NetGear ReadyNas Pro 2 with Xpenology

 A guide mostly to myself regarding installation of Xpenology to Netgear ReadyNas Pro 2 (RNDP2000).

The one with Atom CPU, expandable memory and two 1Gb ports on the back.

Installation was described in multiple places so not gonna repeat unnecessary.

But want to add something from myself.

Booting this box require to press backup button for 15-20 seconds which is cumbersome.

Luckily this box have internal memory (around 512Mb). 

So after all booting from USB and hopeful successful installation of DSM:

1. enable SSH

2. copy synoboot.img file on USB drive and plug it into any USB ports.

3. go to /volumeUSB(x)/usbshare where you should see synoboot.img file.

4. run dd if=synoboot.img of=/dev/synoboot which will overwrite internal flash with bootloader

5. remove both USB drives and reboot, NAS should reboot from internal flash.

To have correct MAC address for NIC you need to change it in /grub/grub.cfg file before booting NAS but if you forgot, there is still a chance to do it (and change serial number as well). To do so we need to change grub.cfg file on internal flash (see above).

/dev/synoboot do not show in mount nor fdisk -l but still if you run 

fdisk -l /dev/synoboot 

you should see:

Disk /dev/synoboot: 119.5 MiB, 125304832 bytes, 244736 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: AFB38D11-BCEA-4409-B348-F4FEEE602114
Device         Start    End Sectors Size Type
/dev/synoboot1  2048  32767   30720  15M EFI System
/dev/synoboot2 32768  94207   61440  30M Linux filesystem
/dev/synoboot3 94208 102366    8159   4M BIOS boot

Create folder somewhere (/) and mount first partition from above 

mount -o loop,offset=1048576 /dev/synoboot /temp

where offset is sector size(512) multiplied by start sector of 1st partition(2048). 

Now you should have access to grub.cfg in GRUB folder.

Change mac1 and mac2 to correct hardware addresses.
Also change serial (I've used serial from the box itself).

To hide internal USB flash use (pid and vid are the same for all NeadyNas Pro2):
set vid=0x090c
set pid=0x1000

After writing to file you can unmount /dev/synoboot and reboot to check if changes applied correctly.

 

I found fans running at full speed a bit annoying so solution was:

1. Install PERL

2. create /etc/fancontrol file and put below into it

configuration file generated by pwmconfig, changes will be lost
INTERVAL=10
DEVPATH=hwmon1=devices/platform/it87.2576
DEVNAME=hwmon1=it8721
FCTEMPS=hwmon1/device/pwm1=hwmon1/device/temp2_input
FCFANS= hwmon1/device/pwm1=hwmon1/device/fan1_input
MINTEMP=hwmon1/device/pwm1=20
MAXTEMP=hwmon1/device/pwm1=60
MINSTART=hwmon1/device/pwm1=30
MINSTOP=hwmon1/device/pwm1=8
MINPWM=hwmon1/device/pwm1=8
MAXPWM=hwmon1/device/pwm1=255

it is faster that installing and running pwmconfig.

Then download fanstart script  and copy it to /etc and add task in Task Scheduler to run /etc/fanstart at each boot.
After reboot fan should be much quieter.

Last thing I've changed was to remove additional sata ports as ReadyNas have only two slots.

To do so ssh in to it and open two files:

/etc/synoinfo.cfg and

/etc.defaults/synoinfo.cfg

And changed on both below info:

esataportcfg="0x000000" <- there is no esata so no need to have it
internalportcfg="0x003" <- to reduce ports to two.

At the moment have two of those ReadyNas boxes running for couple of years without any issues.

PAT files are on Synology server:

DSM_DS3615xs_23739.pat

Bootloaders are on xpenology server:

xpenology.com or directly on mega.nz

Knowledge how to setup volume on Xpenology, how to ssh into it and how to use vi and cat is required to do all above but who ever want to install Xpenology should know it and more.