[solved] GoFlex Net: green light flashes indefinitely

[baafie]

Well, you've probably guessed it, I can't get my GoFlex Net to do anything except blink that evil green light at me. The light does not change colour. The odd thing is I don't know what might have happened to cause this state of affairs. One day my GoFlex was chirping along happily, and the next it turned into a total zombie.

I originally installed my GoFlex Net using Doozan's instructions for debian, and then later overwrote uBoot with uBit, following the instructions from Arch Linux ARM to install a complete system. When the system was operational, so was the net console.

Now, however:

$this->bbcode_list('a')

The LED blinks green at me... and it's getting on my nerves!

Nothing is registered on the uBit netconsole (10.10.10.5 and so on).

There is no evidence of the GoFlex attempting to access the USB drive I loaded up with the ALARM tarball; its light stays off.

No DHCP entries nor any ARP entries are logged by my router for the GoFlex.

I don't have a serial cable or even a good idea of how one is used.

Help!

Edit: solved, see below.

[moonman]

There are many guides on how to use serial with gf home and net. Try to reinstall following the link in my signature. Maybe just create a bootable flash drive for now to boot it up. The key with ubit is to have rootfs partition labeled "rootfs".

Netconsole should work if you do it properly (if using vm make sure the interface is bridged and in promiscuous mode or don't use vm, create aliases for the interface). Ubit is there because the light is flashing.

[baafie]

Thank you for the tips. After reading your hints I realised that iptables might be blocking the netconsole, and indeed, it worked fine when I turned off all blocking rules. (Many things are blocked by default in Fedora, apparently.) Clearly I'm back in the newbie camp.

After getting the netconsole working, I finally discovered the problem was that the USB flash drive I had been using seems to be incompatible with the GoFlex. A different drive had the GoFlex booting just fine.