CSCvn16712 - 8811/41/51/61 phone LEDs flash due to MIC keys being overwritten

[tgarst]

Cisco Community -

I have seen this red/amber/green (I call it the Lightsaber) top two session button flashing at two separate organizations with 1,000+ phones.  However, the issue only impacted 3ish phones at both companies.

I recently discovered downgrading to 11-7-17 fixed the issue and then upgrading back to 12-1-1 caused the issue to return.  I am suspecting certain hardware revisions are to blame because I checked the back of the phones (labels) and found them to be different than known working phones.  I have also seen certain phone hardware revisions (and switches/routers) experience different degrees of impact depending upon current Firmware level. 

Anyway, it seems this bug is still open, but the issue is supposed to be fixed finally on 12-5-1 firmware.  We will try it out next year as we cannot reboot our cluster in these last few weeks.

I wanted to post about this because there does not seem to be much info around about it.  I think there is maybe one other post that I found relating to downgrading to 11-7-17, but did not seem to work for all cases ... or even try deleting and super copy another phone ... trial and error attempts like that.

There were also comments about hundreds of phones being impacted which luckily that is not the case for us.  If you are not sure how to switch phone loads on individual phones you just have to check in Device-->Device Settings--> Device Defaults (find the model and which loads are active and inactive) and then copy the inactive load filename from that line.  Then you go to a specific phone and paste the load filename into the Phone Load Name in the Device Information section of each phone device you are having issues with.  Then reboot and pray.

[Robert Rhodes]

Firmware 12-5-1 does resolve the LED traffic light symptom, but be aware that 12-5-1SR1-4 was just released. I have found that 12-5-x firmware disables ring alerting on attached Jabra/VXi V-series wireless headsets with the Cisco compatible electronic hook switch module. Reverting the firmware to 12-1-1SR1-4 resolves the headset alerting. I have just confirmed that phones previously subject to CSCvn16712 did not see a return to that condition after being upgraded to 12-5-1 and then downgraded to 12-1-1SR1-4

[tgarst]

@Robert Rhodes

Great info!  Thanks for posting more about the newer firmware.  We do have Jabra as our headset standard and I believe some EHSs so I will inquire some more on this to my team.  Interesting that 12-1-1SR1-4 revert fixes the LED flashing and headset alerting.  Overall, I just wanted this session flashing light issue to be spread to General Knowledge because it is DEFINITELY NOT a HARDWARE issue (no need to replace or send phones back) it is MOST DEFINITELY a firmware issue now confirmed by multiple sources.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CISCO .... PLEASE RELEASE SOME INFO/RECALL ON THIS TO THE MASSES!!!!!!!!!

[Robert Rhodes]

A further caveat about the 12-5-1 and 12-5-1SR1-4 firmware, both of these versions introduced a call quality issue onto some (but not all) 8851s that it was applied to. The symptom itself could best be described as "popping" based on the descriptions in tech note 30141. Rolling back to 12-1-1SR1-4 eliminated the noise. This occurred in a cluster running version 11.5.1.15900-18 and was repeatable. If you deploy the 12-5-1 firmware to resolve CSCvn16712 you should consider tests for call quality afterwards.

[tae.s.kim29.ctr]

what is the fix for this issue?

just ran into this bug...

one of 4000 8851NR phones started doing the same thing but the phone is still operating fine.

CUCM is running 11.5.1SU6 and phones have the lasted firmware which is 12-1-1SR2-2 as active load and 12-5-1SR1-4 as inactive load.

Tried to change the firmware to 12-5-1SR1-4 but still having the same issue.

[tgarst]

11-7-17 firmware downgrade should resolve the session buttons doing lightsaber (traffic lights) for you.  I am not convinced any 12.x firmware will cooperate with 11.5 CUCM.  As I stated, putting 12-1-1 on caused the issue to return after I fixed a phone using the 11-7-17.

I don't know of any specific advantages on the newer firmware as the 11-7-17 should be pretty stable for you regardless of Phone Hardware Revision (tested on Revs 3 and 5 mostly).  We currently have some Rev 10 and we upgraded to 12.5 CUCM and latest firmware is

sip88xx.12-5-1SR3-74

Has not caused any flashing session lights or call quality issues that have been reported.  So, might be the next stable firmware (at least for 12.5 systems).

[Robert Rhodes]

v12.5 firmware works fine with CUCM 11.5. We have close to 4000 of the 8851 endpoints running 12.5.1SR2-2 firmware with no problems on an 11.5.1.15900-18 build cluster. 

[tgarst]

Tae - did you try to revert to 11-7-17 version and then back up to 12-5-2?  As I said, 12-1-1 will cause the issue to return but 11-7-17 should fix it.

You should be able to grab from Cisco site and load it in then restart TFTP (no impact) and just copy 11-7-17 load name into the single device.

We had some phones completely lock up when moving to CUCM 12.5 so that is very frustrating.  I think there is a phone hardware revision/firmware issue, but Cisco won't fess up ….

These 8851 models have gone from hardware revision V01 to V10 already … so I find that interesting … and a likely clue.

TAC is separated from Cisco CORP, so mostly CORP will never find out of these issues. (or does not seem like the communication happens between them)