ASA 5520's unable to boot from disk1:

jon.helmer · ‎05-12-2008

We recently purchased two Cisco compatible 512 MB flash drives for our ASA. The drives work fine when first inserted into the ASA. We are able to load boot images, ASDM, CSD on the flash cards. However, when we change to boot statement to boot off of the image on disk1:, after a reboot the ASA can't see disk1: until it is removed and reinserted. Here's an output of the boot load:

Evaluating BIOS Options ...

Launch BIOS Extension to setup ROMMON

Cisco Systems ROMMON Version (1.0(10)0) #0: Fri Mar 25 23:02:10 PST 2005

Platform ASA5520

Use BREAK or ESC to interrupt boot.

Use SPACE to begin boot immediately.

Launching BootLoader...

Boot configuration file contains 1 entry.

Cannot find disk1:/asa803-k8.bin

Error 15: File not found

unable to boot an image

Default configuration file contains 1 entry.

Searching / for images to boot.

Loading /asa723-k8.bin... Booting...

####################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################

512MB RAM

Total SSMs found: 1

ASA-SSM-10, SN JAB0928033B, HW ver 1.0, FW ver 1.0(10)0

Total NICs found: 7

mcwa i82557 Ethernet at irq 11 MAC: 0012.d948.e72c

i82546GB rev03 Gigabit Ethernet @ irq09 dev 3 index 00 MAC: 0012.d948.e728

i82546GB rev03 Gigabit Ethernet @ irq09 dev 3 index 01 MAC: 0012.d948.e729

i82546GB rev03 Gigabit Ethernet @ irq09 dev 2 index 02 MAC: 0012.d948.e72a

i82546GB rev03 Gigabit Ethernet @ irq09 dev 2 index 03 MAC: 0012.d948.e72b

i82547GI rev00 Gigabit Ethernet @ irq11 dev 1 index 05 MAC: 0000.0001.0002

Licensed features for this platform:

Maximum Physical Interfaces : Unlimited

Maximum VLANs : 150

Inside Hosts : Unlimited

Failover : Active/Active

VPN-DES : Enabled

VPN-3DES-AES : Enabled

Security Contexts : 2

GTP/GPRS : Disabled

VPN Peers : 750

WebVPN Peers : 50

This platform has an ASA 5520 VPN Plus license.

Encryption hardware device : Cisco ASA-55x0 on-board accelerator (revision 0x0)

Boot microcode : CNlite-MC-Boot-Cisco-1.2

SSL/IKE microcode: CNlite-MC-IPSEC-Admin-3.03

IPSec microcode : CNlite-MC-IPSECm-MAIN-2.04

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

. .

| |

||| |||

.|| ||. .|| ||.

.:||| | |||:..:||| | |||:.

C i s c o S y s t e m s

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software Version 7.2(3)

.WARNING: BOOT variable added, but unable to find disk1:/asa803-k8.bin

*** Output from config line 93, "boot system disk1:/asa80..."

.............................................WARNING: interface inside security level is 80.

*** Output from config line 1335, "logging host inside 172...."

.Device Manager image set, but unable to find disk1:/asdm-603.bin

*** Output from config line 1361, "asdm image disk1:/asdm-6..."

You see that the ASA complains that it cannot find disk1:. Once the ASA boots, the CF card in slot1 cannot be seen until it is removed and reinserted. We tried this with two different CF cards (from the same Cisco compatible manufacturer) and two different ASA's, with the same results.

Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks,

Jon

smahbub · ‎05-16-2008

Try this command "show run | inc boot" and the output should be as follows:

ciscoasa(config)# show run | inc boot

boot system disk0:/asa706-k8.bin

boot system disk0:/asa802-k8.bin

If there is no boot system command, the output should be null, so you need

to add the boot system command as follows:

ciscoasa(config)# boot system flash:/asa802-k8.bin

INFO: Converting flash:/asa802-k8.bin to disk0:/asa802-k8.bin

Now if you issue the command "show run | inc boot" the outpurt will be as shown below:

ciscoasa(config)# show run | inc boot

boot system disk0:/asa802-k8.bin

Use the following commands to save the config and then to reload.

ciscoasa(config)# write mem

ciscoasa(config)# reload

Performing the above mentioned steps might resolve the issue.also try removing the bootimages and add them back after a reboot.

vitripat · ‎05-16-2008

Hi Jon,

If disk0 does not have a valid image, the boot loader will not look for an image in disk1 - since the presence of disk1 is not mandatory

This behavior is by design. This is the reason you get the error message "Cannot find disk1:/asa803-k8.bin".

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Vibhor.

jon.helmer · ‎05-19-2008

Turns out it that both CF cards we had wouldn't work, even though they were Cisco compatible. Tried with a different brand of CF card this weekend, and both ASA's were able to see disk1 at boot time.

Thanks,

-Jon