Pix 520 upgrade to 6.x

[jonathan.green]

Hello;

Anyone successfully upgraded a Pix 520 to firmware v6.x?

When attempting to upgrade from v5.1(2), I receive an error 'Obsolete FLASH card. Upgrade required" The 520 has 32mb ram & 2 mb flash - do I need extra RAM, etc.?

Thank you

[gfullage]

The page where you download PIX software from (http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/pix) states that you need 8Meg of flash for any 6.x code. You only have 2Meg so you'll have to purchase a 16Meg flash card if you want to upgrade.

Part number for the flash card is PIX-FLASH-16MB.

[mitchell_kohn]

Any gotcha's ? I am waiting for my 16 MB flashcard to come in....I'll be upgrading from 4.4(5).

Thanks

[gfullage]

The one that gets everyone is that they don't remove the 2Meg flash card first. You HAVE to remove this before putting in the 16Meg flash card, otherwise the PIX won't boot up. Also, when people are going to remove the 2Meg flash, the way the cabling is internally in the PIX it can look like the 2Meg flash card has the console port on it amongst others, and so people think they can't remove it. If you look closely the 2Meg flash card is the only card without any ports/connectors on the back of it, remove that one and replace it with the 16Meg card.

Also, you might want to upgrade to 5.2(x) first, then go to 6.2(x), just to make sure there's no config issues, but you should be OK.

Also, the manual says that the 16Meg card is not for the PIX-520. This is wrong, ignore what the manual says.

[jonathan.green]

Appreciate everyone's assistance, thank you.

Re the upgrade, spending 9 bills on a card seems excessive for a firewall that is 3+ years old (already had to replace the power supply), and would total more than half the cost of brand spanking new 506e w/ 3des & smartnet. Are there used cards out there for less - didn't see any on ebay?

Thank you.

[mitchell_kohn]

Thanks ! Our present budget doesn't allow a new Pix and it is covered by Smartnet. Sorry for hijacking this thread.