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Cisco

Cisco

2960‑S 1st Impressions

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes

Just notic­ing some dif­fer­ences in this 2960‑S mod­el switch; things I haven’t seen before in this prod­uct line. One thing is the con­sole port is now two ports: tra­di­tion­al and a small mini-USB. Also, there is a clas­sic USB plug onboard these now too, pre­sum­ably for IOS updates and what­not. These are also stack­able, which makes sense giv­en Cis­co’s new direc­tion in their SWITCH course train­ing mate­r­i­al eschew­ing Span­ning-Tree and try­ing to push Layer‑3 every­where.

1st boot-up below, more impres­sions lat­er.

Using dri­ver ver­sion 1 for media type 1
Base eth­er­net MAC Address: a8:b1:d4:64:8f:00
Xmo­dem file sys­tem is avail­able.
The pass­word-recov­ery mech­a­nism is enabled.
Ini­tial­iz­ing Flash…
mifs[2]: 0 files, 1 direc­to­ries
mifs[2]: Total bytes : 1806336
mifs[2]: Bytes used : 1024
mifs[2]: Bytes avail­able : 1805312
mifs[2]: mifs fsck took 1 sec­onds.
mifs[3]: 0 files, 1 direc­to­ries
mifs[3]: Total bytes : 3870720
mifs[3]: Bytes used : 1024
mifs[3]: Bytes avail­able : 3869696
mifs[3]: mifs fsck took 0 sec­onds.
mifs[4]: 5 files, 1 direc­to­ries
mifs[4]: Total bytes : 258048
mifs[4]: Bytes used : 9216
mifs[4]: Bytes avail­able : 248832
mifs[4]: mifs fsck took 0 sec­onds.
mifs[5]: 5 files, 1 direc­to­ries
mifs[5]: Total bytes : 258048
mifs[5]: Bytes used : 9216
mifs[5]: Bytes avail­able : 248832
mifs[5]: mifs fsck took 1 sec­onds.
mifs[6]: 559 files, 19 direc­to­ries
mifs[6]: Total bytes : 57931776
mifs[6]: Bytes used : 14971392
mifs[6]: Bytes avail­able : 42960384
mifs[6]: mifs fsck took 14 sec­onds.
…done Ini­tial­iz­ing Flash.
done.
Load­ing “flash:/c2960s-universalk9-mz.122–53.SE2/c2960s-universalk9-mz.122–53.SE2.bin”…@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
File “flash:/c2960s-universalk9-mz.122–53.SE2/c2960s-universalk9-mz.122–53.SE2.bin” uncom­pressed and installed, entry point: 0x3000
exe­cut­ing…

Restrict­ed Rights Leg­end

Use, dupli­ca­tion, or dis­clo­sure by the Gov­ern­ment is
sub­ject to restric­tions as set forth in sub­para­graph
© of the Com­mer­cial Com­put­er Soft­ware — Restrict­ed
Rights clause at FAR sec. 52.227–19 and sub­para­graph
© (1) (ii) of the Rights in Tech­ni­cal Data and Com­put­er
Soft­ware clause at DFARS sec. 252.227‑7013.

cis­co Sys­tems, Inc.
170 West Tas­man Dri­ve
San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia 95134–1706

Cis­co IOS Soft­ware, C2960S Soft­ware (C2960S-UNIVERSALK9‑M), Ver­sion 12.2(53)SE2, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc3)
Tech­ni­cal Sup­port: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copy­right © 1986–2010 by Cis­co Sys­tems, Inc.
Com­piled Wed 21-Apr-10 06:08 by prod_rel_team
Image text-base: 0x00003000, data-base: 0x01B00000

Ini­tial­iz­ing flashfs…
Using dri­ver ver­sion 1 for media type 1
mifs[3]: 0 files, 1 direc­to­ries
mifs[3]: Total bytes : 1806336
mifs[3]: Bytes used : 1024
mifs[3]: Bytes avail­able : 1805312
mifs[3]: mifs fsck took 0 sec­onds.
mifs[3]: Ini­tial­iza­tion com­plete.

mifs[4]: 0 files, 1 direc­to­ries
mifs[4]: Total bytes : 3870720
mifs[4]: Bytes used : 1024
mifs[4]: Bytes avail­able : 3869696
mifs[4]: mifs fsck took 1 sec­onds.
mifs[4]: Ini­tial­iza­tion com­plete.

