Hi,

 

I'm fairly new with the Unraid stuff. My experience started two weeks ago, when I've decided to buy a Lincplus Lincstation N1 to replace my failing Qnap Nas.

I've studied the solution for two weeks, felt confident and started to transfer all off my stuff on Unraid. Before to do so, I did manage to arrange a daily backup with restic, at least for the most important stuff. I even bought a Plus license to overcome the 6 devices limits and connect two external USB disks for backup purpose.

 

Sadly today a power outage caused a failure in Unraid: the system is unabel to boot and ends up into an EFI shell after a message stating: "press ESC in 3 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue".

 

Before to write this post I did review the BIOS settings, tried to rescue the flash drive restoring a backup taken with CA appdata.backup; then reinstalling Unraid from scratch. The outcome is the same: the UEFI shell.

 

From one side I'm happy the drives are readeable by another linux OS: cannot bet on the integrity of data, but at least i can see them. Plus i have a backup.

 

I'm surprised that reinstalling system did not solve the problem, that is why I'm asking to the community a possible solution to the problem.

From one side it is my fault to bet on a cheap and immature solution like lincstation N1 (cannot even find support resources on lincplus website); on the other side I have to admit that also Unraid breaks easily relying solely on a USB drive integrity.

 

i'm thinking to send back the lincstation N1, hoping unraid will refund the license upgrade; Maybe my approach is negative, but I cannot see a solution to my problem, if not investing in other drives to rescue my datas.

 

Did I miss something? should I replace the USB drive with a legit one? Any idea is welcome.

 

Thanks in advance

Kaneda79

 

 

Backup the current flash drive, then recreate it using a stock install, test if it boots, and if yes, restore only the config folder from the backup.

Hi JorgeB,

 

thank you for your message.

In the end I managed to solve the problem using an ISO and a manual posted on https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lbhNsvBLdCvVSMourHWkHf0HB7MiQjJ3. Basically the link contains an ISO with a so called "Linc OS", version 0.99.10, delivering Unraid 6.12.10. It looks like this is not an official resource, at least (like most of the things) is not clearly documented on Lincplus website. I have found the solution on this forum, thanks to user @skydrop 

 

Files have to be checked but the array have been recomposed without apparent data loss. With this method i recovered all dockers after reboot, but I have to reinstall all plugins and user scripts. And upgrade Unraid version.

 

I confirm that USB flash drive was mostly readable, but I failed to backup all files on it (anyway the most recent CA appdata.backup have been taken a couple of hours before the failure). Fortunatly the basic.key is intact; I can also confirm that Unraid USB creator tool is not working with Lincstation N1 trying to apply the zip backup made with CA appdata.backup, nor with a fresh install. At least this is my experience.

 

A couple of question remains unanswered, that is why I'm going to call Lincplus official support:

1) Why there is not an easy to find support page for the product? I cannot rely on my bravery, implementing solutions that are not clearly official.

2) Where do I find future Linc OS isos? Why Unraid official tool does not work with their product?

 

34 minutes ago, kaneda79 said:

Why Unraid official tool does not work with their product?

It does, you could have recreated the flash drive, as mentioned.

Tried the tool two times with no success, probably i did something wrong.

Well, glad it works with the Lincstation N1; next time (but i hope not!) I put more attention to the usage of the tool.

Do you remember the error you saw?

 

You can also always use the manual install method:

 

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/getting-started/manual-install-method/

Actually there was no error. I did reimage the flash drive with the tool and then put it back into the lincstation. Boot ended up in the EFI shell again.

The only working option was reimagin the drive with rufus and the iso suggested by @skydrop.

I had a mail exchange with Lincplus support: basically they confirmed that the Unraid USB creator tool should work. They also confirmed the link shared by @skydrop is legit.

 

Well I'm happy the procedure worked, on the other side I'm doubtful about the lincstation reliability. Just today I had to troubleshoot three unraid boot problems: two times I had to restore the "bzfirmware" file because of a checksum error; another time i had to copy back the "go" file in /boot/config/ folder as it was missing. At this point I think the flash drive has some problem; anytime i reboot the lincstation I'm afraid I have to troubleshoot it!

