Cannot boot NAS, just "Starting"

QNAP TVS-471U-RP stopped responding at some point, not after firmware upgrade. It was not network reachable.
Removing all 4 HDD did not help.
After turning it on now, only “Starting” is seen on the screen. I hear short beep, but there is no long beep.
Avago BIOS works and can be configured to boot from USB.
I tried firmware recovery per wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Firmware_Recovery, could not boot Clonezilla nor many other distros, but finally could copy IMG using Tiny Linux.
But “Starting” remains. Sometimes login appeared, and I could login using admin:admin, not MAC or Cloud passwords. Saw it is HAL. ifconfig was empty.
Qfinder does not see it when directly connecting to the computer. Not sure if Windows Firewall may block it.
I assume firmware is older now, but cannot say if NAS is hardware working properly.
I tried to follow community answers and wiki, but cannot proceed, please see if you can help.

what has QNAP said? have you raised a ticket with QNAP?

I tried to report at service.qnap.com but I just get “Something went wrong. Please try again later.”

its working for me.

do you have an account? you need to sign in for it to work correctly

https://service.qnap.com/en-uk/user/create-ticket

I had an account, maybe it needed another log off, log in, anway I opened a ticket and they responded with a link NAS Recovery Guide for x86-based NAS | QNAP.
That is similar to what I used before, but somehow this time it worked. Not sure if related that I tried with 486 Clonezilla. Anyway, NAS booted and could be logged in.
Then came other issues. I need to keep data so not to initialize the system. Disks are still out.
Qfinder does not see the update from 1.2.8. When I applied the update 4.5.4 manually from img, seemingly 100%, NAS cannot boot, it stucks at “Booting the kernel”. Later applying 5.2.2 failed at 20%.
Not sure if I should first insert disks and then try update, I do not see that detail explained. Because advice to remove storage is not applicable. Why won't my NAS boot after a firmware update? | QNAP (ASEAN)

I guess you are stuck then unless you can get QNAP involved.

Just curious, I take it you have no backups of your QNAP data?

That question about backup now may be taken as rhetorical…
Lesson: if something is working, do not update. If it fails, its likely hardware then.

I wonder why that old firmware 1.2.8 is 492MB and new 5.2.2 is 216 MB.
QNAP does not have special instructions when firmware update does not work.
DOM fail? Why and what with that?
I asked if I need to update to some intermediary firmware, no answer.
What would happen if I put back disks in old firmware, is there some compatibility list, I assume no, as official is probably to update all the time.

BTW, I did not understand the difference between community.qnap.com and forum.qnap.com.
I asked here, as Forum site frequently does not work for me.

community.qnap.com is the new forum, the old forums forum.qnap.com ran on phpbb and is plagued with issues due to the amount of spambots hitting the site.

Searching for update message cat: /mnt/update/newver: No such file or directory
Seems New 419PII with Firmware issues - QNAP NAS Community Forum offers an idea.
But I cannot see links nor attachments, also not login there, although I had account from few year ago, due to idiotic level of “security” with cats and dogs making me crazy.
Since in the meantime I changed the password for Service, IDK if Forum has the SSO or its own old pass.
Edit: used other browser and after many dogs could log in.

problem is that is a 12 year old thread. I would suggest thing have moved on a bit by now. is QNAP not helping you out any longer.

To detailed question with for example that same error like 12 years before they give some general answer. Try again or send to service center 3 states away.
IDK still if this is SW or HW, as that 1.2.8 boots, should be SW, maybe there was failed update that prevents all further ones.
i ask how wo clean or fsck or whatever, no specific help.
I tried hacks from that forum, same.

If the DOM has failed (it happens) you could replace it with a new 9pin USB DOM, or switch the boot order to a USB stick

https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=133899

Thanks, wasn’t aware.
But how to know if DOM, how to test it?
If firmware 1.2.8 is wokring, what DOM fault would prevent update?

DOMs are like USB sticks with a different header, it can happen that part of the storage gets corrupted so data written to it throws errors or just locks up access.

Without a 9pin breakout board (you can get those on ebay or AliExpress), it would be hard to test the DOM. But with the above guide you can remove the DOM and test it with a simple USB stick

I got more useful info here than with QNAP. They claim DOM is broken, without providing a method to verify.
I wanted first to try software test, before going to follow that nice replacement guide…
If I test DOM as any filesystem, I do not see errors like badblocks, I can delete PT. When I reflash v1.2.8 again I see There is “Partition has different physical/logical endings” but I assume that is known since NAS works with it.

My final conclusion is that any update to available new versions (4.5 and 5.x) breaks it.
There is forum advice to go thru intermediary versions, but QNAP won’t provide links (they previously scrubbed). So I am missing like v4.1.0 to try.

4.3.5 Build 0760 help? put your model number in the field and select the model once it appears here:

Thanks for 4.3.5. Also could not update to that one. I found 4.2.2 and I can update from initial there and boot NAS, but not further to 4.3 or 4.5. Qfinder update goes to 90% where it says Restart, but it does not boot properly after that. Maybe I should have waited more, like an hour? Not sure if important that I try without disks.
I tried with manual update, to unpack IMG of 4.5 and copy files to /sda2/boot but interestingly NAS still boots with 1.2.8. I did not copy to /sda3 thinking that sda2 is active.

you do know that interfering with disk partitions may break something, these NAS’s are not standard linux platforms that you can do anything to them, right?

How I see that: DOM partitions can be deleted, or disk checked. When flashing full image they are set again. So should be possible to experiment.
In addition to not being able to fix this, there are those unclear issues:

  1. why QNAP does not have a method to test DOM to see if the culprit, device as any, reachable when booted from somthing else
  2. how I can flash 1.28 and upgrade to 4.2.2 but not further
  3. what if I insert disks in 4.2.2, should it work if the previous firmware that worked with them was 5.x

Maybe newer versions use memory areas that are busted on your DOM.

As said before you might have to remove that DOM and test it externally or just get a new one to test. Your options without doing any of that seem limited.