ASA stuck loading new OS, old OS still loads fine

[esa_fresa]

We're upgrading a number of ASA 5505's from 9.1(7) to 9.1(7)9. The majority of them upgrade fine, but a few get stuck on "Loading disk0:/asa917-9-k8.bin..."

The new images are put on disk0, the only storage of the device, via FTP. I verify the md5 hashes once they're on the ASAs. I'm suspecting a hardware  issue, like bad RAM, but we can still boot to the old 9.1(7) image; this is really confusing for me.

Do I just RMA the device, or is there another something I can look into?

[Aditya Ganjoo]

Hi,

Can you check the output of fsck flash and see if the flash health is fine ?

Also when you upgrade the ASA could you share the console logs ?

Regards,

Aditya

Please rate helpful posts and mark correct answers.

[esa_fresa]

Flash looks fine. No new FSCK00??.REC files generated.

ASA# fsck flash:

dosfsck 2.11, 12 Mar 2005, FAT32, LFN
/dev/hda1: 86 files, 47223/62078 clusters

fsck of flash: complete

I can share the console logs when we try the upgrade again. It's in production so will be next maintenance window. Is there anything specific that you're looking for?

[johnd2310 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I have had similar issues with 5505s that have seen heavy compact flash usage i.e. had ios /asdm upgrades and files added/deleted. You could try to format the flash but you have to make sure you backup the files on flash, including activation keys before you do a format.

Thanks

John  

[esa_fresa]

After reformatting the flash, the ASA is up and running on the new code. We did a "format flash:", downloaded the new image into flash, "wr mem", and then reloaded the ASA.

I think so long as we don't do "erase flash:", hidden files like activation keys don't get erased? We're only using the basic license, would that affect anything?

We also had an odd issue where after reloading, only the top half of the startup config was copied to running (missing cryptomaps and everything below). We had to console in again and manually do a "copy start run".

Anyways, thanks for your suggestion John!

[sarterburn1]

Hello,

This worked perfectly. I had just replaced so many different flash cards and even replaced the firewall.

Using a cisco asa 5520 with 512mb for disk0 and 825-59.

It kept saying 0 bytes and 0 bytes available.

I tried to delete disk0 in ROMON and was not able to get the same results. After I loaded an OS.

rommon #3> ADDRESS=172.28.78.1
rommon #4> SERVER=172.28.78.10
rommon #5> IMAGE=asa917-9-k8.bin
rommon #6> set

ROMMON Variable Settings:
ADDRESS=172.28.78.1
SERVER=172.28.78.10
GATEWAY=0.0.0.0
PORT=Ethernet0/1
VLAN=untagged
IMAGE=asa917-9-k8.bin
CONFIG=
LINKTIMEOUT=20
PKTTIMEOUT=4
RETRY=20

rommon #7> tftpdnld

I was able to get in and "delete flash."

This gave me back the disk0 and the ability to save my configs again.

Thank you,

Steve