Need help installing 4.70 firmware to NSA320

seiji_k

Hi all,

Decided to go back to using my old NSA320 for several reasons. Last time it was put to use was around 2013. Today, I found out the firmware is too old (v4.01) and it's EOL already. Managed to download both v4.60 and v4.70. However, the NAS don't seem to initiate the actual firmware upgrade after uploading the .BIN file. I get the message "Please wait, this action may take a while depending on your network connection speed ..." and I can see the upload progress through Chrome's status bar. But even after the upload is complete, no dialog box would appear triggering the firmware upgrade and system LED will not turn to amber.

Wondering if there's a way to force update the firmware if the fw upload function isn't working.

Thanks in advance!

seiji_k

Thanks to your help, I'm now able to revive my NSA320!

For the benefit of others who might ran into the same situation as me, I've outlined what I did:
1. Did a factory reset of the NAS
2. Used rescue stick image containing 4.50 firmware to boot the NAS
3. Using the web interface, I upgraded the firmware to 4.70, which I downloaded from Softpedia
4. After the firmware upgrade, I created a fresh volume using the web interface
5. Using a FTP client, downloaded the 4.70 packages
6. Copied the packages to the admin \ zy-pkgs folder share

From then on, I'm able to configure the NAS and install packages.

Mijzelf

I have a 'RescueStick' here. Unzip it to a FAT formatted USB thumbdrive, plug it in the NAS and boot it. It should flash firmware 4.50.

seiji_k

Thanks for the reply Mijzelf.

TLDR: Firmware upgrade complete but web configurator isn't accessible and other services like Squeezecenter isn't running.

I did what you have outlined:
1. Downloaded NSA320_450AFO1C1_UpgradeKey.zip
2. Extracted the contents to a FAT32-formatted USB key.
3. Inserted the USB drive and clicked "Restart" in the web configurator.
4. Saw the NAS rebooting and saw the System LED turned amber and blinked, same thing with the USB drive as the "firmware" is being copied.
5. The NAS turned itself off. Presumably, this is expected once the upgrade is done.
6. I waited for the NAS to turn on by itself but it did not. So I removed the USB key and turned on the NAS.

At this point, I can access the shares on the drive but all other services don't work, e.g., web configurator not showing (site cannot be reached error), Squeezecenter not running, etc.

Appreciate any advice on how I can get everything running again.

Mijzelf

Somewhere between v4.01 and v4.50 (v4.20?) ZyXEL changed the kernel ABI from OABI to EABI. Technical story, but it means in this case that the 4.01 packages are binary incompatible with the 4.50 firmware.

So you have to remove all packages and reinstall them. The packages for 4.50 are no longer available, but the 4.70 packages are. So remove the packages, upgrade further to 4.70, and reinstall them.

seiji_k

Understood.

However, I'm not sure how I can remove the packages or even upgrade to 4.70 as I can't access the web configurator. Is it just a matter of resetting the device to factory settings? If not, any link you can provide for the detailed step-by-step on how I could go about removing the packages and upgrading to 4.70? I only know through the web configurator but it's unaccessible on my end. Also, SSH isn't working so I can't use Putty on the NAS.

Again, thanks for spending the time to assist. Really appreciate it!

Mijzelf

With web configurator you mean the web interface you see in a browser, I suppose?

I cannot exclude that a non-starting package can kill the webserver, but it's not the first which I would think about.

Try to clear the cache/cookies in your browser, or use another one, or use a private window. The NAS does some redirects which can be cached, but which change in every firmware version.

A factory reset won't hurt. (press the reset button until it has beeped 3 times (+/- 20 seconds)). This will disable the packages, and clear all settings. The data on disk will not be touched.

seiji_k

Yes, I'm referring to the web interface. I recall seeing that term somewhere in this forum so I stuck with it.

I'll try resetting to factory defaults after I backup the files. Afraid that the shares would also be reset and I won't be able to access the files if the hard reset doesn't fix the issue.

Sakura_T

As far as I know, the reset button only deals with system configuration/setting, data on disks will not be affected at all.

seiji_k

Thanks guys for the confirmation.

Mijzelf is right. Any old package would render the web interface inaccessible so I tried using a different hard to factory reset the device. I kept the original hard drive as I still need the data.

Immediately after the factory reset completed , I saw the web interface and I was even able to upgrade the FW to v4.70. I thought I'm on a good start.

However, once I begin installing packages, I once again realized that due the product's EOL, very limited functionality is now available. I kept getting failed package installation since packages are no longer available on Zyxel servers and no offline copies exist in the local shares.

By chance, has someone able to keep copies of the packages so I may still be able to install packages? The most important one for me is SqueezeCenter since it's a necessity for my Squeezeboxes. Would also be great if I will be able to use OwnCloud too.

Lastly, wondering if I can copy the package files from my old drive from the folder "zy-pkgs" to the new drive and will it be compatible for V4.70?

Mijzelf

Did you update the package list? The packages for 4.70 are still available (ftp://ftp2.zyxel.com/NSA320/4.70/zypkg/)

seiji_k

Thanks! Will check and download.

Update: Was able to download the packages. Will let you know once I got everything set up again.