Cannot add 2960 switch to Community

[bkesting]

I am running CNA 6.2 and am trying to add a WS-C2960S-24PS-L switch to an existing Community.  Every time I try to add the switch I get "Authentication Failure".

I can bring up the switch just fine on its own in CNA and fully configure it, but I cannot join it to my existing Community.  What am I doing wrong?  I have VTP mode set to transparent on the new switch and have manually configured the management VLAN on it and assigned an IP.  I have it plugged into a current community-member switch

Thanks in advance.

[bkesting]

Any advice?

[Richard Bradfield]

I take it you have the correct username/password or AAA authentication setup for this switch,

if using Tacacs or radius is the new switch  in the AAA server database?

if using local is the privilege level setup correctly?

[bkesting]

I use local authentication.  I have username setup with privilege level set to 15.  Also have enabled:

aaa new-model

aaa authentication login default local

aaa authorization exec default local

aaa authorization network default local

ip http server

ip http authentication local

ip http secure-server

[Richard Bradfield]

as a matter of interest if you try and discover it as a read only do you still get the same problem, also I assume you can ping the switch from the device that is running  CNA, also I assume you can telnet/ssh into the switch ok

[bkesting]

What do you mean by discover it as read only?

The switch shows up in CNA.  I can bring up its "Device Manager".  I can ping the unadded switch from any switch in my community and my unadded switch can ping any of the switches in the Community.  It joins the VTP domain just fine and VLANs are replicated 100%.  And I can ssh into the unadded switch.

[Richard Bradfield]

I dont know about CNA 6.2 but earlier versions you had the option of discovering with priv 7 read only, or 15 read/write 

You can not  have more than 40 devices in a community according to CNA 6.2 release notes.You are not trying to exceed that are you?

see comunity limitations from release notes below

Community Limitations

These limitations apply only to communities:

• A community can contain up to 40 devices. This limit is enforced whenever you add devices to a community.
• CSCsd04956

The Topology view does not show the internal Gigabit Ethernet link between routers and the EtherSwitch service modules NME-16ES-1G and NME-X-23ES-1G.

There is no workaround.

• Changes to the topology or the network do not propagate across all open Network Assistant sessions connected to the same community. You see this inconsistency when multiple Network Assistant sessions are open on one desktop and they are pointing to the same community.

Open one Network Assistant session per desktop per community. (CSCeh53619)

• In the Topology view, the redundant link for an HSRP group is not shown. There is no workaround. (CSCeh54526)
• If a community has members that are connected to a member through a hub or a Gigastack module, the Topology view shows all the connections. However, if nonmembers are connected to a community member through a hub or a Gigastack module, the Topology view shows only the connection of the first nonmember.
• Accessing a community through a router running Network Address Translation (NAT) is not supported.
• When a device with a device ID that exceeds 40 characters is added to the community, its link disappears. The device ID is usually the hostname, but if a domain name is specified, the device ID is in the form hostname.domain-name. There is no workaround, other than to limit the size of the device ID to 40 characters or less. (CSCsi77210)

[bkesting]

I only have about 12 items in my Community. 

And I have tried, what I think is ready only mode, and there's no difference.  Maybe I should try an earlier version of CNA?

[bkesting]

If I create a new community, then the switch connects just fine with all the other switches.  Weird. 

Maybe I'll just delete the community I have and create a new one.

[Richard Bradfield · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Glad you got it sorted

[bkesting]

Thanks for your help

[sbartgis]

For anybody having this problem, I came up with an alternative that doesn't require rebuilding the entire community.

My situation was nearly identical to the OP. I had 20+ switches in a community and one day, I went to add a switch to the Community that had previously been there. When I went to add it via the Topology View (right-click and select Add To Community), CNA would just hang on "Discovering 192.168.100.xxx." If I went to Modify the Community and add it by IP address, it would just prompt "Failed - authentication failure." The problem is that nothing seemed to trigger CNA to prompt me for credentials. Console and HTTP access were fine - credentials were known but the key is they are different from what they were last time CNA worked with this switch.

I really did not want to start a new Community. I was very happy with my topo view! I then realized that CNA keeps the passwords encrypted in files located in C:\Users\<username>\.networkassistant\password_store. I exited CNA, renamed the two files with a .X on the end, and relaunched CNA. Upon choosing the Community, I was prompted to enter the username/password for a couple of switches. Since most of them use the same HTTP user, of my 20+ switches I only needed to enter 5 username/password combinations. And... one of them was for the switch I was struggling with.

The best part is that my Topo View was preserved, as were my devices and neighbors and exclusions. 

[ElQueue]

This was so very very helpful!

[z.stogiannis]

That helped me too. Thanks

[motochigawa]

Thank you for very helpful advice.