how to boot 4500 Supervisor II from ROMOM, no boothelper

aacole · ‎11-22-2007

I've been asked to help a customer who has a Sup II fitted into a 4500 chassis. He has tried to upgrade the IOS on the switch and somehow in the process lost the boot helper image. So now the switch is at ROMMON, and wont load the IOS, probably due to the missing boot helper.

Documentation on Cisco's web site indicates that this probably needs a RMA swap out, anyone else had this problem and managed to sort it out?

I was thinking of suggesting they use a PCMCIA flash card with a valid IOS image and boot helper in slot 0, but I'm not sure that would work.

glen.grant · ‎11-22-2007

Is it a Sup II or a sup II+ ? If its a sup II then that is catos only . Makes a difference on how you attack this problem . Sup II+ is IOS . You should be able to fix this without RMAing . Rommon just means it could not find the main image to load . If its a Sup II catos switch , do a "dir bootflash: and see what files are on there or a show bootflash might also work . Post here and we can work from there .

Catos recovery

http://cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/hw/switches/ps663/products_tech_note09186a00800949c3.shtml

IOS recovery

http://cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/hw/switches/ps663/products_configuration_example09186a0080094ecf.shtml

aacole · ‎11-22-2007

Its a SupII+, running IOS, or it was!

Unfortunatly I'm no where near the unit, but was asked to advise on a recovery method, but I've not come across this situation before. Every other switch seems to have inbuilt recovery, apart from this one.

Its currently sat at ROMMON, and I know from the DIR commands that there is no boot helper, but didnt find out until too late.

It did run an earlier IOS image, it was during the upgrade process this all went wrong.

glen.grant · ‎11-22-2007

Follow these instructions to recover .hope this helps ...

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps663/products_configuration_example09186a0080094ecf.shtml#image