mifs[5]: 5 files, 1 direc­to­ries
mifs[5]: Total bytes : 258048
mifs[5]: Bytes used : 9216
mifs[5]: Bytes avail­able : 248832
mifs[5]: mifs fsck took 0 sec­onds.
mifs[5]: Ini­tial­iza­tion com­plete.

mifs[6]: 5 files, 1 direc­to­ries
mifs[6]: Total bytes : 258048
mifs[6]: Bytes used : 9216
mifs[6]: Bytes avail­able : 248832
mifs[6]: mifs fsck took 0 sec­onds.
mifs[6]: Ini­tial­iza­tion com­plete.

mifs[7]: 559 files, 19 direc­to­ries
mifs[7]: Total bytes : 57931776
mifs[7]: Bytes used : 14971392
mifs[7]: Bytes avail­able : 42960384
mifs[7]: mifs fsck took 1 sec­onds.
mifs[7]: Ini­tial­iza­tion com­plete.

…done Ini­tial­iz­ing flashfs.

POST: MA BIST : Begin
FC 1 MBIST Test Passed.
DP Sg1 MBIST Test Passed.
DP Xg1 MBIST Test Passed.
NI 1 MBIST Test Passed.
FC 0 MBIST Test Passed.
DP Sg0 MBIST Test Passed.
DP Xg0 MBIST Test Passed.
NI 0 MBIST Test Passed.
UPB MBIST Test Passed.
POST: MA BIST : End, Sta­tus Passed

POST: TCAM BIST : Begin
POST: TCAM BIST : End, Sta­tus Passed

front_end/ (direc­to­ry)
extract­ing front_end/fe_type_4 (78476 bytes)
extract­ing front_end/front_end_ucode_info (43 bytes)
extract­ing ucode_info (77 bytes)
Wait­ing for Stack Mas­ter Elec­tion…
POST: Ther­mal, Fan Tests : Begin
POST: Ther­mal, Fan Tests : End, Sta­tus Passed

POST: Por­tA­SIC Stack Port Loop­back Tests : Begin
POST: Por­tA­SIC Stack Port Loop­back Tests : End, Sta­tus Passed

POST: Por­tA­SIC Port Loop­back Tests : Begin
POST: Por­tA­SIC Port Loop­back Tests : End, Sta­tus Passed

POST: EMAC Loop­back Tests : Begin
POST: EMAC Loop­back Tests : End, Sta­tus Passed

Elec­tion Com­plete
Switch 1 boot­ing as Mas­ter
Wait­ing for Port download…Complete

This prod­uct con­tains cryp­to­graph­ic fea­tures and is sub­ject to Unit­ed
States and local coun­try laws gov­ern­ing import, export, trans­fer and
use. Deliv­ery of Cis­co cryp­to­graph­ic prod­ucts does not imply
third-par­ty author­i­ty to import, export, dis­trib­ute or use encryp­tion.
Importers, exporters, dis­trib­u­tors and users are respon­si­ble for
com­pli­ance with U.S. and local coun­try laws. By using this prod­uct you
agree to com­ply with applic­a­ble laws and reg­u­la­tions. If you are unable
to com­ply with U.S. and local laws, return this prod­uct imme­di­ate­ly.

A sum­ma­ry of U.S. laws gov­ern­ing Cis­co cryp­to­graph­ic prod­ucts may be found at:
http://www.cisco.com/wwl/export/crypto/tool/stqrg.html

If you require fur­ther assis­tance please con­tact us by send­ing email to
[email protected]

cis­co WS-C2960S-48TS‑L (Pow­er­PC) proces­sor (revi­sion A0) with 131072K bytes of mem­o­ry.
Proces­sor board ID FOC1425W1J7
Last reset from pow­er-on
1 Vir­tu­al Eth­er­net inter­face
1 FastEth­er­net inter­face
52 Giga­bit Eth­er­net inter­faces
The pass­word-recov­ery mech­a­nism is enabled.

