topic Re: WLAN Poller question in Wireless

WLAN Poller question

robo0003c — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 16:50:41 GMT

Hi!

We are going to upgrade our WLC 5508 with 2702i APs from release 8.3.141 to release 8.5.140 In the release notes there was information regarding "WLAN Poller", se below link:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless-mobility/wireless-lan-wlan/213317-understanding-various-ap-ios-flash-corru.html

It was referenced from one of the links under "Upgrading Cisco Wireless Release" in the release notes.

Is it anyone who has used it, and is it necessary before upgrading?

Thank you!

Re: WLAN Poller question

Flavio Miranda — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 19:04:15 GMT

It is not necessary. Recently I did the same upgrade with tons of 2700 with no problem.

-If I helped you somehow, please, rate it as useful.-

Re: WLAN Poller question

Haydn Andrews — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 20:04:10 GMT

Yes have used it, and had issues when I did an upgrade where it was not used and i hit the flash corruption issue before this script was available which was one of the first cases to identify the issue.

The polling script will make sure you do not have any APs with Flash corruption issues.

If you do the upgrade without doing it and do hit a flash corruption issue you will then have to recover the APs via tftping a new recovery image to the AP

If you have a support agreement, log a TAC case to go through it with TAC before your upgrade

FYI for planning:

When we ran this against a WLC with close to 6000 APs it took a few hours from a Linux host, and nearly a day from a MACOS.

Look at the script as you can select if you want it to reload APs or not

Re: WLAN Poller question

Leo Laohoo — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 05:51:06 GMT

WLAN Poller is used to identify if an AP is about to "eat itself" but it is not foolproof and it needs to be run several times in order to catch the file corruption before the AP crashes. Once the AP crashes, WLAN Poller won't be able to recover the AP.

You won't need the file to upgrade.

Re: WLAN Poller question

robo0003c — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 11:05:27 GMT

We did the update yesterday of our WLC and it went fine. We did run WLAN poller from a MAC OSx computer before.

With the config of WLAN poller below it gave the result of none affected APs:

ap_fs_check: False
ap_fs_recover: False

But with the below config the script was never able to finish, it just hanged.

ap_fs_check: True
ap_fs_recover: False

So we went ahead and updated the WLC code anyway, and it went fine.

Re: WLAN Poller question

mrcissp — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 05:55:54 GMT

I have been trying to download this wlanpoller file but unable to do so. Appreciate if you can assist me.

Re: WLAN Poller question

patoberli — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 12:32:28 GMT

You are right, download seems to be broken. I've sent Feedback to Cisco about it. With some luck it's working again in ~2 days.

Re: WLAN Poller question

mrcissp — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 06:17:11 GMT

Do let me know if you hear any update from Cisco. I cannot download yet. Thanks

Re: WLAN Poller question

patoberli — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 07:37:53 GMT

For me it works now, but I had to use Chrome instead of Edge (or Firefox). The link isn't completely browser compatible.

Re: WLAN Poller question

Paccers — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 07:56:54 GMT

Hi Haydn,

Just curious as to what Linux OS you used to run it? I've got a CentOS 7 box I'm trying to get the script going on and I'm having no end of issues just getting it unpacked and installed to begin with!

Wondering if I should just call it quits and use a W10 VM, problem is I have a LOT of APs to run this against... (thousands)

Re: WLAN Poller question

patoberli — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 08:30:28 GMT

I used Windows, but the more important part is to use the correct Python version. It's a Python 2.7 script, so you MUST use Python 2.7. Version 3.x is NOT compatible with 2.x version code!

Re: WLAN Poller question

Paccers — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 09:38:48 GMT

Hey patoberli thanks for the response!

My Python is v2.7.x (afk, can't remember the specific version!) I wouldn't think it comes down to minor version differences within 2.7 does it? Pip version on the Linux host is 8.1.2 or something where it looks like the pip install used as part of the package is 8.1.1

Re: WLAN Poller question

patoberli — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 11:09:50 GMT

Then it should work. What exact error messages do you get?

Re: WLAN Poller question

Haydn Andrews — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 22:11:21 GMT

can you share the output of you terminal/ command prompt that you get when trying to run the poller

Re: WLAN Poller question

Paccers — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 08:14:58 GMT

hey patoberli/haydn it might not be wlanpoller side of things to be fair, one of our dev gurus is going to sift through the pip install on our host as they reckon that's causing the dramas. I'll come back with some logs if we keep running in to brick walls 🙂 Thanks for the help thus far

Re: WLAN Poller question

patoberli — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 08:56:59 GMT

I suggest you use a laptop or a VM without any special configuration. That is far easier. Then put it into the same VLAN as the APs.

Re: WLAN Poller question

Haydn Andrews — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 22:18:59 GMT

you can also look at setting up a new Python Virtual environment

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/venv.html

I would recommend using a Linux or MACOS host to run it off based on past experience with Python and Windows, I also found the time to run the poller on windows vs Linux was massively slower on windows by multiple hours.

Also tghe host running it needs the ability to SSH all the AP IP addresses and WLC

Re: WLAN Poller question

Paccers — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 04:26:52 GMT

Good news! Our dev guru resolved an issue with the Linux host itself and we've got the script up and running. Already done a test run and things are looking good 🙂

Thanks for your help!

Re: WLAN Poller question

Paccers — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 01:17:46 GMT

patoberli/Haydn I don't suppose you know if the ap_name_filter variable works properly and if so, what the correct syntax is?

My scenario now is that I have a number of different sites on this WLC but I want to try and only poll a particular site's APs. Let's say I have sites with codes in their AP names, 1234 and 9876. I want to use the app name filter to only check/scan the APs with 1234 in the name, ignore 9876

Re: WLAN Poller question

Haydn Andrews — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 01:50:59 GMT

Unfortunatly not.
This script is supported by TAC so if you jave support you could always ask them