssh in :(

[@paulmartin5981]

@@FailLikeAChamp You almost got it!!! For you issue, I guess you just have to find an ISO with already activated SSH :) When you say that you have runned the installer, you did it with a keyboard or with an auto install ISO? How did you do to boot on the USB stick, you had to force the startup failed message? Or just with the "Initializing OK loading recovery message? :)