512K bytes of flash-sim­u­lat­ed non-volatile con­fig­u­ra­tion mem­o­ry.
Base eth­er­net MAC Address : A8:B1:D4:64:8F:00
Moth­er­board assem­bly num­ber : 73–11909-05
Pow­er sup­ply part num­ber : 341‑0327-01
Moth­er­board ser­i­al num­ber : FOC14251HQ7
Pow­er sup­ply ser­i­al num­ber : DCA1413P1BF
Mod­el revi­sion num­ber : A0
Moth­er­board revi­sion num­ber : A0
Mod­el num­ber : WS-C2960S-48TS‑L
Daugh­ter­board assem­bly num­ber : 73–11933-04
Daugh­ter­board ser­i­al num­ber : FOC14232S4V
Sys­tem ser­i­al num­ber : FOC1425W1J7
Top Assem­bly Part Num­ber : 800–30950-01
Top Assem­bly Revi­sion Num­ber : A0
Ver­sion ID : V01
CLEI Code Num­ber : COMGF00ARA
Daugh­ter­board revi­sion num­ber : A0
Hard­ware Board Revi­sion Num­ber : 0x01

Switch Ports Mod­el SW Ver­sion SW Image
—— —– —– ———- ———-
* 1 52 WS-C2960S-48TS‑L 12.2(53)SE2 C2960S-UNIVERSALK9‑M

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Uncategorized

ASA TU

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes

You ever have one of those weeks where every­thing that can go wrong, does? And even things that can’t go wrong, still do? Last week was that week for me. But more on that lat­er.

I’m final­ly relax­ing with a beer in my home office, Fri­day after­noon, after said hell-week, when sud­den­ly I notice that my desk phone has mys­te­ri­ous­ly pow­ered off. Beyond the visu­al cue of no screen dis­play, and a nag­ging sus­pi­cion that some­thing was still not right in the world, I also heard it when it shut down (The Cis­co 7940 mod­els in par­tic­u­lar seem to make some noise when turn­ing on and off.) Since this phone is using PoE from a Cis­co ASA 5505, I glanced over at the 5505 to see what might be caus­ing all of the unhap­pi­ness. Imme­di­ate­ly I noticed that some­thing was­n’t right, as the sta­tus light was orange for a sec­ond, then the whole unit reboot­ed. At that point the dis­play lights go all green, then amber, then anoth­er reboot… ad nase­um.

What the @#$!?

Try­ing to log in via either SSH or ASDM yields no love at all, so I hook up a con­sole cable. There it is: the ASA appar­ent­ly does­n’t have any OS to boot.

Again with the @#$!?

So, I take the cov­er off and pull out the *cough* expen­sive-as-hell *cough* flash card to dou­ble-check things on desk­top com­put­er. Sure enough, the com­put­er reports that the flash card is not for­mat­ted. So I for­mat­ted it, rein­stalled the OS and license infor­ma­tion from–wait for it–the back­up I had made recent­ly. At this point I could have used this as anoth­er learn­ing expe­ri­ence and re-con­fig­ured the unit from scratch, just to test myself, but at the time I was try­ing to get some movie tick­ets pur­chased and had just got­ten done with a very, very tir­ing week. Not sur­pris­ing­ly then, I took the easy way out and restored the con­fig­u­ra­tion as well.

After a quick rein­stall, the unit came back up and every­thing is fine.

My main les­son learned here–and I’m won­der­ing if this is some­thing that has hap­pened to oth­er peo­ple, or hap­pens fre­quent­ly with the ASA units–is that the Cis­co ASAs seem to occa­sion­al­ly wipe out the installed flash card (cards plur­al if you have 5510s or big­ger.) Either that, or the ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive (like $300 or some­thing) Cis­co-brand­ed 512mb flash cards are flakey as hell. I don’t tend to go with that last option, how­ev­er, sim­ply because when flash cards go bad they’re not usu­al­ly amenable to being re-for­mat­ted and work­ing prop­er­ly again: it’s usu­al­ly game-over, buy anoth­er one.

So, anoth­er ran­dom prob­lem at least solved in the short-term. I’ll keep every­one post­ed on whether or not this hap­pens again. I haven’t seen any­thing indi­cat­ing that this is a known issue, but admit­ted­ly I haven’t real­ly been look­ing. Auto-mag­i­cal­ly wip­ing out the entire boot OS, con­fig­u­ra­tion, licens­es, etc. would seem to be a fair­ly non-use­ful type of bug to have–even by, say, Microsoft stan­dards… let alone Cis­co.

So, has any­one seen this before?

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