Linkstation Firmware Flasher

Hi

Linkstation Firmware Update

Well i just got myself a Buffalo Linkstation HD-H250LAN, however in my infinate wisdom i thought i'd flash the firmware and follow this online Guide to do so. However unfortunaely i rushed through things and failed to read the instructions properly. :omg:

Linkstation

I recently had massive problems with my LinkStation and had to flash the firmware on it. When I finally got it up and running again, my admin screen was in Japanese!! Once this is complete, you need to repeat the process for the other drive. After the second sync the NAS should report an overall capacity equal to the drive capacity you installed. The upgrade was a success and you are finished upgrading the drives in your LinkStation Pro Duo. Step 6 - Flashing Firmware on the LS-WTGL (Advanced). Extract the downloaded file and run LSUpdater.exe. When a LinkStation is detected, an update window will open. If multiple LinkStation units are connected, select which unit to update. Click 'Update' and enter the LinkStation's admin password. The firmware will begin updating. The info LED will flash during the. The Info LED on the front of the LinkStation will flash during formatting. The LinkStation's shared folders cannot be accessed until the disk format is complete. Page 61: Adding Storage Using your LinkStation Adding Storage The LinkStation has a USB connector on the back. You can connect a Buffalo external hard drive to the USB Port.

I flashed the firmware using a normal Cat5e patch cable connected through a network switch. However upon closer inspection of the instructions, i was supposed to flash the Linkstation directly connected to my PC using a cross over cable. After the flash had finished i realised what i had done wrong, but i was to late to fix it as it as it advised that the firmware update had FAILED. :angry:

Having now potentially bricking my Linkstation i was wondering if there was a way of unbricking it?

If so please post your thoughts on how i may recover it back to factory defaults?

Linkstation Firmware Flasher

I have read that it is possible to dismantle in and connect the Hard Disk to an ide port on your PC to recover the drive is this possible?

Now when i try to reconnect to the Linkstation i always get the same error saying that there is no Linkstation found on the network click OK to finish...

Many Thanks

Linkstation Firmware Update Failed

Edited by tobe22Flasher

The purpose for opening a stock firmware is to gain root access to LinkStation. With root access, several additional softwares can be added to the firmware, e.g: using optware package. Furthermore, a custom operating system can be used to replace the Buffalo stock firmware such as Debian.

Linkstation Firmware Flashers

This process based on existing method on buffalo.nas-central.org, tested on LS421DE:

  1. Download the tools from https://github.com/tohenk/linkstation-mod/archive/master.zip.
  2. Get the Buffalo stock firmware from http://buffalo.jp/support_ap/support/products/ls400.html, the latest firmware as of this writing is 1.33.

    After unzip process, the firmware can be found on the ~/lsmod/linkstation-mod-master/firmware/ls400-133en/ folder.

  3. Prepare SSH public key for login authentication.
    If you’re already using a linux box, simply copy id_dsa.pub or id_rsa.pub to data folder.

    On windows box, use puTTYgen to generate SSH private/public key pair. Refer to http://winscp.net/eng/docs/ui_puttygen for an example. After the key generation is complete, do not close the puTTYgen window, rather select all the text in the generated public key, press Ctrl+C to copy the content and paste it as text file in notepad and save the file with .key extension. You then can copy the file to linux box using WinSCP for example and put in the data folder.

  4. Execute the script to open the stock firmware.

    Additionally, you can add features by editing data/nas_features and issue the following command:

    The opened firmware image can be found on ~/lsmod/linkstation-mod-master/out/ folder named as hddrootfs.img and initrd.img.

  5. Re-flash the modified firmware.
    You need a windows box (or Machintosh) to flash Buffalo firmware. Copy and replace original firmware with the opened firmware from previous step.
    Append the following lines to LSUpdater.ini

    Execute LSUpdater.exe, activate debug mode by clicking in the upper left corner (see figure below).
    In the Debug Mode dialog, tick the following options:

    • Config: Do not check version
    • Config: Force update
    • Update: Update rootfs
    • Update: Update initrd (only if you add features to initrd image)


    Next, perform update process by clicking the Update button. After update process is done you can SSH-ing to the box using root.