Troubleshooting Debian on QNAP TS-41x/TS-42x

QNAP TS-419P from the front

This page describes common problems that users of Debian on the QNAP TS-410, TS-410U, TS-412, TS-412U, TS-419P, TS-419P+, TS-419P II, TS-419U, TS-420 and TS-421 have run into. If you have any problems with your QNAP device, either while trying to install Debian or when running Debian, please look through this page carefully to see whether you can find a solution. If your problem is not covered here, feel free to contact the debian-arm list for help.

Debian installer

Cannot connect to Debian installer

If you cannot connect to the Debian installer via SSH, make sure that you connect the Ethernet cable to the correct port. Ethernet port numeration differs between the QNAP firmware and Debian. Under Debian, eth0 is the port marked with "LAN2". On the TS-419P, this is the lower (and not the upper) connector!

Formatting the disk is stuck at 33%

Formatting the disk may take a long time, especially if you have a large disk. Unfortunately, the progress bar is not updated while the disk is being formatted so you may think that it is stuck (at 33%). If this happens, just be patient. The installer is in fact formatting your disk.

Debian

My QNAP no longer boots

There can be many reasons why a QNAP running Debian no longer boots, ranging from a broken disk, to a bad upgrade or configuration. Unfortunately, it's often impossible to say what the problem is without the use of a serial console. The best solution is to connect a serial console to see what the problem is but not everyone can do that.

Before you do anything, you should listen. Maybe your QNAP is performing its regular filesystem check and this will delay the boot process. This delay can be considerable if you have a large disk. If you can hear that your hard drive is being accessed, just wait for a few hours.

If your hard drive is quiet and Debian doesn't start, you should try is to connect your USB drive to another PC and to check the log files:

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

Now you can look at the files in /mnt/var/log, in particular at the file syslog. If this file doesn't contain any information about the last boot attempt (which is quite likely), you can enable bootlogd which will record early boot messages:

sudo sed -i "s/BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=No/BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=yes/" /mnt/etc/default/bootlogd
sudo umount /mnt

Connect the drive to your QNAP, boot it, wait a few minutes, then turn it off and connect the drive to your PC again and mount it. Now look at the file /mnt/var/log/boot which might tell you more.

One common cause for boot problems is related to filesystem checks and running fsck over all partitions may help. There are several reasons why this might help. For example, the Linux ext3 filesystem has to be checked periodically. Even though Debian has been configured not to prompt the user during the filesystem check, it might still do so in case of serious errors. Without a serial console, this prompt means that your QNAP will hang waiting for user input.

Turn your QNAP off, connect the disk to another machine running Linux and run fsck over all partitions containing data. On a normal Debian installation, this includes sda1 (/boot), sda2 (/) and sda6 (/home):

sudo fsck /dev/sda1
sudo fsck /dev/sda2
sudo fsck /dev/sda6

If none of this helps, I'm afraid you probably have to connect a serial console or use the recovery mode to flash the Debian installer and to perform a new installation.

Not enough space for initrd in MTD

When upgrading your system, you might get an error message like this:

Not enough space for initrd in MTD 'RootFS1' (need 9670100 but is actually 9437184).

The kernel and initramfs (the initial ramdisk that loads Debian from disk) are stored in MTD flash. There's only 9 MB available for the initramfs. This might not be enough if you use LVM or RAID.

If this is the case, you can apply the following workaround:

echo "COMPRESS=xz" | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/compress

This configures initramfs-tools to use XZ compression, which achieves higher compression. Hopefully your ramdisk will now fit in flash. If it still doesn't fit, there's unfortunately not much you can do.

The initramfs in Debian buster is larger than in previous releases due to the inclusion of OpenSSL and unfortunately there's no fix or workaround for that issue.