Basic questions on 4500 upgrade

[gautamzone]

Dear friends,

A few basic questions on the 4500 (4507-R-E / 4510-R-E with Sup 6-E running 12.2.(50)SE). These questions
are reloaded to an IOS upgrade which i need to complete tomorrow.

1. Why does a copy to the standby supervisor cause a lot of timeouts (lot of 'O' instead of !)?

I am using TFTP to do a file copy and i use tftpd32 (one of Cisco recommended tftp servers)
to do the file transfer. Here's the output:

HGH_LAB#copy tftp://172.21.10.15/cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-53.SG2.bin bootflash:cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-53.SG2.bin
Accessing tftp://172.21.10.15/cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-53.SG2.bin...
Loading cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-53.SG2.bin from 172.21.10.15 (via Vlan999): !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!O!O!O!!O!!!!!!!!!O!
[OK - 25646261 bytes]

25646261 bytes copied in 270.036 secs (94973 bytes/sec)
HGH_LAB#copy tftp://172.21.10.15/cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-53.SG2.bin slavebootflash:cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-53.SG2.bin
Accessing tftp://172.21.10.15/cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-53.SG2.bin...
Loading cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-53.SG2.bin from 172.21.10.15 (via Vlan999): !OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!OOOO!O
[OK - 25646261 bytes]

25646261 bytes copied in 714.104 secs (35914 bytes/sec)

2. sh ver reports "host config file is tftp://x.x.x.x". I know this has come
after i did a snmp write to the switch. But i hope that it will not try to fetch
the config from there when the switch reloads?

Here's the exact output:

HGH_LAB#sh ver
Cisco IOS Software, Catalyst 4500 L3 Switch Software (cat4500e-ENTSERVICESK9-M), Version 12.2(50)SG, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc4)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copyright (c) 1986-2008 by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Wed 24-Dec-08 22:03 by prod_rel_team
Image text-base: 0x10000000, data-base: 0x1267FC00

ROM: 12.2(44r)SG
Darkside Revision 4, Jawa Revision 18, Tatooine Revision 140, Forerunner Revision 1.74

HGH_LAB uptime is 33 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 58 minutes
Uptime for this control processor is 33 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 20 minutes
System returned to ROM by power-on
System restarted at 13:29:56 DST Fri Oct 30 2009
System image file is "bootflash:/cat4500e-entservicesk9-mz.122-50.SG.bin"
Host configuration file is "tftp://172.21.10.15/10.1.102.121"

This product contains cryptographic features and is subject to United
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use. Delivery of Cisco cryptographic products does not imply
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Importers, exporters, distributors and users are responsible for
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A summary of U.S. laws governing Cisco cryptographic products may be found at:
http://www.cisco.com/wwl/export/crypto/tool/stqrg.html you require further assistance please contact us by sending email to
export@cisco.com. WS-C4510R-E (MPC8548) processor (revision 6) with 524288K bytes of memory.
Processor board ID SPE122601NN
MPC8548 CPU at 1.33GHz, Supervisor 6-E
Last reset from PowerUp
2 Virtual Ethernet interfaces
320 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
4 Ten Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
511K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory.

If

cisco

Configuration register is 0x2102

3. When i reload the switch to do an IOS upgrade, is it better to use the reload command or the hw-module reset command?
Also, i have noticed on the 4500's with dual supervisors that i need to execute the reload command twice. Why do i issue the command reload twice?
I never faced this on a 6500 with dual supervisors.

[Leo Laohoo]

In my experience, there are only two reasons why you will get the "O" during TFTP transfers to the flash:

1.  Very slow link; and/or

2.  You don't have enough flash space.

[Ganesh Hariharan · Accepted solution]

The possible reason for the error code O means that the packets were received out of order, Check the  interface setting  if any error are happening.If not it can be space problem in flash or to resolve it doubled the timeout from 3 seconds to 6 seconds and increased the number or max retransmits from 6 to 12 and see the result.

Following are the codes are of tftp error for future reference

The characters which show the status of a transfer in IOS are
! – Indicates a successful transfer to 10 packets
O – Indicates out of sequence packets
. – Indicates a timeout
E – Uppercase E indicates an error
e – Lowercase e indicates flash is being erased
V – Indicates checksum verification

Hope to Help !!

Ganesh.H

Remember to rate the helpful post

[Brandon Lynch]

Another option you may have in getting the IOS image to the standby SUP is to copy it directly from the active -

copy bootflash: slavebootflash:

This may serve to be more reliable than going back to TFTP server.

[gautamzone]

Thanks a lot for the answers.

It was very informative.