515 Activation Key Recovery...

[solefald]

Hello,

I recently got my hands on an old 515 (128Mb RAM/16Mb Flash)that was running 5.2. I successfully upgraded that to 6.2(4), but then decided to put 8.0(3) on it, to make it more "user-friendly" since i am more familiar with the new ASA5500 family and figured 8.0 would have pretty much the same featureset. Anyway, it successfully installed 8.0(3), but now, it is stuck in the reboot cycle

Cisco Secure PIX Firewall BIOS (4.0) #0: Thu Mar 2 22:59:20 PST 2000

Platform PIX-515

Flash=i28F640J5 @ 0x300

Use BREAK or ESC to interrupt flash boot.

Use SPACE to begin flash boot immediately.

Reading 7188992 bytes of image from flash.

Cisco Secure PIX Firewall BIOS (4.0) #0: Thu Mar 2 22:59:20 PST 2000

Platform PIX-515

Flash=i28F640J5 @ 0x300

Use BREAK or ESC to interrupt flash boot.

Use SPACE to begin flash boot immediately.

Reading 7188992 bytes of image from flash.

Cisco Secure PIX Firewall BIOS (4.0) #0: Thu Mar 2 22:59:20 PST 2000

Platform PIX-515

Flash=i28F640J5 @ 0x300

Use BREAK or ESC to interrupt flash boot.

Use SPACE to begin flash boot immediately.

Reading 7188992 bytes of image from flash.

you get the idea....

so i got into the RMMON mode and tried to put 6.2(4) back on, but it would not let me do it, because it needs a 4-part Activation Key

This pix is super old and i acquired it for the personal use, so i am not really planning on spending money onf support contract. Is there anything i can do to make this thing boot? Or extract those activation keys?

thank you in advance

i

[alkamalju]

I had a same problem. I am scared to give you any solution-still let my try. Dont blame if wrong.

Well, did you execute "show version" from any of the earlier IOS. This command returns the activation key for the pix you are using. However, if not, second option is to write to Cisco with your serial number.

You will get the serial tagged on the pix. Or during the boot immidiately before it asks you for activation key (The part of boot process you printed here, is it all/you cut a portion of it?).

If you are not a customer of cisco and dont have id or password, you can take help of someone that can mail the serial to get the activation key. Its no big deal.

But, next time always keep back of this activation key.

Thank you.

[solefald]

Yep, i ran show version, but as you can imagine i did not save the output :(

We do have a corporate account with Cisco, so maybe they will able to help...

thank you very much for your response,

igor

[cisco24x7 · Accepted solution]

Here is my experience with Cisco Pix.

The Pix has a while label with number

like 448xxxx and if you go to www.cisco.com

enter this serial number, you will get an

email from Cisco with a serial number.

The problem with the serial number is that

with Pix 6.x code, it is a 4 quad tuple number.

On the 7.x code, with some pix device, you

will see 5 quad tuple number. I've asked

Cisco TAC about this numerous times about

this and apparently Cisco does not have a

a valid response for me either.

The other thing you have to be careful

is that sometime cisco will send you a FO

license only when the original activation

key on your pix is a UR or R license thus

making the pix useless.

Be patience when dealing with Pix. it is a

beast.

[solefald]

Ok, problem solved!

for the future reference, in case someone has the same problem here is the solution:

Go here: https://tools.cisco.com/SWIFT/Licensing/PrivateRegistrationServlet

And request yourself a new key. For some reason when i requested Version 7 and up, it did not work and said that my serial was not found in the database. After that i got Version 6 no problem. Went back, re-requested Version 7 and it worked. Go figure :)

Thank you to everyone who replied!