Cisco Aironet 2800 Series. Mobility Express Image not working

eidenlouis-mt — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 07:48:06 GMT

I got a used Cisco AIR-AP2802I-E-K9 access point from ebay and I want to use it as an AP in standalone mode. When I got it I did a factory reset. Now when starting the device it won't boot any further than U-Boot.

U-Boot 2013.01-ged7ddad (Jun 07 2017 - 17:31:48) SDK version: 2015_T2.0p10

Board: Barbados-2K
SoC: MV88F6920 Rev A1
running 2 CPUs
CPU: ARM Cortex A9 MPCore (Rev 1) LE
CPU 0
CPU @ 1800 [MHz]
L2 @ 900 [MHz]
TClock @ 250 [MHz]
DDR4 @ 900 [MHz]
DDR4 32 Bit Width,FastPath Memory Access, DLB Enabled, ECC Disabled
DRAM: 1 GiB
NAND: 256 MiB
SF: Detected N25Q32A with page size 64 KiB, total 4 MiB
PCI-e 1 (IF 0 - bus 0) Root Complex Interface, Detected Link X1, GEN 2.0
PCI-e 2 (IF 1 - bus 1) Root Complex Interface, Detected Link X1, GEN 2.0

Map: Code: 0x3feda000:0x3ffae0a0
BSS: 0x3ffefb5c
Stack: 0x3f9c9f20
Heap: 0x3f9ca000:0x3feda000
U-Boot Environment: 0x00100000:0x00110000 (SPI)

Board configuration:

port Interface PHY address
egiga1 SGMII 0x01
egiga2 SGMII 0x00
Net: , egiga1, egiga2 [PRIME]
Hit ESC key to stop autoboot: 0

When I check version I see:

u-boot>> version
U-Boot 2013.01-ged7ddad (Jun 07 2017 - 17:31:48) SDK version: 2015_T2.0p10
arm-openwrt-linux-uclibcgnueabi-gcc (OpenWrt GCC 4.7.1 r48430) 4.7.1
GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.24.0

I have several bad blocks in my NAND Flash

bad block at 0x0ff00000
bad block at 0x0ff20000
bad block at 0x0ff40000
bad block at 0x0ff60000
bad block at 0x0ff80000
bad block at 0x0ffa0000
bad block at 0x0ffc0000
bad block at 0x0ffe0000

u-boot>> ubi info
UBI: MTD device name: "mtd=2"
UBI: MTD device size: 254 MiB
UBI: physical eraseblock size: 131072 bytes (128 KiB)
UBI: logical eraseblock size: 126976 bytes
UBI: number of good PEBs: 2024
UBI: number of bad PEBs: 8
UBI: smallest flash I/O unit: 2048
UBI: VID header offset: 2048 (aligned 2048)
UBI: data offset: 4096
UBI: max. allowed volumes: 128
UBI: wear-leveling threshold: 4096
UBI: number of internal volumes: 1
UBI: number of user volumes: 1
UBI: available PEBs: 0
UBI: total number of reserved PEBs: 2024
UBI: number of PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 20
UBI: max/mean erase counter: 2/0

When Trying to boot after successfully writing the image to a newly created rootfs partition I get a singning verification failure. I got the image from Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/ciscomobility since I can't download it from cisco website... but it should be pretty up to date, since its also version 8.10 https://software.cisco.com/download/home/286304510/type/286289839/release/8.10.196.0?i=!pp

u-boot>> bootm ${loadaddr}

Checking image signing.
Image signing verification failure(-2), not allowed to run...

I then set the env variable setenv skip_validation 1 to disable signature verification.

I was able to reboot but now getting other errors while booting.

Re: Cisco Aironet 2800 Series. Mobility Express Image not working

Mark Elsen — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:11:44 GMT

- Looks like the AP has fatal hardware issues and needs to be replaced (RMA) ,

Re: Cisco Aironet 2800 Series. Mobility Express Image not working

eidenlouis-mt — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 09:17:02 GMT

alright! I thought the same earlier when resetting it again and realising I cannot create the partition I was able to create before. It really acts weird. Thanks for the brilliance ;D

Re: Cisco Aironet 2800 Series. Mobility Express Image not working

Rich R — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 14:15:10 GMT

> When I got it I did a factory reset.
How exactly did you do that? It seems like you wiped all software from both flash partitions, not just a factory default reset.

It is not possible to install the regular AP software from u-boot. You need a special u-boot recovery image which only Cisco has access to for these AP models. Cisco have never released that software for the Wave 2 AP models. Cisco have only released the u-boot recovery images for the WiFi 6 C91xx APs as per https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/catalyst-9120axi-access-point/217537-repairing-c9120-c9115-access-points-from.html so at this point your only option for a 2800 AP is to RMA/replace the AP. Next time be careful not to erase the flash partitions because they cannot be recovered.

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Cisco Aironet 2800 Series. Mobility Express Image not working

Re: Cisco Aironet 2800 Series. Mobility Express Image not working

Re: Cisco Aironet 2800 Series. Mobility Express Image not working

Re: Cisco Aironet 2800 Series. Mobility Express Image not working