Cisco CP-7940G not resetting to factory settings or downloading proper configuratiron

[adamskalicky1]

Hello,

I am having a touch of trouble with 2 Cisco 7940s. I have about 15 of these phone in various locatios, the bulk of which are between our two offices, and when we switched to a new PBX (a Free PBX SIP server) we ran into an issue with the two phones.

When the DHCP server changed the default TFTP address, the phones did pick up the change after being restarted and appeared to try and download the new config file and firmware as all the phones were updated to the latest. These two phones that were having issues with are in the same office that a handful of other phones that went through the exact same update without a hitch. What appears to happen is the 2 phones boot up, attempt to download the configuration, stalls, then fails and loads the old one. The what is very odd is after it stops requesting the configuration, it goes to the upgrading software page and then loads the extensions after not doing anything.

For troubleshooting purposes, I reset the network config and manually specified the alt tftp server. Even after this was done the phones still failed to boot. At this point I decided to reset the phone to factory settings but the the screen does not change, it simply boots right through me holding the # sign. One thing I noted that is different between the two non-working phones and all the others is the fact that these two dont load the application loader but jump straight into the SIP application. I believe this is the cause of the inability to factory reset.

In short:

The phones dont download the new firmware while all the others do.

They dont download the appropriate config files.

They skip the application loader and jump right into loading the SIP application.

Also, when the configuration is manually specified, the phones can make outgoing calls but do not register.

They are running firmware "P0S3-06-3-0" and under status messages they list TFTP Error Timeout for all the important files they need to download.

I am stumped and dont know what to do with these as they are not doing anything they are supposed to and dont know how to proceed. I thank you in advanced for any assistance.

[Leo Laohoo]

I've seen a colleague trying to get a 7940 to connect to his Trixbox and ran into similar problems.

He got it to work when he stumbled upon a post whereby it describes how some OLD phones' MAC address were omitted (because they are old) from a central database for FreePBX. 

[Leo Laohoo]

The DB is called "endpoint.db" and my colleague used "sqlite3" to edit the database.

[adamskalicky1]

I am having some issues accessing that database and examining it, do you have the syntax of the command that would allow me to view the database, I would appreciate it. To be honest I dont usually deal with DB stuff, I usually just use the GUI for my modifications.

[adamskalicky1]

Okay, i will give that a shot sometime tomorrow. One thing to note, i did attempt to have a standard tftp server running with just the firmware and a basic config file running on the LAN and the phone would still not pickup the image or file. Because of this I think the phones have some sort of problem. What and how to fix it, I have no clue.

[Leo Laohoo]

i did attempt to have a standard tftp server running with just the firmware and a basic config file running on the LAN and the phone would still not pickup the image or file.

This is exactly what we saw.  Check the endpoint.db and make sure the first six characters of your phone's MAC address is in it.  If not, then this is potentially where the problem is.

[adamskalicky1]

While attempting to change the DB, I thought about trying another troubleshooting step. I made a TFTP server on a windows machie of mine, put just the firmware P003-08-7-00 and a few other files in it. I started up the phone and pointed it to the new IP only to review the logs and find there was no attempt made to contact the server, failed or otherwise. Because of this I dont think a DB modification will assist. Is there a way to hard reset this phone and force it to look for a new firmware.? I read something about SSHing into them but never could figure it out.

[Leo Laohoo]

I made a TFTP server on a windows machie of mine

Exactly, what application are you using?   Did you enable DHCP Option 150?

[adamskalicky1]

I am using the Solarwinds TFTP server and did configure option 150 to point to the server on my windows computer.

[Leo Laohoo]

I started up the phone and pointed it to the new IP only to review the logs and find there was no attempt made to contact the server, failed or otherwise.

If the phone gets a valid IP address but cannot contact the TFTP server, then you've got something blocking it.  You may need to run a packet capture and examine the traffic.

[adamskalicky1]

Okay, I will look into that using wireshark, however, why are all my other phones unaffected. I used one as a test and it was able to pull the new firmware on the TFTP server.

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

Hmmmmm ... I've read something before whereby some old Cisco phones need a baby-step-upgrade to an interim before you can go to the 8.X firmware.

[adamskalicky1]

I think your on to something. I just got a third phone that is doing the thing, checked the firmware, all runing

P0S3-06-3-00. I think I will get a lower version, put it on a seperate server, and attempt to try to do a peliminary flash before jumping straight to the top.

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

OLD phones need to be upgraded to SIP 6.3(0) first before you go anywhere.

Can you confirm that your have OS79XX.TXT, SIPDefault.conf and SIPmacaddress.cnf have the filename are all matched up?   Like they all mention SIP firmware 6.3(0) as "P0S3-06-3-00".

[adamskalicky1]

I put the P0S3-06-3-00 in the tftp server with the appropriate OS79XX.txt file ad nothing happened but hten I went one above it to 7.0 and everything flashed perfectly. Thank you so much, you just saved me 3 phones.