Standby FWSM context doesn't respond

[sampusarkar]

Hello :

We have FWSM Active/ Standby mode and

one context out of 9 is not accessable

from management station. The starnge

thing is that this behavior is intermittent. Sometimes I can access the

context but sometimes not.

The only way to access that context via MSFC. Also we have also observed another strange bahavior. When we are unable to access that context , it is being observed that

the standby vlan MAC address is not showing up in ARP table in the switch.

It shows the MAC address of Active FWSM

context vlan.

Any help is appreciated.

Best Regards

Arjun

[Kureli Sankar]

You may be running into this known defect.

Pls. read here:

http://tools.cisco.com/Support/BugToolKit/

CSCsl39710

[sampusarkar]

Dear Sankar :

I have managed to find another bug which may be relevent in this situation.

CSCsr75501 Bug Details

FOVER:Standby MAC addr is improperly registered as Active MAC on Primary

Symptom:

After the customer changed configuration on FWSM/VLANs, the ARP entry was wrongly updated and fails to update with the proper mac address.

The secondary/standby is advertising the primary/active's MAC for the secondary/standby's interface. The primary/active is adding this MAC to his ARP table.

Conditions:

This issue has been observed on 3.1.x.

Workaround:

None

Further Problem Description:

When the ARP timeout is reached, it should update the ARP table with the correct address. However, the Secondary/Standby IP's MAC address is registered as the Active MAC. Because of that, the Primary/Secondary cannot communicate properly and the failover status on the Secondary is "failed".

But our main foucus is why we are not able to access the one of the contexts

from standby context.

Regards

Arjun

[Kureli Sankar]

If you are familiar with collecting captures you can see if the packets arrive on the context. You can do vlan span as well.

TAC can do elam captures on the 6k. For this you need to open a TAC case that only TAC can do this procedure.

[sampusarkar]

The issue is sometimes we can reach that

context and sometimes not. There are 9 contexts on standby FWSM. 8 contexts are accessable from our mgmt station except 1 context. Sometimes it accessable.

Do you think the bug I had mentioned is correct ? in show ARP on Cat6k all mac addresses are correct except that context which is not accessable.

Thanks

Arjun