8 hours ago, kaneda79 said:

At this point I think the flash drive has some problem

It's possible, but it can easily be replaced.

Just for the records: the 4GB drive provided with the Lincstation N1 was faulty.

Official Lincplus support didn't provide a replacement as They were out of stock. The alternative is to send the entire Lincstation N1 to their support in Germany (I am based in Italy).

I ended buying a Sandisk Ultrafit 3.1, the only USB drive easy to find and fitting into the Lincstation. Consider their drive is 18 mm tall, while Sandisk Ultrafit a little bit more then 19 mm. I want to add that Unraid USB Creator complains that the Ultrafit has no GUID; I had to preare the drive manually.

 

What to say? Unraid rocks, Lincplus support not so much.

 

Thanks everybody for your help!

Edited August 19, 20241 yr by kaneda79

I have this issue now, i cant get the page to come up to be able to login. i connected directly to it and it booted up through linux and was able to get into the interface, but lioncstation doesnt show up on my PC. Laptop, Tablet or phone now to be able to get into it. Help is needed to be able to restore, but not loose any of my files

 

Thank You!

Please post the diagnostics.
 

Just recently I have lost power three times (never used to happen). I am about to buy a UPS to deal with the recent issues. What I have noticed is the lincstation seems to have a hard time rebooting/booting. I have to long press to reboot or even at times unplug the unit if long press is not working. I have to do this several to many times to get the unit to boot properly. It typically is stuck on flashing all lights. This happened after every power outage. Oddly enough, its also happened with just regular shutdown/startup scenarios. I added extra SSD's to redo my drive setup, converting from array to ZFS pools. In this process I had to reboot several times and several of those reboots experienced the same startup issues. I am not sure if there is something wrong with the internal flash or not, but its a pain to get this device to boot sometimes. However when it does finally boot, it works great. I am attaching my diags if anyone is interested. tower-diagnostics-20250816-1647.zip

I have had USB drive fail on me same way.
I was able to use Unraid USB creator to boot into fresh install and copy all the data, and then it stopped booting altogether.

SanDisk drive does not work with unraid usb creator. Samsung drive does - but does not fit into the designated slot.

I have KVM attached to it and it just is stuck on splash screen. No amount of "Del" button smashing gets it to show bios even (I was able to get into bios once before)

7 minutes ago, MikeManiac said:

SanDisk drive does not work with unraid usb creator.

Try the manual install method:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/getting-started/manual-install-method/

did manual install (partitioned 4gb partition and formatted as fat32, left the rest of 128gb unpartioned on my SanDisk).

does not boot.
plugging in Samsung AND Sandisk (so now I have 2 bootable drives, Samsung is the one that booted once before) - does not work.

disconnected KVM and plugged directly into monitor and keyboard (via front USB-C port) - can't get into bios.

I even tried to boot into virtual CD (via KVM) but that does nothing.

Looks like the bios on this thing is dead and there is no amount of tweaking that can save it :(

Cleared BIOS by unplugging CMOS. it actually booted (while I had original malfunctioning USB stick in).

Edited August 25, 2025Aug 25 by MikeManiac

I was able to boot it once, and exactly once - after unplugging the battery from the motherboard for 30s and plugging it back. I booted with the original  USB stick (fresh unraid 99 flash via rufus).

Any subsequent attempts to boot do not get anywhere. So I strongly suspect a bios issue, or some hardware damage that got both the USB stick and bios itself.

8 hours ago, MikeManiac said:

So I strongly suspect a bios issue, or some hardware damage that got both the USB stick and bios itself.

Agreed

I was able to boot into SanDisk drive (that I prepared using manual install), after I took out both SATA SSDs.
I also changed bios boot order to (USB, CD, HDD) but I do not think that matters.

SanDisk drive does show GUID within Unraid UI

If it only works after disconnecting other devices, still looks like a board/BIOS issue to me.