Upgrading both firmware images on RV34x?

[bp5286-1]

Hi all,

I have an RV345, and have upgraded the firmware on the primary image to the 1.02.xx build as of now. In looking at the options currently on the router, I can load up the 1.02 build or the original 1.01.xx build that the router shipped with. No matter what I've tried, I can't upgrade the firmware on the other image, which to me is problematic as that is supposed to be failover firmware in case there are any corruption issues with my active image. I'd like for these versions to be the same so that there aren't any compatibility issues in my network or with my running configuration file. Also, I'd like to not have to have two separate sets of router configurations, keeping one just for the older version of the firmware.

Can someone advise on how to upgrade that second firmware image?

I've tried switching to the older 1.01 firmware so that it's active and then loading the 1.02 upgrade from there, as well as loading the 1.02 upgrade with the 1.02 firmware version active and the 1.01 version inactive. Neither makes a difference. No matter what I do, I have one copy of 1.02 firmware and one of 1.01.

Now that the 1.03 firmware is out, I'd like to get rid of the 1.01 firmware at a minimum as the 1.02 and 1.03 firmware versions are similar enough for my needs. I'd rather have it bump back to 1.02, being almost identical and a few months old than 1.01, which is a few years old and was problematic from the start.

Thanks!

[balaji.bandi]

here is the upgrade proceedure for the RV Devices :

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/smb/routers/cisco-rv-series-small-business-routers/smb5506-upgrade-firmware-on-an-rv34x-series-router.html

One of the thing i am still not able to understand "Can someone advise on how to upgrade that second firmware image?" 

Any router have only 1 image that is sufficient for the router to work. if you have space you can have images stored in the devices (not sure is this you looking, but RV model - as per i know you can not do that)

[bp5286-1]

Hi,

Thank you. I'm aware of the upgrade procedure and appreciate your reply.

The RV model does support two firmware images, at least as of a newer version than you may be aware of. Please see the URL below of the emulator on the Cisco site, as well as the screenshot I'm including.

The "inactive firmware image" is listed, in the emulator at least, as having the same firmware as the active image. This is what i'm trying to do. Apologies if I wasn't clear before.

EDIT: The reason that Cisco stated this was useful was that if there is an issue booting from the active firmware image, the router will automatically switch to the inactive image and try booting there. I'm trying to ensure redundancy as this has been added as a feature.

Thanks!

https://www.cisco.com/assets/sol/sb/RV345_Emulators/RV345_Emulator_v1-0-02-16/index.html#/Admin_Reboot

[pgrey]

I think this is intentional, keeping two disjoint copies (I have the same two, on my RV340).

Having the backup image be the same (mostly) negates the purpose (being able to semi-rollback, probably with some "config issues") of the whole deal.

It used to be possible to shell into the RV340, but it was very user-unfriendly (I haven't done this since shortly after I got the RV340, for this reason), in terms of command discovery (everything doesn't work, which is understandable, given that it's technically unsupported), and such.  
I would guess this is the best-bet, at getting those images the same, if you really want to do it...  Good luck though, be careful, given that it's all essentially undocumented/unsupported, if it still works (you can at least nuke your router config here, and possibly brick it).

[Jo Kern]

Hi,

the idea is that the second image can be used to boot when a firmware upgrade fails or gets interrupted. So the router has a watchdog timer for some scenarios to recover from a corrupted firmware image during upgrade.

Also when a feature fails in a new firmware or was changed it shall be easier to fall back to the old image and you can than upload the old config from a PC or USB stick which you can save before you do upgrades.

In general the concept is that the backup image is not the same as the running image. This is why you do not have direct control.

If both images are the same and would have a severe bug or a security issue it would be more difficult to swap images. You could brick your device.

Thanks for raising this as we will take all ideas and suggestions into our roadmap planning.  Suggestions and questions from the field are invaluable.

Hope this helps

Jo

[bp5286-1]

Hi Jo,

Thanks for your reply, it sheds so much light on why this feature exists, and is really helpful since I couldn't find any documentation on how it worked. This is great. I'll have to save the URL to this thread.

I have one follow up question for you: If I run a firmware upgrade, will the version I'm currently using (active) be bumped to the inactive image, and the new version will take its place? For example, on my RV345, I have the 1.0.01 firmware and the 1.0.02 firmware, with the latter active. If I run the 1.0.03 upgrade from the active 1.0.02 firmware image, will I end up with an active image of 1.0.03, and an inactive image of the 1.0.02 firmware that was running when I did the upgrade?

My goal is to "bump" the 1.0.01 firmware off of the device completely, as it's so different I think it would cause more problems than not if it were ever rolled back to.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Jo Kern · Accepted solution]

The router is running from active firmware. eg. 1.0.2

During a firmware upgrade the new firmware you upload to the device will override the inactive firmware in flash.  eg. 1.0.3. will override 1.0.1

Then you reboot and the inactive version ( which is the new 1.0.3 ) will become active

1.0.2 will become inactive.

So you went

from:  active   1.0.2 inactive  1.0.1

to:      inactive 1.0.2 active 1.0.3

Jo

[bp5286-1]

Fantastic. Thank you, Jo!