Update/Rebuild NTA3000 System Drive

This article provides instructions for rebuilding the system drive of your NTA3000 to the factory default state. This might need to be done to bring your system drive up to the latest operating system. It might also need to be done in case of any corruption of the filesystem.

NOTE: The instructions below are for NTA3000 hardware platform only. If you have an NTA1000, please refer to this document.

Disk Image Release Notes

Background

Your NTA3000 has an internal NVMe system drive and two SSDs combined into a logical volume as the data drive. The system drive contains the Linux operating system, CDRouter software, and the qacafe user account directory. The data drive contains all of your CDRouter data (configs, packages, results, etc.).

If you have any files on the system drive that you want to restore later, please back them up before performing this operation. Rebuilding a drive will PERMANENTLY DELETE all existing files on the drive. Since only the system drive will be rebuilt, CDRouter data located on the data drive will not be affected by this. However, it’s still a good idea and good practice to perform a backup of your data drive as well.

NOTE: This procedure requires an active Internet connection on the NTA3000. All steps in the procedure below will be executed directly from your NTA3000 system. If the NTA3000 does not have Internet access, consider temporarily connecting it to the internet just for this procedure. If this is not possible, please contact the QA Cafe Support team support@qacafe.com.

Step 1: Install the latest version of the nta-create-image package

The QA Cafe nta-create-image package may be installed automatically from the QA Cafe rpm repository using the dnf command.

``` no-highlight
dnf update nta-create-image
```

This will install a python script in the /usr/share/nta/bin directory. This script will be used in the next step.

Step 2: Create the bootable USB drive

The create-image.py script creates a bootable USB drive that is used to clone a new system image onto the system drive of the NTA3000.

  • To get started, plug a USB drive into the NTA3000. Note that the USB drive will be overwritten, so any data currently on the drive will be destroyed.

  • Next, run the create-image.py script as the root user using the following command:

    /usr/share/nta/bin/create-image.py

    The script will verify that a properly sized USB drive (>= 4GB) exists and will abort if one is not found.

  • If a properly sized USB drive is found, the script will download and copy the appropriate QA Cafe Disk Image Utility package from the QA Cafe repository server and then burn it to the USB drive.

  • Once the image utility has been burned to the USB drive, the script will provide additional instructions for properly booting the system from the USB drive.

    • Press p to power off the system and continue with Step 3 below.
    • Press c to exit the utility if you wish to continue the procedure later instead.

Step 3: Boot the NTA3000 from the USB drive

  • Power on the NTA3000 with the bootable USB drive created in the previous step inserted.

Step 4: Install System Image from USB drive

  • After the NTA3000 boots from the USB drive, you will be provided with a menu.

  • Select (s) Rebuild system drive - This will begin the imaging process.

  • After the imaging process completes, the menu will be displayed again.

  • Remove the USB drive, then select (r) Reboot to reboot your system.

  • Once the NTA3000 has rebooted, it should be running Rocky Linux 9. This may be verified by running the following command in a terminal window:

cat /etc/redhat-release

Output should be:

Rocky Linux release 9.3 (Blue Onyx)

Step 5: Install CDRouter software and license

Now that the system drive has been successfully rebuilt, CDRouter must be reinstalled.

Please follow the instructions in the “Manual installation using the command line” section of the CDRouter Installation Guide.

Once CDRouter has been reinstalled, an active CDRouter license file must also be installed. This can be done automatically by running the following command:

cdrouter-cli -update-license

The following command may be used to verify that CDRouter and a valid, active license file have been properly installed:

cdrouter-cli -info

CDRouter’s web UI, and all CDRouter data should now be available.