topic Re: Clearing storage space on Cisco ME AP 3800 - IOS XE for upgrade. in Wireless

Clearing storage space on Cisco ME AP 3800 - IOS XE for upgrade.

TsvetanVladimirov7864 — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 22:34:34 GMT

Hello Experts,

I hope you all are doing well.

I am having a struggle to upgrade some Mobility Express 3800 APs from 8.5 to 8.10 version.
Reason is - no space available.

So after a lot of investigation and debugging, it turns out that I need to have at least 41+ Mb of free space for the new ME image. (even though the image itself is bigger, but apparently the important information is 41)

Most newer APs (same model) that did not go through previous updates got only 1% used space after the upgrade. So there is no issue with them. However I have some, that have around 27MB free space only. And this is after I deleted the Core files!!

Here is some output:
#show flash
Directory of /storage/
total 108
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             2 Jul 25 10:54 ACTIVATE_COUNT
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             4 Jul 25 10:54 BOOT_COUNT
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             4 Jul 25 10:54 BOOT_COUNT.reserve
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            29 Jul 25 10:54 RELOADED_AT_UTC
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             2 Jul 25 10:41 UPGRADE_8.10.196.0_COUN                                                                    T
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root           304 Jul 12 2020 ap-images
drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root          2088 Jul 25 10:55 application
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         13748 Jul 25 11:01 base_capwap_cfg_info
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            20 Jul 25 12:00 bigacl
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           442 Dec 21 2024 bootloader.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             5 Jul 24 22:36 bootloader_verify.shado                                                                    w
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            18 Jul 12 2020 config
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         16677 Jul 24 07:08 config.flex
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Jul 3 14:05 config.flex.mgroup
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Jul 25 10:54 config.local
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           379 Jul 25 10:55 config.mobexp
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Jul 3 14:05 config.rlan
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          2345 Jul 24 04:47 config.wireless
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root           880 Mar 1 19:06 cores
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root           320 Jul 12 2020 dropbear
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root           160 Jul 12 2020 images
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           212 Mar 15 2021 last_good_uplink_config
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root           160 Jul 11 2020 lists
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            84 Jul 25 10:41 part1_info.ver
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            63 Jul 12 2020 part2_info.ver
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          4096 Jul 25 11:06 random_seed
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             3 Jul 12 2020 rxtx_mode
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            64 May 9 21:49 sensord_CSPRNG0
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            64 Apr 22 16:50 sensord_CSPRNG1
drwxr-xr-x    3 support root           224 Jul 11 2020 support
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          2200 Jul 25 10:55 syslogs
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
flash                    57.5M     35.8M     18.7M 66% /storage

SO how do I clean up those APs?
All I could find around in the community is showing "delete /recursive, /force" etc, however those APs do not have these commands. Nor they have /overwrite when doing the archive download-sw command.

I have show flash and have delete core
Nothing else.

Formatting flash is not an option, because the APs are remote, so I can't get in the AP in rommon mode.

Any advice would be highly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Re: Clearing storage space on Cisco ME AP 3800 - IOS XE for upgrade.

Mark Elsen — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 15:25:54 GMT

- @TsvetanVladimirov7864 Post the output of the command show version

Re: Clearing storage space on Cisco ME AP 3800 - IOS XE for upgrade.

Jens Albrecht — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:28:13 GMT

Hello @TsvetanVladimirov7864,

there are a few threads already regarding this kind of upgrade problem with the 2800/3800 series APs.

The common solutions was to convert the AP to CAPWAP mode and then re-convert it back to Mobility Express with the new image.

Yes, this process is tedious but it works remotely as the alternatvie requires physical access and of course backup the config before doing this.

Some of the threads I mentioned can be found here or here.

HTH!

Re: Clearing storage space on Cisco ME AP 3800 - IOS XE for upgrade.

MHM Cisco World — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:46:08 GMT

I was hoping one of cisco employee answer you' the idea is you need to know each file name what represent and can you delete it or not' some file is necessary like

base_capwap_cfg_info

And

config.flex

Other not so like

syslogs

And

Cores

but you need to check before deleting any file/folder

Command you need to delete is ""rm file/folder-name""

Please be careful dont remove any file before you 100% it not effect your AP ME

MHM

Re: Clearing storage space on Cisco ME AP 3800 - IOS XE for upgrade.

TsvetanVladimirov7864 — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 19:27:21 GMT

Thank you Jens and team.

Current running version 8.5.131.0.

Yes most of the threads lead to this solution. However with the newer versions of Lightweight APs, it is no longer possible to convert a Lightweight AP to Mobility express. So that option is not working if you have only the latest versions. (thats my contract)
I am stuck with only 8.10 versions unfortunately.

The APs are so locked down, that once converted to Lightweight for 8.10 version, you cannot install ME image. It doesn't allow it.

Therefore I use the backup image and go back to 8.5.
If I use the upgrade image ap3g3, then the AP reports that it is missing the image version file on that partition and goes back to previous version.

So basically its a version loop happening.

Any other advices will be really appreciated.
Because I am going around in circles.

Re: Clearing storage space on Cisco ME AP 3800 - IOS XE for upgrade.

TsvetanVladimirov7864 — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 19:29:28 GMT

Thanks for the warning, much appreciated.

I think format flash will do me good things, but I think the u-boot of those APs is also locked so tftp is also not working from there.
Any advice on how I can make it work?